I hear it all the time, “My website looks so good, but I’m not getting any leads.” To be frank, just because a site looks really great does not mean that it is going to provide high conversion rates. You could have a site designed by the best web designer you can find. If that site doesn’t function well and is difficult for users to navigate, they will most likely leave or worse venture to your competitor’s site.
Test Before You Launch
User experience design (UX) is something that really needs to be thought out and implemented as your site is being built. This is the best time to test conversion paths before you launch. I recommend bringing in a few third party people to test the site. When I say third party, I mean people who don’t know a lot about your business and who are in the range of your target audience.
Tell them to do something specific on the site. For example, have them find a certain page or product without using the search bar. This will prove whether or not your site is easy to navigate.
What to do if Your Site is Already Live
If you already have a live website, there are still a number of ways to go in and improve the UX.
Start with the home page and work out from there. Are your call to actions (CTA’s) all similar in color and style? Do the CTA’s make sense? Say your main CTA’s across the site are buttons. If some buttons are red rectangles and others are blue circles, you may be confusing your users.
Not only do your CTA’s need to look cohesive, but they need to take the user to the correct page. If a CTA says something like “Shop our hottest trends” and the button takes them to a contact page, all you are doing is confusing and possibly losing customers. Small fixes like this can make a huge difference in your conversion rates.
Build Custom Landing Pages for Specific CTA’s
Yes, navigating users throughout the basic pages of your site is important. BUT, what if you could control the UX and direct your customers to exactly where you want them to go. Well, you can.
Example: You’ve got a call to action that says “Schedule Your Appointment Now”. Typically, this type of CTA would just go to the contact page. Let’s try something more effective. Build a simple page called Schedule Appointment. Rather than having a form that says Contact Us, change it to say “Schedule Your Appointment” and design the page for “Scheduling”. You may be thinking “But Jenn, that’s basically the same as the contact page…what’s the point?” To you, yes, they are the same page. To the user, you are directing them to a customized page just for them. Users are more likely to fill out a custom form than a basic contact form. That’s why.
UX is Crucial and You NEED It to Succeed
User experience will forever be a crucial piece of web design and marketing in general for that matter. From your website to email marketing and beyond; UX is the building block. Better to have a solid foundation than a marketing strategy that will collapse under pressure. Am I right?
