Do you know why user experience (UX) is an important factor for websites today? Well, if you want visitors to love coming to your website, then it might be worthwhile to spend some time and money on improving the experience they have on your site, and with your brand in general.
Here are the top five reasons why you (as the website owner) must provide the most remarkable experience to your users.
1. Engages Visitors
A website is supposed to attract online visitors by offering them the information they need quickly and easily. If you’ve strategically planned out your online presence (knowing your target audience, providing value, using landing pages and CTAs for lead generation, optimization based on testing, etc.) you can tailor the information and UX with them in mind.
If your website is interactive, informative and easy to use, then you can be sure that it will succeed in engaging users and may eventually help convert them into customers.
2. Improves Ranking
Popular search engines do their best to provide a great user experience, by always returning the best results. They recognize when visitors are able to complete their desired task in a timely manner, and they give higher preference to such websites in search results.
Visitors unconsciously send signals to the search engines that they’re satisfied with the information that they’ve found, or with the experience they’ve had, when they stick around on your site for an extended period of time. And as a result, search engines reward such type of websites by giving them a more visible rank on all relevant searches.
For comparison, if users are struggling with finding exactly what they’re looking for on your site, then they’ll leave immediately. Search engines recognize this too and place such results lower on the listing page.
3. Boosts Brand Loyalty & Customer Retention
How do you get customers to keep coming back? And to, perhaps, bring their friends with them? Shift your focus away from acquisition towards retention.
It should be of no surprise that websites (and brands) that offer an awesome user experience have higher visitor return rates and increased customer loyalty.
- Treat your website visitors like house guests (the ones you actually like ;)! )
- Build a relationship, not just a transaction.
- Help them fall in love with your company. You may be so lucky as to have them help others fall in love with your company too!
4. Converts More
One of the main goals of every website is to convert more (visitors to customers or sales, users to members or subscribers). If you provide a satisfactory, or sub-par experience on your site, you’ll get satisfactory or sub-par results. As poor user experiences will harm your conversion rate, it would be wise for you to invest in the UX of your website to help direct visitors to take the intended actions.
Removing any friction (such as wasted clicks, error pages, slow page loads, etc.) shapes the UX and influences the visitor to stick around longer (feeling less indecision and doubt).
5. Positive Impression
Every brand needs to make a positive first impression on their prospects if they want to earn their trust. The online presence, including the website as a hub, is often one of the first (OR ONLY!) interactions people have with brands.
So if your website is of poor quality, the design is ancient, lacking white space, jam-packed with outdated content, flashing text, inconsistent branding, slow to load, has broken links, uses obtrusive pop-ups, missing social media sharing, etc. you can be sure you’ll only get one chance for a first impression. Such a poor user experience is sure to garner the wrong kind of attention and contribute to a bad reputation.
Want to learn more about what a great UX can do for you?
If you weren’t able to attend our lunch and learn session yesterday, then please click the link below to check out the video.
Discover How to Deliver a Great UX That Your Website Visitors Will Love
A big thank you goes out to everyone who made it out yesterday and to Innovation Place for hosting with us. We enjoyed seeing you all there!
