Paul Rone-Clarke SEO Expert is happy to share the following.
A topic I probably don’t spend long enough on is one of conversion with UI and UX optimisation. Once you have the visitor to your website, how to best create a positive response from them. Be that making a sale, signing up to a mailing list, downloading a report etc. While the language used is important, and might be where most of your effort goes (Good sales copy, after all, can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a few hundred well crafted words from the real experts) The other side of the coin is the user journey and experience on your website. The placement of elements, the use of colour and white-space. Right down to the choice of font and the colour of your logo. It all plays a part in conversion. In reassuring the visitor that they in the right place and that what you are offering is exactly what they are looking for.
Introducing;
UI: User interface
UX: User experience
These are the cornerstones of your onsite presentation to your visitors and the base on which your conversion journey starts.
Web design involves a lot of factors- such as content, mobile friendliness and SEO. However, driving internet traffic to your site and generating sales are two different things. Search engines will deliver the users to you, but you need to impress them. After all, it’s humans who will be buying your products or services. And these are real people who tend to have short attention spans and lead busy lives. The reality is that a user makes the decision to accept or reject a website within mere seconds. You need to grab the attention fast, and keep it. When they get to your site, it should deliver what they want without frustrating them. This is where UI and UX come in. What on earth are they? Put simply, UI refers to User interface, while UX is the User Experience. What will your visitors see when they come to your website? How easily can they navigate around it? This directly impacts your conversion rates.
What UX and UI Do For Your Sales
Good design determines how much trust a visitor has in your website and, therefore, in your business. A poor design will send them off to look for a site that appears more reliable. A recent survey was done on U.S consumers aged above 18 years to show the impact of the user experience and interface of a website
(Source: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/max/2015/pdfs/state-of-content-oct.pdf ).
It showed that given 15 minutes to consume content, 66% of people would rather read something beautifully designed than something plain. When content has unattractive imagery or layout, 38% would stop engaging. That’s a huge chunk of the traffic to your site if you plan on making any sales.
UX determines the look and feel of a website. It’s like when you take a car out on a test drive before you purchase it. You’ll want to know how smooth it feels, or and how comfortable the upholstery is. It’s like the papier-mache that’s put on a sculpture to make it more appealing, or that personalized service you get from a waiter at your favourite restaurant. A product has to attract you before you buy it.
A service has to please you to keep you coming back for more. The same thing applies to your website. UX entails everything from the aesthetics of the site to the layout of the individual pages. This also directly affects your brand. In fact, the future success of your business will be determined by the quality of your online platform, since it gives potential customers a permanent first impression. If yours is a young business or a start-up enterprise, a superb design will go a long way in solidifying your reputation. This will determine how many sales you make, and how fast your business will expand and increase its market share.
UI and UX go hand in hand. Take your body for instance. UX would be your organs, and how they operate in tandem for you to carry out your activities. UI would be the nerves, senses and reactions driving them. UI works behind the scenes to help users achieve their goals smoothly and efficiently- from making queries and signing up for newsletters to searching for an item and making a purchase. It focuses on knowing what your clients are looking for, and helps them to find it easily. That makes it directly related to your conversion sales. For example, retail websites have to give potential customers a good browsing experience, and make purchasing product to be simple and fast.
How many times have you done a search, clicked on a link, and found a website that was a real nightmare to navigate through? What did you do? Most likely you closed it down and clicked on the next link. That’s exactly what visitors to your site will do if they find it hard to use. You could have the best looking site for your market niche, but if visitors cannot quickly learn how to utilize it, they will leave it behind. Slow load-times and complex navigation will turn away users and reduce conversion rates. You want your site to have elegance, clarity and simplicity- these increase the conversion rates.
You can also analyze user habits and current trends and directly implement them into your website design strategy. For example, if your UX/UI analyses shows users continually clicking away from your site after visiting a certain page, such as your “About Us,” you can utilize this information in your UI Design to fix the problem, thus increasing your conversion rates.
5 UX And UI Trends That Are Increasing Conversion Rates In 2016
- 1. Using full width images to grab the attention of the visitors. It makes them stop at the specific page and take in its content. This “interruption” increases the conversion rates.
- 2. Split-screen layouts are particularly beneficial to businesses offering different products or services. You’ll want to take your visitors to the correct landing page as soon as possible. A split screen allows you to easily direct them to the specific item/service they require, without them having to spend time navigating through all the categories. You can also use prioritized navigation. A B2B Web Usability Report showed that after reaching a company’s website via a referral site, 50% of visitors will use the navigation menu to orient themselves. If there are too many options, users are less likely to convert into sales. Tuck away all the secondary navigation to a menu icon. This enables you to prioritize the pages where your visitors will go to, thus increasing conversion.
- 3. Use of colour and white space will determine which elements on your site stand out, and how attractive it ease. For instance, placing a “Sale” or “Deal of the week” using a bright pop of colour, with a neutral or contrasting colour palette will grab the visitors’ attention.
- 4. Internet users don’t want to spend endless hours perusing through content. That’s where videos come in. Would you rather watch a video that showcases how a product works or read about it? Videos win the trust of people visiting your site. You can use them to personalize your brand and show them what you are about. Welcome videos, testimonials and product demos increase your chances of making a sale.
- 5. Including a Call To Action (CTA). What do you want your website visitors to do? Do you want them to sign up for a service? Buy your product? Tell them. What better way to capture leads than simply asking with no distractions? In addition, the CTA has the benefit of getting clicks and user IDs from visitors who are genuinely interested in your products or services. This boosts conversation rates. It’s also a great way to enhance customer relations, build consumer loyalty and grow your business.
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