Web Design Tips for Better User Experience

Creating the best user experience possible is an important goal any website owner should aim for. In fact, any marketing campaign you run depends on how well the site’s user experience is. SEO, for example, is now influenced by user experience; search engines simply assess the overall user experience based on time-on-site, readability and other factors to determine whether your site should rank higher or lower. Of course, a good user experience begins with a good web design.

Mobile-Friend Interface

At the top of our list of things to do when you want to create a smooth, very pleasant user experience is mobile-friendliness. All sites should be mobile-friendly today, mainly because users use their mobile devices more than ever. Google and Bing are also ranking sites that are mobile-friendly higher when the searches are coming from mobile devices.

There are two ways to make your site mobile-friendly: you can employ a responsive design or create a mobile, lighter version of the site. Both ways work well in today’s competitive market, so we shouldn’t get into the debate on which one is best.

What’s more important is creating a seamless, consistent user experience on both platforms. Users need to be able to recognize elements of your site when viewing it from a smartphone or tablet. This way, they don’t need to ‘learn’ how to use your site all over again.

Some of the things you need to pay attention to when designing a mobile-friendly site are:

• Make sure images are small enough to load from mobile devices quickly.
• Add a consistent navigation that is easy to understand and use for both platforms.
• Do a test on multiple browsers as well. Just because your site is responsive, doesn’t mean it will work on mobile browsers just as well.

Page Speed Matters

The attention span of today’s users is shorter than ever, so having a site that loads quickly is a must. The best sites are the ones that load in under 8 to 10 seconds. Of course, this isn’t always possible, especially if you have a lot of images and visual elements to display.

To get around the limitations, here are a few tips you can use:

• Make sure the main content of the page loads first. If you are showing an article, for instance, make sure it gets loaded first. This way, users can start using the site or reading the article while the rest of the page loads.
• Optimize images, scripts and CSS files for better loading time. You can use Google’s PageSpeed tool to help analyse the elements that can still be optimized for a faster loading time.
• Move load-blocking elements, such as a JavaScript that needs to be loaded before your site appears correctly, to the bottom of the page. Alternatively, you can avoid using this type of elements altogether thanks to HTML5 and CSS3.

If you are not sure about what you are doing in terms of creating a better user experience, you can also get help from the best web design company. Most design services in the country are very affordable and are certainly worth every penny.