What is UX and Why Does it Matter?
What it is
UX, or User Experience, is the overall experience a person has while interacting with a product, service or, in this case, your website. UX encompasses everything from the initial impression to the final interaction, focusing on how easy, efficient, and enjoyable the experience is.
Think of it this way: UX isn’t just about how a website looks. It’s about how it feels to use. It’s about whether you can find what you need quickly and easily, whether the process is intuitive, and whether you leave feeling satisfied.
Why it’s important
Visitors can and will leave a site the moment it becomes frustrating to use. After all, they have the whole internet at their fingertips. Irritating pop ups, text that’s hard to read or content that’s just difficult to find can make people lose patience and move on to another site.
A good user experience allows visitors to enjoy your content so seamlessly and find what they need so easily that they have no reason to go elsewhere.
How to Design for Good UX
Why, then, do some websites end up with a poor user experience? The answer is usually the same: creators simply base their design of their own preferences or trends rather than basing their design off user needs.
The solution, of course, is to keep your target audience at the center of every design decision you make.
Let The User’s Needs Be Your Guide
Before you can tailor your design to the needs and preferences of your users, you first need to develop a clear picture of what those needs and preferences might be. The best way to do this is to create a profile of the target audience you most want to reach. The more detail you can provide, the better.
Demographics
- Average age
- Educational history
- Geographic location
- Occupation
User Needs & Expectations
- What problems are they trying to solve?
- What kind of information or services are they looking for?
- How tech-savvy are they?
- Do they prefer self-service options or direct interaction?
- What devices do they use?
- What context will your audience be in when they access your site (an outdoor festival, a quiet office …etc).
Throughout the process of designing your website, you’ll have the opportunity to make decisions about every aspect of your website. At every fork in the road you’ll want to ask “what’s best for the user” and then follow that path.
A professional developer/designer should guide you through the process of defining your target audience before any work begins on your site.
Keep Design Consistent
A consistent design throughout your website builds trust, establishes credibility and makes for a more intuitive user experience.
Making your design consistent is one of the easiest ways to have a big impact on user experience. All you have to do is decide on some styles and stick to them.
A Few Common Areas to Check for Consistency
- Menus: Your navigation menu should look the same no matter what page the visitor is on.
- Text Font & Size: Use the same font for the same type of content across all pages. For example, a quote should be formatted and styled the same way on every page.
- Spacing: The space between certain types of elements should stay consistent. For example, there should always be the same spacing between a heading and the paragraph that follows.
- Color Scheme: Be consistent about which colors you use for which elements of your site. Every action button on your site (eg: “buy now” ..etc) should be the same eye-catching color.
- Personality / Tone: Your writing style can be playful, serious or somewhere in between but you’ll want to make sure your tone doesn’t shift too much from one section to another.
Prioritize Your Content
There’s a truism in web design: “People don’t read website content, they scan it.” At least, they scan it first to see if it’s worth reading.
This means that the most important information on your website should be the most eye-catching.
Decide what the most important content is and utilize headings, sizing and spacing to draw attention to it. See our article on Visual Hierarchy to learn how to draw the viewer’s eye to your most important content.
Accessibility: Check for Obstacles
An accessible website is one designed and developed so that people with disabilities, including visual, auditory, cognitive, and motor impairments, can use and interact with it effectively. The beauty of accessible design is that following accessibility guidelines actually improves user experience for all of your visitors.
For example, in order for visitors to easily read the text on your website, that text should contrast with the background it appears on. Thanks to accessibility guidelines, we not only have a minimum contrast ratio to aim for, we also have a free online contrast checker to ensure our text meets that readability threshold.
Creating a website that meets accessibility standards often requires some technical skill The key is to work with a professional who can perform an accessibility audit and make recommendations with the needs of your business in mind.
Stick to Industry Standards
As consumers, we may be able to appreciate a wide variety of colors and styles but, when it comes to operating a product, we don’t want to wonder where the on/off switch is.
Similarly, visitors to your website expect the basic functions of your site to function in a predictable and familiar way.
Logo
Your logo should be located either at the top center or upper left hand side of the site and should link back to your homepage.
Menu
- Menu Order: While the menu items will differ from one website to another, there are some commonalities that should always be the same. Your homepage should be the first option on the left, the contact page should be the furthest to the right and a call to action should be located at the top right of your site.
- Menu Placement: Keep your menu at the top of the page for easy navigation.
- Mobile Menu: The mobile version of your site should have a small three-line menu (often called a “hamburger menu”) that users can click to see menu options.
Contact Info
In addition to having a contact page, your contact information should be displayed in the header and footer of your website so that it appears on every page.
How to Start Designing for UX
Designing for good UX means keeping user preferences at the center of each decision you make. This involves some research into your audience, prioritizing the content that’s most important to them and designing with care.
We recommend working with a professional who can walk you through a structured plan to keep your user experience on track throughout the design process.
If you’re looking to design a website that’s built for a positive user experience or you’d like to take another look at your existing site with UX in mind, contact us for a free consultation.