You’ve finally decided to take the leap and put your business out there in the vast sea of the internet. You want to make sure that you stand out from your competition with a memorable and easy-to-use website that leaves your visitors delighted and coming back for more. Or, even better—they tell their friends, or even purchase your product. It's all about how you define success, am I right?
First things first—you’ve got to understand the audience you are targeting. Understanding the user roles and the challenges that a user faces is critical. This ensures that you are serving up solutions via the best website experience you can. Once you’ve got that figured out, you can decide what you want them to do while they are on your site. Design is a crucial element that will help tell your story and drive the users' engagement.
You’ve spent a lot of time (and blood, sweat and tears) putting your website together and creating riveting content. The cold hard truth? People skim websites.
Users spend an average of 5.59 seconds looking at a website’s written content. That sure doesn’t seem like enough time to drink in the information.
When it comes to the way in which your users experience your website, design is paramount. Think ahead and consider what you want folks to pay attention to and make it stand out—guide their experience. There must be a hierarchy to the visuals on the site to guide the way.
Here are a few simple ways to forge the path:
Visual Hierarchy
Use images wisely to guide the user's attention to where you want it to go. If everything is the same size, it can get pretty boring. Change up image sizes to focus on a specific part of the story/message.
Have Fun with Typography
Use font size to direct the user's focus and provide a little personality—but don’t go crazy. Keep your fonts on brand and limit to one or two. Don’t forget to be mindful of proper tagging. Using H1s and the like properly are important for your SEO.
Color and Contrast
You’ve got a color palette—use it! Color is a great way to draw the eye to elements that engage your website visitors. Utilize color in Calls to Action (CTAs) as well as important headlines.
Be Random in a Sea of Symmetry
If everything is uniform, it can start to get a little mundane and it becomes difficult to keep your visitors on your site. Adding a stand-out feature can provide an element of surprise.
Room to Breathe
Don’t be afraid to leave some negative space or white space in your design. Letting your content breathe can make it easier on the eye and more digestible to the user.
Be Mindful of Spacing
Proper spacing of text and images can help guide the user on the path you intend. A little wiggle room goes a long way.
Get In Sync
Keep related materials close together. Don’t make the user have to work to find the information they seek. Leading them on a wild goose chase for information and getting them hot on the trail only to end up empty-handed can leave a bad taste in their mouth. The flow of your content should make sense—putting one foot in front of the other. Bring it home. Close that deal.
Your website visitors’ excellent user experience on your site will keep them coming back and telling others about their experience—which in our book, is the ultimate compliment. If you have interest in going through a quick User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) audit of your site, we’d love to help.
Normally these types of website audits can get pretty detailed and technical, so we’ve put together this easy guide to help you take a quick temperature of your site. Check out our DIY Website Audit to help you assess your website and get you moving in the right direction.
