Research
Investigate users and their requirements to add context and insight to the process of designing the user experience.
When designing and developing your website we will use our expertise to make sure your website is the best experience it can be for your users. Not only will help your conversion rates but if your site is easy to use your likely is likely to come back again. How many times have you just given up on a website and decided to go to one of their competitors? Don’t lose the users that you’ve worked so hard (and possibly paid) for to other sites that just work better.
There’s a reason why huge companies spend a lot of money on their UX teams, they know it is the smartest and fastest way to build great online products and services. We have experience working with small local business as well as financial companies that get a huge amount of traffic in a highly competitive industry.
UX Testing Methods
Improving your UX doesn’t have to be complicated or guesswork, it’s actually pretty straightforward. There are lots of different ways you can improve your website, not only to reduce users frustrations but also to increase conversion on your website. Let’s face it, you didn’t spend all that time and money building your website just to make users happy, you built it because you wanted to achieve something.
Screen Recordings
One of our favourite UX testing methods is Screen Recording using hotjar. This software allows you to capture recordings of your users screens while they are on your website. It’s a great way of seeing what your users are doing on your website so you can address any issues any come up with a strategy to improve them.
UX Usability Testing
UX testing sessions are another great way to understand your users experience. Invite in (preferably) real-world users of your site, you may have to offer them some reward for doing so, and ask them to complete a series of tasks on your website. If you record the session, take notes and ask questions you can get valuable information and areas for improvement. This is also a great way of prototyping any new ideas or functionality you may have been working on.
A/B Split Testing
One of the most interesting methods of improving UX is to run split tests. Put simply, yuo give half of your customers one version of your page and the other half of your customers your new version. Then you monitor conversion using analytics. You can then see which version is working best with your users! This method is widely used across lots of big companies and is a fairly cheap way of getting great results.
Other UX Testing Methods
There are lots of other ways of gathering information to improve your UX including surveys, polls, questionnaires and focus groups. However you go about it you should be able to gather some great data and information to go through the process above.
So do your research, produce a design (or a series of designs), prototype it, test it and when you have all that information you can make some great UX improvements to make your customers less frustrated and importantly, increase conversion.
The Key Aspects of UX Design
Visual Design
Nobody wants a website that doesn’t look great. Even if you don’t want to spend a lot of time and money with a designer you should at least have some sketches and ideas of what you are trying to achieve. Visual Design is about improving the users experience with the use of effects, illustrations, imagery, typography, space, layouts and colours. The aesthetic appearance of your website.
Navigation Design
The design of interface elements in a way which facilitates the user’s movement through the information. You don’t want a users experience of your website to be frustrating so make sure they can get the information they need as easily as possible. Designing your navigation early on helps you map out the content and assets you will need for your new website.
Information Design
The design of the presentation of information to facilitate understanding. I.e. making sure that paragraphs are nicely formatted, that your content has clear sections and headers. Don’t just put images in for the sake of it, make them informative or emotive.
Information Architecture
Choosing the best structure for your content and assets to make something understandable or easy to achieve is probably one of the hardest aspects of UX. You want everything to be there for the user but you have different types of users wanting to achieve different things. Don’t make the mistake of trying to stuff everything in ‘above the fold’ or in the header… but don’t make a user scroll forever to find it either!
Content Requirements
It is likely that you will have some content already or be writing new content for your website pages, it is good to have a strategy in place to know what content is required and for what pages. One of our favourite tools is Answer the Public which allows you to enter keywords and then see the types of searches people are actually making on the web. You can then cater your content to be as informative as possible to the user. A good content strategy will help your SEO too.
User Needs
What are your users trying to achieve on your website? Is your UX allowing them to achieve their needs? If the user needs to get in touch with you, give them the best way of doing so. If they want to buy a product, make the process as frictionless as possible. It is difficult to understand the users needs sometimes so you may have to do more research, questionnaires, surveys, heat maps, screen recordings, focus groups and UX testing are useful for this and can help you not only understand a users needs but gain valuable insight into how users interact with your website and how you can improve it.
Site Objectives
Site objectives are slightly different to users needs, these objectives are more about getting users to convert or complete an action, whether that be to make a purchase or an enquiry. Making your UX as good as possible is one thing but you still want to ensure you are getting those conversions. UX testing can help you understand how to get more users to achieve your goals for your website.