5 Tips To Improve User Experience On Your Website

The field of user experience is exploding in this era of online and hybrid commerce. Visitors must be able to access, engage, and transact with your website in favorable ways in order for your business to stand any chance of success as we head toward 2023. If you are struggling with how to improve the UX for your website, keep reading for 5 helpful hints that will facilitate the process. 

Optimize Loading Speed for Your Pages

There is no quicker way to draw the ire of your visitors and see them bounce to a competitor than by having slow-loading pages. In fact, statistics indicate that each second it takes to get your page to load reduces conversions by 4.42%.

Therefore, take any and all measures to optimize the loading speed of your site. Some ways to accomplish this include:

• Compressing image file sizes
• Upgrade your hosting to a performance-based solution, even if this means paying a little more for the service
• Reduce your number of re-directs and ensure that your top-level domain resolves with no more than one re-direct

While there is no shortage of affordable, DIY website-building platforms on the market today, be willing to admit if you do not have all of the skills necessary for optimizing your pages and enlist the services of a web design professional. It could be the most lucrative investment you ever make. 

Add Where to Buy Software

Although hybrid and e-commerce are the future of retail--and the COVID-19 pandemic expedited the future’s arrival--the fact remains that not all businesses are in a position to provide front-door delivery. The skyrocketing cost of freight and challenging last-mile scenarios simply make delivery an unprofitable proposition for many small businesses at this time.

Therefore, if your delivery infrastructure is not fully fleshed out, it is paramount that your website include the best store locator software on the market to quickly give visitors a where-to-buy location. Features of the best locator software include:

• GPS routing from your device location to the nearest vendor. This is especially crucial to capture the exploding mobile shopping market
• A robust photo selection of the store from multiple exterior and interior angles so that shoppers know exactly where to go to find the product
• Up-to-the-minute inventory and store traffic data to help customers determine if the closest location is a satisfactory solution

Statistics show that 78% percent of all local mobile searches result in a purchase within 24 hours, with a whopping 73% of those occurring in a physical store. Therefore, getting your website equipped with quality locator software could be the difference in whether you make the sale or not.

Invest in an Asset Management Tool

One of the great aspects of digital marketing is that anyone, anywhere can become a marketer for your business quickly and affordably. The downside to this convenience is that your marketing content can quickly become watered down as uncoordinated marketing messages can spread like wildfire across the internet in unfavorable ways.

To help combat this issue, it is worthwhile to invest in a digital marketing asset management tool. This innovative software helps coordinate all aspects of the digital marketing campaign, from idea formation to hard selling, allowing everyone on your team to be speaking the same language when it comes to your company’s brand. An asset management program helps keep all content curated, organized, and accessible so that marketing professionals can quickly use business-approved content to help do their job from any location. 

Streamline the Checkout Process

There is no shortage of statistics across the internet that highlight the scope of how significantly abandoned shopping carts plague online sales. For myriad reasons, when it comes time to pay, visitors simply close their screen and go about their day. To help your website reduce its number of abandoned carts, try to implement the following features:

• Guest checkout - shoppers are drowning in a sea of username/password combinations and likely won’t want to create one to buy a single item from your site. While account creation has many benefits for your business and the shopper alike, ensure them that your site’s SSL encryption will keep their data safe during guest checkout so that they can more quickly finalize the purchase
• Allow for multiple payment options - gone are the days of paying with cash. The same can be said with paying by check. And to a certain extent, even debit/credit cards are falling out of favor. Younger shoppers want the convenience of paying with Venmo, Apple Pay, and even cryptos in some cases. Therefore, the more payment methods your site is able to process, the more likely you will be to finalize a sale
• Automatically apply coupon codes - many visitors are drawn to your site via an offer they saw somewhere else online. When they aren’t able to access this offer at checkout, they will quickly become frustrated and leave

It does not take much to cause a finicky online retail market to change its mind, so any features your website provides to expedite the checkout process will be highly lucrative.

Regularly Post Authoritative Content

In order to achieve long-term success, your website has to be more than a checkout counter for merchandise. It must be able to provide a holistic shopping experience for the customer.

In the same way you would want customers to be able to browse merchandise in a physical store and have associates answer any of their questions, your website must be able to do the same. A great way to achieve this is by regularly posting authoritative content to your website’s blog. Not only does this answer questions in your field and get customers to trust your expertise, but it will help your website rank for SEO, which will ultimately increase your number of visits. 

Use These 5 Pro Tips To Improve UX On Your Website

A strong UX can be the difference between finalizing a sale or seeing a customer bounce to a competitor in the modern online commerce climate. To help you improve your website’s UX and strengthen conversion rates, consider optimizing your page loading speed, including where to buy software, investing in digital asset management, streamlining the checkout process, and regularly posting authoritative content. If any of these steps feel outside your comfort zone, contact a web design professional today to get started on creating a user experience that works for you!