Most people now know that the user experience is central to the way that Google ranks content. Google has built in things like load time, bounce rates, time on site, and user experience modalities into the makeup of the ranking algorithm. In order to get your website ranking well, you need to tick the boxes in terms of the user experience, which means getting the user interface design correct.
In this article, we will talk about how you can do that. It really does make a huge difference to the rankings that you achieve, the conversion rates that you can obtain, and the bottom-line profitability of your business.
Ensure Accessibility
One of the things you need to do is make sure that you make your content as accessible as possible. Think about the prime real estate of your screen and use it wisely so that people can see what you are about straightaway. Avoid making images links, because people won’t necessarily know to click them. Add alt text to your images so that those with images turned off or with screen readers can clearly see where to click to get to different areas of your website. Label the links within your website so that, again, the links can be explained with screen readers.
Make Your Website Responsive
Google has moved over to a mobile first index. If your website isn’t looking good, or isn’t functional on mobile interfaces, then you may struggle to rank. Google Webmaster Tools has a feature to find out whether there are pages on your site that do not perform well on mobile. It could be that elements are too close together or they are too small. Some of the top tips for responsiveness include allowing elements to scale to any width, using Google standards for design, making drop-down menus work equally well on mobile and desktop devices, using a fluid grid that renders properly on mobile and using columns so that they drop-down at certain widths.
Develop a Story around Your Brand
In order to really engage the user, you need to tell a story. Even more than that, you need to tell your story. That means using real-life images of your company, your staff, and your facility. Stock images just don’t cut it when you are trying to communicate a custom message. You need to be authentic and present your personality through the company website.
It’s also important to use interactive content these days, as that can go a long way to build rapport with the user and keep them on your website. Embedding social media and really getting a good brand voice through social media can also make a huge difference to your ability to connect with website visitors.
Become a Minimalist
With your design, less is more. Using white space and big fonts can really help the visual appeal, as can using good quality images and rich media. Solid colours rather than gradients tend to work better, but obviously this comes down to what you are trying to achieve to a certain extent. The point here really is that you don’t want to confuse the web visitor, and you want to create an easy on the eye, easy to assimilate interface providing clear and concise messages that speak to the reader.
Get Rid of the Errors
It’s really easy these days to know where the errors are on your website. Broken links causing 404 errors, readability issues, text not showing on the page properly, are all things that you need to sort fast. With Google Webmaster tools, you can see broken links, but you also need to do a full site audit. Think about the user and what they will expect when they come on to your website.
If you have PDFs that they have to download in order to access content, they are going to have to break the flow of what they’re doing, and you should probably put that PDF in a webpage. Offer interactive elements where any problems with your website can be communicated to you, such as suggest feedback, report a problem. Make sure that your website is usable from a technical point of view as well as from a design and content point of view.
Streamline Your Navigation
In order to get people to move through to conversions on your website, you need to have a clear user journey. Your navigation should be simple. You need to ensure that your navigation is mobile friendly, that there are clear call-to-actions, that your navigation isn’t ambiguous, and that all of it comes together to aim for conversions.
Part of that means understanding what part of the journey your visitor is on when they reach your website. If someone hits one website page, they may be looking for something very different from if they hit another website page. Your navigation should cater for all of this, and side menus may help you to deliver extra content and a user journey so that they can go in at the step they need to be to get the information they need at that stage of the buying process.
User interface design and creating a great user experience is crucial to your seoperfect rankings on search engine and your search visitor conversions. Get it right from the start, and make sure you keep it up to date with current trends. Realise that there are certain expectations that your visitors will come to your website with, and if you aren’t meeting those expectations, they will leave very quickly.
