A user friendly website which provides a great experience is vital for encouraging users into your website and steering them down the sales funnel.
Ideally you want everyone who visits your website to become a customer (preferably straight away!). But if your website if confusing or frustrating to use, that won’t happen.
Providing users with an easy to use website and a great user experience will make buying easier. If they don’t buy then and there, they’ll remember your website and may return when they are ready to buy.
Design
Your website’s design is important for creating a great user experience and an easy to use website.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the post, your website should look easy to use from the second a user arrives on your website. If it looks confusing or cluttered people may be put off and decide to visit another website instead which looks easier to use.
It is also essential to ensure that your websites branding matches the branding on your marketing collateral. And your social media profiles, to avoid confusing users.
Navigation
Your navigation is the core of designing a user-friendly website. If users can’t figure out which page they need to go to or how to find the information they’re looking for, they’ll go to another website where they can.The page titles in your navigation should give users a good idea of what they can expect to find if they click on that button.
If you have a lot of pages or sections on your website, you might consider having a sub-navigation within each section or page to make things easier.
For example one of our clients, Gardening Delights, has a sub-navigation on the left hand side of root-category landing pages to help users navigate around categories easily.
To ensure you don’t confuse users, ensure your navigation is exactly the same throughout your website. And always make sure to include a ‘Home’ button.
Blog
If you have a blog make sure it’s integrated into your website and sits on the same URL as the rest of your website. For example ours is www.themarketingpeople.com/blog. Not only is this SEO friendly, but it also makes it easier for users to find.
It’s also important to use your websites navigation on the blog so users can switch between the two easily. Not only is it website friendly, but it looks much better and more appealing. Rather than having a blog which looks completely different to the rest of your website.
Content
Creating concise and useful content is important. As we’re sure you’ll want users to leave your website having learned something about your company or products, even if they don’t become a customer on that visit to your website.
There’s nothing worse than arriving on a website to be met by a wall of unformatted text. Even if it contains the best solution or answer to a user’s question, they’ll be put off by a block of text.
Encourage users to read your content by making it look appealing by using titles, headers, paragraphs and images. You should also consider whether the font’s readable in terms of; the font itself, size and the colour.
Mobile
Last year roughly one sixth of all internet traffic in theUK came from a mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone, and that number will only continue to grow.
Having a mobile optimised website means that mobile users also get the same great user experience and are able to browse your website easily.
Case Study
We recently carried out some work for one of our clients, Gardening Delights, to help them create an easier to user website. This involved; reviewing the website and planning and organising the changes and carrying out the changes themselves.
As part of the websites update we;
- Re-organised their navigation and renamed pages to make it clearer what kind of products users would find if they clicked on that button.
- Added new categories to make large categories with lots of different yet similar products smaller and easier for users to look through.
- Created and implemented new sliders and graphics for the homepage which linked to the root-category landing pages
- Created three new landing pages which fit with the brands current positioning, which offers users helpful information.
The final result is a website which is much more user-friendly and enables users to find the products they’re looking for quicker and easier.
Contact Us
If you’re a small business based in Cannock, Burntwood, Lichfield or Staffordshire and need help making your website more user-friendly, get in touch to us to find out how we can help you. To find out more, call us on 01543 387 047 or fill in the contact form on our website.
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