UX Audits can be conducted in a variety of ways and using various approaches depending on your timeframe and budget – but the focus is to dig deep into the wants and needs of your audience. It might be time to take a closer look at things from a UX perspective if you’re experiencing conversion or churn issues or experiencing a general lack of user satisfaction.
For those interested in giving it a try, we have created a simple starting point. A usable product can be defined by the following elements.
You can use landing pages to drive traffic, improve your SEO, and build your brand.
Landing Page
By creating landing pages, you can attract customers and grow your business. They should include:
Your company’s mission is easy to understand
In order to make an impression on your visitors, you must capture their attention with a landing page. This screen is a good place to emphasize your brand’s USP and values.
The design clearly reflects your branding
The design of your website should reflect your branding personality, whether it is with colours, imagery, or symbols. As a result, customers will become familiar with your product and will be able to associate certain text or colours with your company.
Users are encouraged to adventure
It’s great to have a beautifully crafted landing page, but if the user isn’t told how to move forward, what’s the point? It will be helpful to display a clear Call to Action (CTA) to retain website visitors.
Navigation
A poorly designed navigation will make it difficult for your users to interact with your product, which might result in them abandoning it.
Providing different types of navigation for ease of use
Users may want specific, accurate results by sifting through particular categories. While some users may want to simply search for words. It is important to provide multiple navigation options so that various types of users can reach their desired goals.
Using easy-to-click, accurate links
Clickable links should look inviting, otherwise you won’t see much interaction
Assisting them if they get stuck
It is not always possible to provide exactly what someone is looking for. Whether it’s a chat bot, FAQs, or contact information, offering your user the support that they need is important.
Problems, help, and learnability
A site is error-tolerant if, despite evident errors in input, the intended result may be achieved with either no or minimal corrective action by the customer.
Notifying your customer if an error is made
A website design should take human error into consideration since it is unavoidable. Mistakes are bound to happen. When such an error occurs, you must notify your users as soon as possible – otherwise, you may have very frustrated (and confused) customers.
When an error is made, notify your customer
It is frustrating to be notified of an error without being provided with steps or a solution. There’s no winning in being ambiguous, be clear to your users in what steps to take to solve their issue so they can get back to using your product.
Content and design
When a logo, icon, colour, or layout is appropriate, it helps customers complete common tasks. Your visual design should also reflect your branding well.
Relevant content in reference to specific page
It is important that the images and text on each page reflect well on what it offers. It needs to look intentional, otherwise it will appear rushed and unprofessional.
Effective hierarchy
When hierarchy is utilised effectively it creates a well structured and readable website. Titles and headings need to be larger than body text and text in general needs to be spaced out appropriately as to not be too cluttered
Search
There needs to be a search engine that acknowledges the ‘human’ side of searching, which means dealing with spelling mistakes and synonyms.
Providing an accurate search function
Search functions that provide accurate results are key in providing a seamless customer experience.
A search function that deals with human errors
Spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can happen, and if a search engine does not pick up on this – it can be quite frustrating to the user.
Tasks & Completing Forms
An interaction with a company can be achieved through tasks and forms on a site. Well-designed forms provide access to rich functionality while asking for minimum input from the customer.
Making forms digestible
Extensive forms with no end in sight can be incredibly intimidating, and tend to have a much higher drop off rate than those that are divided into sections
Providing guidance
Sometimes the extensiveness of a form is unavoidable, but this is an opportunity to make it as easy as possible for your user. Providing guidance in tricky / potentially confusing spots can make the process a lot smoother.
Service pages
If you are providing a service, you must provide detailed information about your services and your company on the website. For the users it should be easy to access, usually from the landing page
Having an ‘About us’ page
As a pivotal part of branding – you must have a story. And why not share this with your customers? It adds a personable approach to your content and allows users to resonate with your brand.
Having a ‘Contact us’ section
A common mistake is not including an easy to find “Contact us” page. Having clearly displayed CTAs and sections for contact (whether it be a form, a chat bot, etc) shows you are very easily approachable.
Displaying your policies
Displaying your policies accentuates your approachability and legitimacy and is a great point of reference for customers.
Contrast enables the designer to present the layout in a way that informs users which points of interaction are vital and which ones are secondary.
Accessibility
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides a set of guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.0) for making website content accessible for people with disabilities.
Contrast of colours
Contrast enables the designer to present the layout in a way that informs users which points of interaction are vital and which ones are secondary. Poor contrast leads to poor readability level which results in users missing key data or feeling tense using the product. This tense feeling is due to the struggle with the copy which takes considerable effort to be read.
Alt. image attribute
Alt text is essential to accessible web design. Its purpose is to describe images to visitors who are unable to see them. Including alt text ensures that all your users, regardless of their level of visual ability, can appreciate the displayed content on your site.
Performance
There’s nothing more annoying than a clunky, “scrolly” website. We’ve all been there, and it makes the product simply unappealing, and we tend to give up after a while. The same goes for loading time. We live in an impatient society where we expect things almost instantly. When a website takes 10+ seconds to load, it can feel like hours!
Loading time
According to a Financial Times Technology Department research piece, a test group was provided with a 5-second delay on a web page. They found the following:
- The first-second delay resulted in a 4.9% drop in the number of articles a visitor read
- The three-second delay resulted in a 7.9% drop
- Visitors read less when delays occurred
You can see how much a few seconds can make to a user’s experience.
There are many things you can do to improve your loading time, including file compression, optimising your code, reducing redirects, and optimising images.
Mobile responsiveness
Responsive design involves implementing design practices to ensure that your website automatically scales its content and elements to match the screen size that it is being viewed on. This reduces any unnecessary resizing, scrolling, zooming, and panning for the user.
Wrap up
While a comprehensive UX Audit can be a pricey, time-consuming process, it can be the difference between a product with substandard performance and one that exceeds all user expectations. Contact Stich Creative if you’d like to find out more.
