Best Practices for Website UX in 2023

Website user experience (UX) defines the way customers feel when interacting with your brand’s website. These feelings are often heavily influenced by design choices related to both visuals and content. Because your website is often the foundation of your brand’s digital presence, customers will base their impression of your business on their experience with your site. 
In fact, 88 percent of consumers report that they wouldn’t revisit a website if they had a bad experience.
Websites have the power to turn users into leads, so you can’t ignore their importance if you want your brand to thrive. Try these valuable tips to foster a positive website experience for your customers. 

Why Should I Improve My Website’s User Experience?

User experience plays a part in the success of the interactions on your website. Cultivating an emotional connection with your customer by providing an outstanding user experience also contributes to brand loyalty. With an increased focus on UX, your brand can continue to excel in the current landscape. 

The 7 Components of User Experience

UX designers should consider these seven key aspects of UX designed by Peter Morville when revitalizing their website to succeed in an evolving digital space.
 

Desirable: Is your product attractive to your customers? Does your website make your product appealing? Desirability is about luring your customers in through emotional connection. For instance, consider using the color red to evoke passion and impulsivity in your customer. This will excite them about your product and potentially increase sales.

Useful: Your product must have a purpose, and it’s essential that this purpose benefits your consumer. A well-designed website may advertise a business’ products and services on its home page while directing you to additional resources, immediately demonstrating the site’s usefulness.

Usable: When a potential customer visits your site, they should be able to find all of the information they need quickly and easily in order to keep them interested and wanting to continue browsing on your website. Whether it be finding more information about products and services or learning more about your company, your site should be user-friendly. This all begins with an intuitive design, which simply means creating a site that visitors feel confident navigating from the start.

Accessible: An accessible website will account for any disabilities that a website visitor may have, ensuring that regardless of the user’s abilities they have the same access to the website content as any other visitor. Accessibility also means that a customer can navigate your website across devices and have access to your brand at all times. Common methods of increasing accessibility include enlarged font sizes or Alt Text that describes images.

Credible: The popularity of the internet has made it so that anyone can have a website. This means that people today are hyper-aware of scams, so your site must prove its credibility. This can be accomplished by displaying brand partnerships, customer reviews, contact information, and more. These aspects wrapped up in a sleek and engaging package boost trust.

Findable: Findable refers to a user being able to locate the information they need on your website. For instance, if your business offers memberships, your customer should be able to very quickly locate your memberships page and easily apply. 

Valuable: Websites must provide something of value to both parties, such as time. Many sites use an FAQ page to answer their customers’ most asked questions, saving customers the time they would’ve spent researching and the customer service team the time they would’ve spent answering repeated questions. 

What To Consider When Updating UX Design

There is one essential rule to remember in UX-based web design: UX is not necessarily only about great design, it’s about making people feel good and providing them with a positive brand experience.

What should web designers keep in mind to ensure that UX is always front and center? According to a report titled “How to Catch and Keep Customer Attention, Part 2” there are four main elements that affect UX. Considering them in your design will allow you to properly optimize your site:

Excessive Navigation or Information is Frustrating: Too much content has been shown to irritate users. If they visit your site looking for specific information but aren’t able to quickly find the information they need, then the odds of them clicking off of your site will increase. This is because users will get frustrated at having to search and leave your site to find their answers on a more comprehensive website. 

Users Don’t Like Irrelevant Information: When a user visits your site, they do so with specific goals. If your website distracts them from this goal by flooding them with information in an attempt to market to them, they’re likely to disengage and then report having a negative experience.

Clutter Confuses Users: If a user visits your site and is met with a series of pop-ups, they’re more likely to click away than they are to follow the prompts. Again, these unexpected features lead to irritation and cause the user to spend more time working towards their goal.

Users Like Simple Tasks: Users love a simple and comprehensive website. If they can visit your site, find the information they need, and be satisfied by the results, then they’ll have a positive experience with your brand. 

The Best Practices for UX Design in 2023

There are many emerging strategies that brands can use to ensure they’re giving customers an excellent user experience. Below is a list of emerging trends that you can apply to revitalize your web design.

Custom Illustrations: The days when web designers could place stock photos throughout their websites have passed. Today, websites require a bit more flare to keep visitor’s interest and attention. One way to do this is by investing in custom illustrations. While they may cost more to create, the ROI is also greater. Visuals that are tailor-made for your brand will better foster an emotional connection. They’ll be specific to your brand’s look, feel, and voice, which will better communicate your personality to your customers. Custom illustrations can be found across Warby Parker’s site, specifically on their information pages. Check them out to see great custom illustrations in practice.

White Space: White space can be a great way to break up imagery and clear the mess. While not a new concept, it is still effective in guiding a user’s attention to the most important elements of a page. Just look at WealthSimple to see excellent and creative uses of white space. 

Immersive Elements – Web designers can consider implementing 3D elements to prevent visitors from clicking away from your site. These 3D features may include buttons, text, floating features, or shadows. The result iswebsite depth, which grabs your visitor’s attention and forces them to continue navigating. Chirpley uses 3D masterfully to draw in users the moment they visit your site. 

Color Gradients – Designers today are beginning to utilize the full-color spectrum. This choice is again a part of the trend to explore every possible method of visual storytelling to better represent a brand. Colors are great for enhancing UX as they have the power to subtly queue an audience. Different colors may evoke different emotions in a user, allowing businesses to better control the feelings of their audience. Gucci Beauty uses soft colors to give their site a warm and inviting feel.

Parallax Scrolling – Parallax scrolling is the evolved version of dynamic scrolling. This feature gives viewers the illusion of scrolling endlessly while the background moves with it, but at a slower rate. So long as this element is used carefully and doesn’t distract the user, it can be great for telling the story of your brand. Look to none other than Koox for another excellent example.

How to Choose the Best UX Elements for Your Website

Trying to implement every UX optimization included above can be overwhelming. So how should you decide where to start? It may help to first assess where your website is underperforming. This will allow you to form specific goals and choose the elements that are most likely to aid you. Also, assess the current skills of your web designers and consider selecting the elements that they can implement best. Remember that more elements can always be added to your website over time, so you can always start small and build.

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