Why User Experience is Fundamental in Driving Website Conversions
Key takeaways
1. Users will be frustrated and upset if a website has bad UX. These leads will often end up exiting the website and go to a competitor.
2. UX web design has been shown to enhance conversions by 400% and generate a big number of leads and revenues for organisations.
3. Site visitors that end up having a good experience are more inclined to share your content and return for repeat purchases - what business wouldn't want that?
What is user experience?
The practice of creating websites, applications, and other interfaces to appeal to human behaviours, perceptions, and preferences is known as user experience (UX) design.
UX design does this by anticipating users' requirements and striving to make their experiences as seamless, useful, and meaningful as possible. Rather of focusing just on aesthetics, UX prioritises usability and usefulness above all else.
If these principles are met, UX designers may focus on making their products enjoyable and joyful to use, which are referred to as "delight" elements.
Because it is so closely related to website conversions, UX is incredibly useful to website owners.
How does UX help website conversions?
Better user experience design may increase conversion rates by up to 400%! So how exactly can it accomplish such results?
Here are the five most important ways UX boosts website conversions:
1. UX directs website users towards their objectives.
UX design may help to increase a completed action in a user's behaviour, like a sign-up or a sale, by making it extremely simple for customers to achieve what they came to do. This enhancement applies to navigation, iconography, and information.
2. UX improves your initial impression
UX design may assist in increasing the average time spent on your website since consumers are more inclined to stay on a website if they believe it is trustworthy. A trustworthy site design will safeguard your initial impression, increasing conversions and decreasing bounce rates.
3. Fewer users leave out of frustration
When consumers encounter a poor site loading speed, difficult navigation, or untrustworthy design, they are more inclined to leave. As a result, once these issues are fixed, websites' bounce and conversion rates will increase.
4. More users understand your products or services
UX includes using high-quality photographs and content to explain the value of your products or services in a more clear and convincing manner. When these aspects are optimised, more leads will comprehend what you're selling and will be in a better position to close deals with you.
5. Happy or impressed users are more likely to share your brand
Website users who have liked or been pleased by their experience on your site are more inclined to promote your brand to a friend or share it on social media. As a result, you should expect to see an increase in leads and purchases.
What makes a positive user experience?
So, what exactly constitutes a pleasant website user experience? It includes items such as the following:
- Navigation that is simple and effective
- Pages that load quickly
- The operations and aims of a website should be clear and obvious
- There are no interruptions, such as too many pop-ups
- Simple checkout process
- Useful information is easily accessible or displayed directly
- Moments of joy (fun!)
- Personalised components and recommendations
- Gamification moments
- Past customer feedback and testimonies
- Website experience to remember
- Human moments, empathy, humour, and charm
Of course, gamification and joy are secondary objectives; perhaps you could introduce them after navigation and accessibility have been addressed.
3 reasons why UX is so important
1. UX influences the emotions of website visitors
The fundamental reason why a website's UX has such a strong effect on conversions is that UX affects the emotions of site users. Poor site design, for example, might make visitors feel irritated, frustrated, cautious, mistrustful, angry, and so on.
Users are far more likely to quit a task if the navigation or checkout process on a website is so tough that it provokes one of the aforementioned emotions. As a result, bad UX might lower your conversion rate.
Therefore it's not a leap to claim that the emotions of website users are crucial to whether e-commerce enterprises thrive or fail. User-centred design should be a core component of website development.
2. Trust and credibility are key to conversions
Conversion rate is heavily influenced by trust and credibility, and there are various ways for websites to fail to inspire that trust:
First and foremost, consider website design. Because 94% of users do not trust older-looking websites, this is a critical issue to fix immediately. Bad design suggests that a company does not have much experience or is unprofessional. In any case, they will not appear to be worth doing business with.
The second item is contact information. Keeping important information, such as firm facts or price, hidden seems suspicious. In fact, 44% of visitors will quit a vendor’s website if there are no contact details.
Next, consider your checkout method. If website visitors believe your site's checkout experience is strange or untrustworthy, they may abandon their basket instead of entering their credit card information.
Users who feel intruded upon or overwhelmed aren’t likely to trust your site. As a result, reducing the quantity of interruption marketing on your site might be beneficial. Permission marketing is not only more successful, but also less startling, according to an increasing number of studies.
Next, be certain that there are no spelling or language errors and that you have an SSL certificate. These seemingly trivial issues are actually quite substantial and might be the source of your low conversion rate.
3. Users want seamless journeys
Conversions require easy navigation; in fact, improving it can increase conversion rates by 18.5%
This is due to the fact that people want their experience to be as simple as feasible. Hiccups, diversions, and problems just slow down the process. Users will just move to another website if yours is difficult to use.
Internet consumers have grown used to a high degree of usability as UX and current web design practices have been widely available. As a result, they are especially disappointed when they stumble upon a badly designed website.
With 37% of visitors abandoning sites due to navigation issues, business owners should take navigation seriously and invest in initiatives that will create smooth user journeys.
