What is UX? 

UX is shorthand for User Experience and relates to the experience that someone will have on your website. This encompasses all the elements that are involved with an interaction on your site, including layout, wording and navigation. It has a huge impact on how people respond to the site and influence how successful your conversions will be.  

A poorly laid out, difficult to navigate and visually overwhelming site will not get many positive reactions and have a high bounce rate. This can spell disaster for people who are looking for a high conversion rate to support their site or business.  

We’ve come up with our easy to action top tips that you can do to help boost the conversion rate on your site. 

Be Mindful of Your Use of Space 

This refers to making sure your site is clean – think, white space and solid lines. This doesn’t literally mean an empty white space, but more a lack of adverts everywhere, links, images and buttons. This helps readers to focus on your content, whether it be a video, blog or product.

By not cluttering the page, people can see what you’re doing, and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. It also helps them to quickly and easily identify the content that they are interested in, resulting in higher engagement levels. 

Consider Your Use of Language

Each blogger will have their own style, and that’s great! We encourage people to develop their own style and use of language, it helps to build a brand personality and for readers to identify your content.

However, if you are doing a long post or a post on a tricky subject, there are a few simple guidelines we suggest you follow.

It is a good idea to break your content down into manageable sized chunks or bullet point key topics. For example, if you’re doing a post that lists the top reasons why dogs are better than cats, make the content skimmable by having clear headings for each of the reason so people can clearly see. 

Another great tip is to use language that anyone can understand, regardless of if your subject is more advanced. This makes your site accessible to more people and gives you potential to have higher audience numbers. From a UX POV, this also helps readers to really understand what you are saying and they will not be turned off by your content. The exception to this would be if you have a very niche site that targets a very narrow audience, such as quantum physics.  

High quality content that is easy to read will keep people engaged.  

Clear CTAs 

Your calls to action are very important to the success of your site conversions. A CTA can be anything from a sale closing to someone signing up to join your mailing list.

Regardless of what your CTA is for, it should always be clear and informative, showing readers exactly what it is and how they do it. CTA’s can be longer than one sentence and don’t always have to be a button; sometimes the best ones are an embedded link. That being said, the hyperlink should be on minimal text and be absolutely clear what clicking on it will do. An example of a long tail CTA is below. 

If you want to learn more about creating the perfect CTA, take a look at AdEspresso’s blog here. 

Fast Loading Speed 

A slow-loading page is the number one reason for high bounce rates. However amazing your content is, however flashy and brilliant your pages look, if it doesn’t load in less than 4 seconds, people will not wait around to see it. 

To improve your page speed, use appropriately sized images, limit the number of graphics, use reputable hosting sites and avoid using over-the-top sliders or effects where you can.  

Want to test your site’s loading speed? Use this free tool. 

Be Consistent with Your Branding 

When setting up a website or company, it is important to think about the overall look you want. What message does it send? Does it reflect your content? If you have a blog site about finance and how to save money, does it make sense to have pictures of ponies everywhere?

Having clear branding will help people identify with your content or products and trust what you do. It also stops confusion when they go from one page to another and think they have gone to a new site. 

Branding is important for UX not only on your site, but to help build your brand across a multitude of platforms. UX can extend to your social media pages and, if you have a strong brand, people will recognise and actively engage with your content on many channels, improving their experience with your brand. 

Keep Navigation Simple 

the navigation on your site is are the menu bars either in the header, footer or in sidebars. Have a navigation bar that is easy to see, quick to understand and does what it says, e.g. an option named “about me” takes readers to a page that is about you and not an article about something else. 

Make sure you link up all your pages on the site to the menu so people can easily find them. If you have long posts, consider having navigation at the bottom of the page or headers/menu icons that stay with you as you scroll. 

Having poor navigation will only frustrate readers and disengage them from your site, even if you have incredible content. Take time to think about how menu’s are laid out and how you are going to categorise topics. Adding a search function to your site is also a good idea. 

Track Your User Journey on Your Site 

Tracking your users on the site is great for two reasons. Firstly, you can see if there are similar routes people take to reach your CTA and secondly, you can see high drop off points.

Drop off points can be an indicator that the page is disengaging your audience and it is wise for you to work out why – it could be from some of the reasons on this blog! 

Understanding your user journey can also help you streamline it better. If people stay on a particular page for a long time, take time to understand why and think about how you can leverage it. It is also interested to understand why one route through your pages is more popular than others. 

Test, Test, and Test Again 

When you create a new page, test it. Test its loading speed, its responsiveness, how it looks on mobile. Press all the buttons and make sure they go to the right place. Read it two thousand times, spell check, grammar check, read it backwards. Ensure the images are correct, are the right size, the right quality and that they are relevant.

You cannot test a website enough and even when you think you’ve done it all, someone will find an issue. Listen to your audience and fix any issues they tell you about immediately.  

Stay on Topic 

This is a very important point, and probably the one most overlooked. If you have a site that sells vacuums, don’t start blogging about your latest nail art. It isn’t relevant to your brand and will instantly turn people away – they came to your site looking for the newest tips on how to vacuum a polyester rug not how gorgeous your sparkly pink nails look! 

This is especially important when tagging or titling your posts. A post named “How to vacuum straight lines into your carpet” should just be about that and not digress into why you think Coldplay are the best-band-ever and how excited you are for their next tour.  

Don’t Behave Like a Spam-Bot

The last thing you want people to think when they land on your site is that it’s shifty or untrustworthy. Things that make people think your site is spam could be: 

• Lots of external adverts and links 
• Your domain name is weird (e.g. www.i-can-save-you-money-$8867-by-adding-radish-to-your-life.com)  
• Out of date links 
• No contact information or “about us” pages 
• You haven’t created unique content and you’re not viewed as credible (plagiarism can also get you in a lot of trouble for stealing and could result in your site being shut down)
• You’re using ten images when one would do 
• Everything about the page screams sales with CTAs such as “BUY BEFORE 9.52AM OR ELSE WE WILL NEVER SELL IT TO YOU”  
• You need people to sign up/give you all their personal information just to read the blog post on your life changing experience of knitting a scarf for your pet

Next Steps

So, in conclusion, the UX on your site should be clear, easy and reflect your brand. If you’re unsure how your site is being received, ask family, friends or colleagues to jump on and give you feedback. In general, less is more when thinking about images, ads and colours. 

We hope that you’ve found this blog helpful and that you’re ready to get started.

If you’re interested in working with financially-focused brands, we can certainly help and welcome you to sign up for our network by clicking here!