Is User Experience an Essential Part of Web Design?

There are many things that determine the success of a website. It is no longer sufficient to have a beautiful site, with a properly designed layout and navigation and hope that it will open for you the floodgates of online traffic to grow your online business. Whereas aesthetics, performance and marketing are critical to the ultimate success of any website, the user experience is another great factor that can never be ignored if you want to have a successful website. Remember, it is humans that interact with the websites on the internet and it is imperative that they find it easy and intuitive to use when checking out your content.

User experience refers to how a user feels when going through your website and the kind of responses they might have, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. Out of their interaction with the website and the kind of experience they get, they will decide whether or not take the intended action.

The intended action is always the main objective of setting up the website, and this could be either to sell a product, collect email addresses or share content. Every website, therefore, should be designed with the potential users in mind, and it should anticipate the kind of interaction expected from the user and ensure that the design has been aligned to meet the user’s expectations.

User experience and search engine optimization

In the recent years, Google, the major search engine today, updated its algorithm to factor in the user experience when determining the ranks of websites. Google always has always stressed to developers and online marketers on the need for quality content, which in turn will lead to great user experience. When users land on your website, they are hoping to find something which they were looking for on the internet.

If they fail to find it, they will quickly navigate away from your website leading to high bounce back rates. If Google notices this in your websites, it will interpret that your site has an awful user experience, and this is why people are moving away the moment they get there. Your site will then be given lower rankings because it is not offering a good experience for the users by providing quality content.

With the lower rankings, you miss an awesome opportunity to get loads of free and targeted traffic to your website. Therefore, user content should always one of your top concerns when making websites to enhance your search engine optimization efforts.

Mobile websites and user experience

The number of people accessing the internet with mobile devices has outgrown the number of people using desktop devices to access the internet. It implies that if your website isn’t accessible to these kinds of users, then you will be limiting the viewership of your website to the desktop users alone. In this manner, you will be using a great opportunity to take a share of the humongous mobile traffic for the growth of your website and online business.

It is due to user experience that you will be compelled to make a mobile friendly site take of mobile users as well. If user attempt to access your website via the mobile devices but they are not able to, they will simply give up and search for a similar website that will be displayed on their mobile devices. This is another reason for you take user experience seriously in web design.

User experience and lead nurturing

One of the goals of a website is to collect leads for future email marketing. Through user experience, marketers are able to personalize the lead capture process for effective results. It made the potential leads feel more important and appreciated thus breaking any barriers they might have had before. The eventual results of this won’t be just increased lead capture but also increased conversions since the potential customers will feel less skeptic about taking the desired action.

Ease of use of the website by the users

Website usability is important for the success of any online venture. Usability encompasses various items that still points back to user experience. A good website should be easily found on the internet, and it should also have useful, desirable, accessible, credible, and valuable information. These are the core determinants of good user experience. When a website has all of these, it will give users easy time in navigating the content, the download speeds will also be high, meaning that users won’t have to wait for a long time and it will also be easy for the users to search and find the various content they are looking for. Eventually, users will enjoy using the website each and every time thus helping in building the brand authority of the website.

User experience is a very extensive subject due to its importance to the success of websites online. The crucial thing is to take time and investigate thoroughly on the user experience before setting out to develop a website. It will be a waste of time to design a website that users won’t enjoy using.

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