User experience is absolutely vital to a successful website design, ensuring that websites are easy to navigate, provide useful information and are efficient. Good UX and user expectations differ depending on the industry, so ensuring that you do research for your industry and business specifically is key. Working with an experienced design agency Manchester or London-based will help you to get the UX right for you specifically, but here are some of the overall things you should consider.
Heat Mapping
First up, a good way to understand user behaviours across the website to then improve user experience is to use heat mapping softwares. This can track how users navigate behaviours, from clicks to scrolls and how a user moves around a page, to show where users aren’t engaging and also the elements that they engage more with. You can also compare this between different landing pages to see which are more effective.
This software can be quite affordable and provides significant detail about user journeys across your website, helping to highlight where a user leaves the website as well as behaviours prior to that to help you understand where the website may be lacking. For example, if you see a consistent pattern of a user clicking on a call to action on the website but then bouncing off the website, the call to action may not have been what they were looking for.
Bounce Rate
Another thing you should look at is bounce rate when it comes to user experience, as it can give good indications of which pages are lacking in terms of keeping users on the page on a basic level. If your bounce rate is any higher than 45-55%, then you’ve got an issue. A bounce rate lower than 20% may indicate a tracking issue. Look at bounce rate at both an overall website and also a page specific level, along with reviewing the other user statistics, to help you understand where adjustments need to be made. Pages with high bounce rates need to be addressed, so reviewing bounce rates across your website is key.
Pages Per Session
Pages per session are also another thing to look out for when analysing your user experience, as if you have low pages per session, then users may be finding it difficult to navigate to other pages. Some websites have landing pages that are designed to not encourage navigation to other pages, so as long as the conversion rate is what you want it to be, then that’s okay. However, for general users who you may want to look at different services, if your pages per session is below 2 on average, then you may have an issue. To increase your pages per session, having a solid link building strategy, having clear sections about your other services and good call to actions to “Learn More” is all important.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rates are the percent of users on a website who have completed a desirable action on a website, which may be anything from submitting an enquiry or making a purchase. A desirable conversion rate can differ significantly depending on the product or service you’re offering, for example a very expensive vintage jeweller may remain profitable with a 0.5% conversion rate, whereas other much more affordable businesses need closer to a 8% conversion rate. The same goes for lead generation businesses.
image source
So, if you aren’t currently meeting targets through the website, looking at ways to improve conversion rate is important. Utilising services like conversion rate optimisation is important, which is often a consideration when you work with an experienced branding company. Improving conversion rates can be transformative for your business, as you’re simply utilising people who have shown some interest in your business already, whether it’s from brand awareness work, paid advertisements or word of mouth. So, by ensuring your website is up to scratch to push them to convert, you’ll be creating a much more cost effective business model. In terms of small business decision making, conversion rate plays a huge role in terms of the data you can utilise to improve your overall profitability.