Engaging with visitors to a website is just as important as driving traffic to the website. Engagement is not only about attracting visitors but making them stay on the site to achieve your goals by fulfilling their needs. It is one of the most important aspects of website design for understanding the performance and ROI on and is directly linked to the growth of the business. A positive user experience enables trust and builds relationships with prospective customers.
How Does Website Design Impact User Experience?
How the website is perceived by the users and how they interact with it can tell if the site is a success or a failure. The website design can influence the user experience in the following ways:
- A well planned and designed website will ensure that the reader keeps scrolling. This would mean, organizing and grouping content into smaller parts with the use of visuals, banners, and other elements to utilize the white space.
- The first impression always matters. So, grab the attention of the visitor. It takes a split second for a visitor to decide whether they would like to scroll through a website or not. It is important to have high-quality visuals and cohesive design with text organized systematically to hold the attention of the visitor.
- The functionality of a website plays a huge role in the overall user experience. Responsive web design ensures the website and its functions are the same when accessed from different devices.
- Having a well-planned updated website is the key to making an impression on the visitor and presenting the business as professional and reliable. It reflects the clean and professional manner of conducting business.
Having stated how website design can impact user experience, let us look at some of the important elements of a good website design
- Strong, limited colour pallet – Colour scheme and usage of colours play an important role when it comes to website design. People associate colours with certain things so use colours thoughtfully to make an attractive website. The number of colours used on a website is a very important element as too many colours can be visually distracting. A Simplified colour scheme with 2 to 3 colours makes it easier to focus and is preferred in modern website design.
- White Space – It is a term used for the space that acts as a buffer between all the elements on the page including sidebars, margins, etc. There should be ample room around various elements on the website for a clean and organised look. As the current trend in website design is all about minimalistic style, having white space on the website will allow the visitor for easy navigation.
- Tell a Story – As mentioned earlier, a good website design should be able to attract the attention of the visitor and have them scroll down the page. This can be achieved through the use of visuals that help tell a story and captivate the audience. Video is another source to introduce the brand to the first-time visitor and provide information about the product and services. Graphs, charts, and data visuals help in putting across information in a more attractive way rather than content that carries all the information in text form. Finally, the words used on the website should complement the storytelling and guide users.
- Offer a Search Bar – People browsing the website are usually looking for specific information. Engage them by helping them find what they are looking for swiftly. The search bar should be placed where visitors would expect it to be which is the top right corner of the page. Features like auto-suggest and drop-down menu can enhance the user experience.
- Loading time for the website – If the speed at which a site load is slow, then the engagement will suffer. According to Think with Google, 53 percent of the people leave a mobile page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Similarly, 47 percent of people expect a desktop page to load in 2 seconds or less. As the load time increases the bounce rate increases too. The speed of the website can be increased by using compressed images, enabling browser caching, reduce the number of plugins, reduce server response time, and minimize HTTP requests.
- Call to Action– Converting visitors into leads and customers is very important for modern website design as websites are meant to connect with people who are interested in your offering. Once there is a connection, it is important to retain these visitors. Converting visitors into customers start with the process of having them sign up for e-mail newsletter, subscriptions, free products forms, free consultations, or other exclusive invites. This is only successful when there is a Call to Action. These should be incorporated into website design as they help in gathering important contact information of the visitors to continue interactions and convert them into customers.
- Organized Card Designs – Currently the focus is on minimalistic website design which has made the use of cards very popular. Cards help in organizing content by grouping together text and image forming an eye-catching element. This helps visitors consume the content more easily. Using cards for website design helps you achieve a clean, organized look while prioritizing user experience.
- Clean Backend Coding– The modern website design element is the most important from a functionality point of view. Coding dictates the performance of a website. Ensure clean backend coding to help in making it easier to write, read, and maintain how the website functions.
- User-Friendly Design – The website should be designed keeping in mind the user. It should be user friendly. If the users get a good value from the website and they keep coming back to it, it starts ranking higher on Google search. Always remember to give more importance to the content rather than SEO especially when you are starting out to be able to build a group of loyal and recurring visitors.
- Elements to boost SEO– Having stated earlier that website should be user friendly, but one must not forget the importance of SEO. There are elements of modern website design that enhance and improve the SEO of the website. These are a part of the backend coding for pages and posts. Meta tags, title tags heading tags, and other HTML coding go a long way in improving the ranking of the website on Google search engine. Ensure to teak and optimize these elements to improve the search ranking.
The aim of any website should be to provide a fluid and intuitive user experience by integrating the 10 elements in the modern website design. Prioritize user experience and ensure website optimization not just for design but for its functionality. If users can easily access your website, engagement will follow.