Implementing better UX for better conversions
Best practices and principles for creating user-centred website design
If you want to start a UX project for your website, you need understand the following ideas and practices:
1. To begin, always utilise facts to back up design decisions. Statistical evidence will drive your project in the right direction, whether you're in the early stages of study or the later testing phases.
2. User feedback, like data, is incredibly essential. While empathising with user requirements is a core UX concept, taking into account their input will be quite beneficial.
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3. UX is a never-ending process. Don't make the mistake of finishing a one-time UX project. Instead, track your KPIs on a regular basis and A/B test fresh CTAs, pop-ups, and emails for the greatest outcomes.
4. Buyer personas and journey mapping assist in keeping design decisions user-focused. Both of these technologies will be used by the top UX designers to shape their approach.
5. UX designers must always consider the user's context. This concept is made up of three parts: the user's location (for example, a bustling street or a quiet office), their medium (a digital gadget), and their mood.
6. Never forget that designers' or website owners' personal opinions are not useful in the UX design process. Colour theory is your best chance for establishing the optimal colour scheme for your website, even if the CEO has a favourite colour.
Top 10 UX tips to simplify the user journey
If you wish to eliminate friction points on your website, you might consider making the following changes:
1. Give a clear purpose to each homepage, with a single CTA - especially for pages with a vague (or not) purpose.
2. Allow users to finish transactions as guests by changing your checkout settings.
3. Optimise your website for mobile, tablet, and desktop use.
4. Permission marketing should be used instead of interruptive marketing.
5. Integrate data-backed colour theory throughout your website.
6. Provide a tour tutorial for new users to the checkout procedure.
7. Reduce and simplify form fields, or make them multi-step.
8. Employ familiar iconography (such as the hamburger icon for navigation) rather than abstract ones.
9. Eliminate any unnecessary expenses.
10. Under a banner or side panel, show the various phases of the checkout procedure.
How do I know if my UX efforts are working?
Ask your staff
One of the simplest methods to test a new website design is to enlist the assistance of your team. Once your first version is finished, distribute it to other team members for testing and comments. According to some studies, you only need to enlist the assistance of only five people to identify 85% of your site’s issues!
A/B testing
A/B testing (also known as split testing) is the most common method for determining the effectiveness of your revisions.
Example:
If your UX designer changed the colours of your CTA buttons from purple to red, you'd build two web pages: "control" (purple) and "challenger" (red) . You would show the control page to half of your visitors and the challenger page to the other half. The click rates for each of these variations will show which colour is the most successful.
Why you should continuously monitor and improve your conversion rate
Instead of evaluating your conversion rate once a year, check it once a week. As you connect into your website analytics tools, keep an eye on it and respond promptly if you see a change.
Constant monitoring is ideal since it ensures that the website is continuously achieving company objectives and catching problems as they develop. Issues such as:
If your tracking code hasn't been changed in tandem with a modification, your conversion rate may appear to decline. Sometimes it will fall because users don't like a new adjustment on your website.
Constant monitoring eliminates the need to deplete your resources on huge initiatives. For example, if you reviewed your conversion rate after six months and discovered it was incredibly low, you may opt to relaunch your website, which would take months and be pretty costly.
Someone who monitors their conversions on a regular basis, on the other hand, may take on one modest CRO project every month, which will cost less and be a more reasonable burden on resources.
As you'll see below, continual A/B testing may be a very valuable aspect of CRO, so this is something you should consider.
How Diabetes UK raised conversions by 61% through usability testing
The challenge:
Diabetes UK wished to increase the quantity of donations received via their website while also improving their user experiences.
The solutions:
This case study's action plan included doing search intent research, usability testing, and A/B tests, as well as mapping and analysing current user paths.
The results:
Not only did test users remark on improved website usability (particularly on mobile), but donations increased by 61%.
How Venture Harbour increased web form conversions by 743%
The challenge:
Prior to embarking on its CRO journey, Venture Harbour's online form conversion rate was 0.96%. Their purpose was to boost it as much as possible!
The solution:
Venture Harbour switched from single-page lengthy forms to multi-step forms (which are proven to be more user-friendly). Conversions increased by 300% as a consequence, but they didn't stop there.
Venture Harbour forms underwent several revisions and adaptations as a result of continuous A/B testing.
The results:
Venture Harbour increased their online form conversion rate by 300% prior to performing A/B testing. After running testing on a regular basis, the conversion rate climbed by 743%!
Final thoughts
If you're concerned about the conversion rate of your website, there are several simple strategies to enhance it. As Venture Harbour's case study demonstrates, simple modifications can provide enormous returns.
The key to achieving these types of outcomes is to examine your website's performance statistics. Are you losing more leads at the point of sale? Or on the sign-up pages?
These signs will reveal the optimal approach to the UX of your site. Keep in mind that you may not need to handle everything!
Increasing the conversion rate of your website might be as simple as simplifying its CTAs or altering the colours of particular buttons.
If you'd like to talk about enhancing the UX design of your website, please contact the purpleplanet team; we'd be happy to assist.