10 Tips to improve your website's User Experience in 2023

Website forms a great part of every digital marketing plan for a business or brand. It shows the importance to strive for a great website user experience. Lacking a good user experience on your site will only make you end up losing valuable audience, leads, and customers.

Website owners that have observed that they lack good website user experience sometimes opt for redesigning the website. Nevertheless, instead of redesigning or creating a new site, you can improve the user experience for customers on your existing website.

What is User Experience?

Website user experience refers to the behavior and impression people have on your website or application while they are on it. You can garner the experience of visitors on your website through the set of actions visitors perform on your site. It also includes the impressions customers get on your website.

So, it is important to enhance the user experience of your site to reduce the bounce rates that may otherwise occur. You should also make it easier for customers to access and navigate your website, among other things. So, how can you improve the user experience for customers?

10 Tips to Improve Website's User Experience (UX)

A good website user experience leads to you converting visitors to customers and getting more traffic to your website. Below are the ways you can try to enhance user experience on your existing website:

1. Simplify the website’s design

Besides providing relevant and valuable content to your website visitors, another way to ensure that your visitors keep on coming back to your website is by ensuring that you simplify your website design. Your website should be easy to navigate. When visitors struggle with navigating your website, they will look for alternative websites, preferably your competitors who can provide the same value you are providing. It shows why you should improve the user experience for customers.

The first way you can go about simplifying the website design is to ensure that the color palette stays consistent. Avoid using many and varying colors on your website. Also, use a letter font that is easy to read and understand. Go for something simple but understandable.

Your menu also has to be easy to locate. There should not be several sub-menus. If possible, categorize your website content so that your visitors can easily access similar content. Do not have several scattered categories, you can group them to enhance user experience.

2. Check the Validity of each link

Another great way to give a great website user experience is to check the validity of each link you have. We have encountered the frustration of clicking on a particular link only to discover that it is broken or simply not working. For most website visitors, having that kind of experience on your website does not speak well of your brand and can lead to them deciding not to visit your website again.

To avoid missing customers, you should improve the user experience for customers. Regularly check if all the links on your website are working or not, then make necessary changes where necessary. Invalid links can lead to bounce rates, which work adversely on your search engine rankings and will not be good for your website.

3. Include a Search bar & Sitemap on every page

A visitor who visits your website is visiting for a particular reason in mind. Though they sometimes spend time surfing and looking at products, services, or content they initially did not want. Therefore, to enhance user experience, having a search bar on your website and including a sitemap on every page is great for your visitors.

With the search bar, visitors can type in the content they are looking for. It will take them to the relevant page. The sitemap helps them have a quick look at the content you have available on your website easily. When you put a search bar and sitemap on your website, you not only improve the user experience for customers, but you also reduce bounce rates on your website.

4. Usage of Engaging Visuals to Enhance User Experience

If you come across a photo, you have seen before on a website, it is easier to spot them. Most website owners end up losing the trust of their customers because they use generic photos. On some websites, photos are lacking which makes a website lack the engagement and connection of customers that visuals promote.

So, use images that represent your brand or fit the content to which you are attaching the image. If you want to make use of videos on your website, ensure it is engaging and of good quality. Your videos should not pass one minute. If you want to include a longer video, simply upload it on YouTube and embed the link to your website.

5. Use Pop-ups sparingly

A good website user experience is ensuring that the pop-ups that appear on your website are minimal. Seeing many pop-ups can be annoying and sometimes intrusive to visitors to your website. For some people, seeing many pop-ups can make a customer leave a website. The pop-ups should only be used on the website when it is necessary like an offer of a new product or service, notification for a discount sale, etc.

In the quest to enhance your website's user experience, it's crucial to use pop-ups sparingly, as excessive interruptions can frustrate visitors. Additionally, integrating a subtle and user-friendly cookie notice ensures transparency and compliance with privacy regulations, contributing to more seamless online interactions.

6. Responsive & Mobile Friendly Website

Ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly and responsive is another way of making customers have a great website user experience on your website. A responsive website drives and retains traffic on your website. Apart from your website loading quickly and responding the way it is supposed to, the website also has to be mobile-friendly.

The majority of your website visitors use their mobile devices to access your website. This makes it important for your website to be functional and accessible on all devices. When Google or other search engines discovers that your website is not mobile-friendly, your site misses traffic based on bad user experience and usability.

Therefore, to remedy this, you must ensure that the site speed of your website is great. Visitors who have to wait for long for your website to load will end up leaving your website for your competitors. Ensure that your website is optimized for all and any device for easy usability.

7. Use Social Proof to Improve User Experience

How many times have you decided to pay for a product or service simply because of the reviews you read from customers online? Social proof has helped businesses, brands, and business owners to get more customers and find out areas that need improvements.

Social proof can be in the form of likes, shares, and comments on websites or social media platforms. Seeing these social proofs in action most times makes visitors or readers know that the website is worth visiting or that the product and service are worth trying out.

With the help of social proof on your website, you can attract your target audience and more customers. If your website is lacking the engagement it deserves, it helps you know how to improve the user experience for customers.

8. Incorporate AI Chabot

Website user experience has been seen to improve significantly with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbots on websites. Imagine you visit a website and you have questions that you need to be answered, a Chatbot pops up and you can ask the question you have and get answers. This will make you visit the website another time.

The ability to enhance user experience has been possible with the help of chatbots. Artificial intelligence on websites has played a significant role in making relevant suggestions to website visitors, which is of help to visitors. So, it is rare for visitors to leave your website because they were not able to get relevant help from your website.

9. Strengthen Website Security

Many times, we leave a website because we see a warning sign that the site is not secure. Seeing HTTP instead of HTTPS is also a warning site that your information can be compromised, and no one wants to stay on a website where they are at risk of compromising their valuable data.

To ensure a good website user experience, it is necessary to install an SSL certificate. Therefore, you have to buy an SSL certificate. When you get an SSL certificate and have it on your website, you increase visitors' and customers' trust in your website.

A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate helps to increase security on your website. The information, which your customers share with you, remains safe and encrypted on your site or database. The possibility of hackers accessing the information and being able to decrypt it is very low. When your visitors see that you have good website security, it helps to improve user experience on your website, which is what you need.

10. Decrease Website load time

You can improve the user experience for customers by ensuring your site loads quickly and on time. One way to achieve it is by using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver content to visitors on your website.

Compressing files, especially large images is important too if you are to deliver content on time. It is also a good idea to enable browser caching on your website. Therefore, if a visitor is returning to a particular content on your website, because it was already saved locally on their browser, they can access it easily and without wasting any time.

Conclusion

Improving the user experience of customers and visitors to your website in 2023 is important. Most people lose traffic and customers on their websites because the user experience is bad. Currently, they are several competitors offering the product and service you are selling. This means that lacking a good user experience on your site makes you miss a lot. With these steps shared here, work on improving the user experience on your website and see a difference in customers and traffic.