If you are wondering why user experience is important then think about the statistic that 88% of online shoppers will not go back to a site that has a poor UX. If you want to build your customer base online, then you need to understand their needs and build an experience that is easy and convenient to use.
You may be surprised to learn that despite its importance, only 55% of businesses carry out UX testing and those that do often don’t learn anything useful to improve their website performance. The reality is that instead of looking at what competitors are doing; companies would be better advised to learn about their users’ behaviour and understand the impact that will have on their UX.
Let’s take a look at three ways you can make your website UX stand out from the crowd.
User Behaviour – Understanding Motivation and Patterns
Analysing insights into user behaviour will not be enough on its own. Instead, you need to consider the underlying patterns that affect how your users utilise your website. This means understanding what your audience is thinking about and what is motivating their actions.
For example, you may want your users to focus on a particular item on a page but find that they go elsewhere. Ask yourself why this is happening? What are they looking for and how can you use that information to improve?
Interviews and questionnaires can help you to find out some of your users’ reasons for their actions and help you to make a more thorough analysis of their actions. By adding those findings to your insights you will build a more complex picture of user behaviour.
User Behaviour – Understanding their basic needs
An optimal UX will always involve understanding your users’ needs and providing them with a simple, easy and convenient way to meet them.
Think of their visit to your site as a pathway involving how they move between pages to find what they want. Use your analysis and feedback to improve each page ensuring the individual page structure will fulfil their needs.
Eliminating frustrations and distractions will help your users to navigate your preferred path and make their experience smoother and more effective.
User Behaviour – Understanding the Journey
Your website’s UX can only be truly improved if you consider the whole journey that every user takes. By understanding their starting point and where you want them to end up you can map out their whole experience.
This applies to both first-time users and regular customers who will only return if their experience has been a success.
Think about how your audience comes across your website and what they will be looking for. Understanding their expectations and what motivates them to search will help you to map out their whole journey in small steps. You should remove the blocks and sticking points that cause frustration so that users are less likely to go elsewhere before they reach what you want them to reach.
Use all your sources of feedback to build a picture of your audience requirements and find ways to make their experience better.
Final Thoughts
The most successful brands will pay the same attention to their online user experience as they do to product design and marketing. Remember to know your audience.
