Tags – How to Improve Page Experience
Page experience is one of the most important aspects of any website.
If people don’t enjoy browsing your website, they are not going to stick around for very long.
To put it differently, a website with good user experience (UX) is like a physical store with outstanding customer service.
A store will have salespeople who try to work out what’s important to the customers so they can offer the right products, at the right time, and the same applies to your website.
Essentially, conversion rate optimisation (CRO), is ensuring your webpage is presenting the right things at the right time for the visitor.
At the end of the day, web visitors are people, and so websites should prioritise people over algorithms – you need to humanise the website user experience.
Do this, and your visitors will feel more comfortable to move along their buying journey.
In this blog post, we will discuss some tips on how to improve page experience and increase conversions.
1. Not Everyone Is Ready to Buy
Some visitors will know exactly what they need, while others with a pain point won’t even know a solution is out there.
Unfortunately, some websites fall victim to greedy marketer syndrome: websites designed to cater only to those who are ready to take action.
But this disregards top-of-the-funnel visitors.
As such, understanding your website visitors is key. Here’s 2 ways you can learn about them:
- Quantitative data lets you see and understand what visitors are doing.
For instance, you can look at:
- Keywords: the phrases and terms people are using to find your website can indicate where they are in their journey
- Page popularity: audit pages that visitors engage with the most and pages where they exit the site
- Qualitative data allows you to determine why visitors are doing what they are doing. For instance, you can look at:
- Interviews: asking customer-facing employees about the typical people they speak with and what conversations they have
- Surveys: gather rich data by including visitor surveys at key trigger points throughout the site. (Keep in mind that people will be in a different mindset depending where they are on the site).
2. Have User Intent-Driven Navigation Design
Customers visit your website to seek for a solution for an issue or for a certain product.
So, make it as simple as possible for them to do so and avoid navigation mistakes that get in the way.
For example, if you run an e-commerce site, it’s not going to be very helpful if you put “featured products” front and centre, as this will force the user to use top navigation or do a search – and that’s not good UX.
To put it simply, your homepage needs to show your visitors a map of your site that presents top-level categories visitors can drill down on to find what they need, and ultimately convert.
3. Make Site Search Helpful
A portion of your website visitors will use on-site search.
Those who do will typically be late-stage visitors and more likely ready to buy.
That said, when people search you need to show them relevant results. So review your search results and conduct regular audits.
We all make mistakes, and some visitors will mistype things – it’s only human.
As such, you’ll want to make sure your on-site search function has some degree of fault tolerance.
By helping visitors recover from minor errors, you will provide a better user experience and increase their chances of converting.
At the same time, you don’t want to dump users with a lot of results either – don’t display ALL of the things that match their criteria without a way to map relevance to the sort order.
Consequently, too many choices can result in decision paralysis, so you don’t want to overwhelm them.
4. Use Language Consciously
A positive reputation and a solid presence on the internet are keys to attracting visitors and building trust.
But if you establish a good tone, you’ll be in a better position to attract more of your visitors to convert.
As such, resist the urge to use jargon and intimidating language as this will not communicate well.
Instead, be clear in your message to help visitors understand your website will address their pain points.
And, talk like a real person – if messaging is friendly, visitors will feel happier to engage.
In addition, button labels should be as clear as possible to provide users a sense of what will happen next after they click on it.
5. Make Text Easy to Digest
Let’s be real, people don’t read on the internet – they scan.
So, your copy needs to be presented in a way that supports scanning behaviour.
To do this:
- Don’t put all your copy on the homepage – you don’t know what the visitor is interested in yet. This is what links are for, so users can click through and find more in-depth information
- Write in short sentences
- Have a clear visual hierarchy – i.e. use headings and subheadings
- Use bullet points instead of paragraphs, where possible
- Avoid industry terminology unless you know your audience is familiar with it
Wrapping Up
Although technology advances quickly, the brain doesn’t.
Hence, you need to prioritise the psychological needs of your potential customers in order to convert them.
By optimising your website so that it caters to all types of visitors, ensuring your navigation matches user intent, use language consciously and structure your content clearly, you’ll be on the right path to improving page experience and increasing conversions in the process.
Find out more by getting in touch today.
In the meantime, take a look at our Web Design service here.
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