The journey of every prospect or lead ends on your website. Whether they started from a Facebook™ ad or an Instagram Story, they are finally where you want them to be. But what happens once they reach your website? Some of them browse for a few minutes and leave. Others are not even moving beyond the landing page. Every lead that leaves your website without taking any action after the first visit is a lost lead.
What Makes People Leave a Website?
Ruling out the fact that they reached your website by mistake, the number one reason why people leave a website without taking action is poor user experience. This term defines a complex of features and functions of a website, such as:
- Web design
- Website speed and functionality
- Form design
- Navigation
All these elements must work together like a well-oiled mechanism. Their role is to give every user frictionless browsing experience. People want to find what they need quickly and easily.
At the same time, they want to experience the same emotional connection they have developed with the brand on its social media pages and through social interactions.
So, How Should You Improve User Experience on Your Website?
One of the things you must keep in mind is to review and update your website on a regular basis. This goes beyond content. An in-depth website analysis should cover issues such as broken links, page load speed, Google indexing etc.
Speaking strictly from the point of view of improving user experience, here are some key aspects you should keep in mind:
1. Design Your Website for Your Users, Not for Yourself
Internet users have various browsing habits, depending on how well acquainted they are with technology. Millennials and younger generations are extremely proficient at using the internet and use mobile phones as primary devices. These users like simple, clean website designs, with a minimalist look, flat icons, and easy navigation.
If your target customers fall within the older generation, consider their physical and tech skill limitations. Opt for larger fonts, clearly defined navigation bars, and large-sized CTA buttons.
2. Maintain Consistency in the Design of Your Web Pages
Consistency in design means that users can recognise your brand image and tone of voice in each web page. To fulfill branding requirements, even shopping cart software providers offer many customisation options so that the checkout process is consistent with the user experience of the website.
Look out for any discrepancies in page layouts, colours, fonts and choice of images and graphics. If anything stands out, looks and feels different, it should disappear from your website.
3. Remember Fitt’s Law
Fitt’s Law states that users tend to select those elements on a web page that are larger in size and closer to them. This was the result of a series of experiments conducted by psychologist Paul Fitt in 1954 and still stands true at the present.
How do you apply Fitt’s Law to your website? Simple: make your CTA buttons and links large and place them in the most visually accessible parts of your web page. To determine placement, you should create a heatmap of your site, showing where users focus their vision and clicks. To achieve this, you can choose from a wide range of heatmap tools and even WordPress plugins.
4. Use Images in Line with Your Brand
A photo speaks a thousand words – but they have to be the right words. When making the selection of photos that will go on each page of your site, ask yourself a few questions. What will a person understand from looking at this photo? Will they recognise my brand? Will they know what that specific web page is about?
Without going too deep in detail, we will add one more thing: the age of stock photos of smiling business people in offices has gone. Instead of purchasing photos that have no connection with your business, arrange a photo session at your premises with a professional photographer.
5. Do Something about 404 Pages
The 404 code means “Page Not Found”. Ideally, you should not have any broken links in your website. However, you should provide for the situation when a user clicks on a broken link.
Instead of the standard message displayed by the browser, set your broken links to redirect users to the home page after getting the error message. Alternately, use a bit of humour and keep the viewer engaged with a funny image and text, followed by several navigation options: to your products page, to the contact page, etc.