The importance of UX

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User Experience (UX) is the overall experience that people have whilst navigating a website, mobile app or a digital product, and is critical to its success. Providing a product to audiences isn’t enough, and it needs to be centred around users and tailored to their needs.

Some important statistics:

• Only 55% of companies are currently conducting user experience testing (Skyhook)
• 88% of online customers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience (sweor).
• 95% of users think that good UX pays off (uxeria).

Key considerations for your website’s UX

At Origin, we always refer to Peter Moville’s “honeycomb diagram” featuring seven facets that influence User Experience (semanticstudios) to ensure we meet our client’s user’s needs.

Below, we’ve listed the seven facets to help you improve your website’s UX.

1. Be useful

Your website needs to serve a purpose and benefit your users, and it should also inform, educate or entertain them, for them to convert into leads. So, the information you display on your site should be clear, concise and provide an answer to your audience’s questions.

2. Increase usability

Only 55% of companies conduct any type of online usability testing for their websites (uxeria). It is crucial that your site is easy to access and that users can effectively and efficiently achieve their end objective when visiting it.

And, if a website is easy to navigate around, it will ultimately lead to users spending more time on your page.

3. Desirable

Your website might be useful and usable, but if it doesn’t stand out amongst your competitors then it will not be “desired”. So, monitor how users are navigating around your site, and identify what they’re clicking on and what they’re searching for to gain insight into what your users want and what the most desired aspect of your website is. Then, this information will enable you to produce more of what they want, which will ultimately speed up the conversion process.

4. Be findable

A study found that 44% of users will leave a website if there’s no accessible contact information for your business.

By giving users immediate access to relevant information you’ll decrease a potential customer’s frustration and increase their loyalty.

Using a Call-to-Action (CTA) is an interactive way to guide users to their desired destination, and research has shown that 70% of small business websites lack a CTA on their homepage (business2community).

And, having well-placed CTAs are proven to increase your revenue by 80% (creativemms).

5. Increase accessibility

Accessibility is all about providing an effortless experience for your website users. A study found that 83% of mobile users say that a seamless experience across all devices is very important. And, many Internet users use several different devices such as mobile, laptops or tablets, so it is expected that sites function correctly on all devices.

Another factor is website loading speed, if your site content doesn’t load quick enough, users may leave your site entirely. Whereas, sites that load in five seconds receive a 25% higher ad viewability in comparison to sites which load in 19 seconds (Hobo-web).

6. Be credible

Your website should be looked upon as a credible source of information and if you can achieve this, you’ll build trust with your users. A way to show credibility is through customer testimonials and case study examples of your work.

By showcasing your services and your successes you’ll build a strong, positive reputation amongst prospects.

7. Add value

It is important to gain a deep understanding of how people are navigating across your website and what sort of things they are clicking on.

If you fail to measure your audience’s interactions with your site, you’ll miss opportunities for improvement, so collect customer feedback, send them surveys and ask for their opinions on your website features so you can constantly review and refine your site functionalities.