User experience is easy to forget in a flurry of design elements and textual content. But web users is what makes or breaks a website and so, giving it the attention it deserves may not be such a bad idea.
User Objective Defines Website Structure
When you start designing a site, by all means, concentrate on its technicalities such as the design layout, the goal of the website and additional features to be included to make it more attractive. But, in the mad rush for a quality web design, consider the fact that pimping the look of anything is only good so far as an onlooker finds it worthy of use.
So, pay attention to user objective. Find out what it is and then plan a layout that will help visitors find their way to goal fulfillment. Identifying user objective is the first step to understanding their web psyche and creating a suitable design flow.
Ease of Use = to User Experience
Users visiting your site from different sources will have different levels of knowledge. You have to understand their requirements and develop the website architecture accordingly.
You could be a net savvy teenage bop searching for dates on dating sites or a 60 something man searching for gout home remedies. Your level of knowledge on the internet are bound to be different. Of course, the design and layout of these two site genres will be vastly different, but where usability is concerned, one may yet be wanting.
Point is, for anyone spending at least 5 hours on the internet everyday, is easier to spot ways to navigate to the goal. On the contrary, for someone who only switches on the computer in need, navigating through even a mildly complicated website can be difficult.
Should Your Aim be to Convert a Casual Visitor into a Customer, Always?
By all means, YES! So how is user experience related?
In-your-face marketing = negative impact = bad user experience = never visiting you again.
Don’t bombard your users with banner ads, text ads, pop-up windows, or cute Flash bunnies asking him to buy stuff. Provide him with informative and genuinely useful content before thrusting him forward into emptying his wallet.
Give your visitors a reason to move forward and win his trust gradually. Organize your content, tell him the benefit of your products/services and highlight the call-to-action button.
Focus on newsletter subscription, because the potential buyer will generally want to know more about a company before buying their products. And make sure your newsletters are informative, plus has a couple of 2/3 line promotional content coaxing a subscriber to buy things. For instance, if a customer is seeking web design solutions, remind him that you offer affordable services between providing him with tips…and not vice versa. You aim should not be just promotion (or even if it is, you wouldn’t want the customer to know).
Clients can hire expert web designers from website design company India to fulfill their business objectives. Designing a layout is not that difficult, but designing a site considering user experience is quite challenging. So, next time you design a site, consider visitors’ goals and plan a design accordingly.
One Comment
Some designers think, “Users should like this” and add unnecessary elements or omit some basic features thinking “users don’t need something so simple. Nobody is that stupid”, but when the bounce rate starts increasing, they realize their mistake. That is why I liked your suggestion, but one thing is not very clear to me. In the first point, you said designers should try to know target audience’s requirements and then plan the layout structure, but you did not mention the process to collect user opinion. Should the designer take a survey and if yes, then what are questions that need to be asked? After all, the site is only in the conceptual stage and users may not bother to give any response as they can’t check the live site.