If you are reading this, you have encountered, evaluated, and made a decision based on UX. Whether you realized it or not, your experience while navigating a website—like how quickly pages loaded, how easily you found information, or how intuitive the design was—has already influenced your perception of the brand. Every action you take, from clicking a CTA button to completing a lead form, is a reflection of the user experience. This ultimately determines whether or not you will continue browsing or return to the site in the future.
What is UX?
UX stands for User Experience: How a user interacts with a product, system, or service. Sounds pretty simple right? But evaluating that experience, and how a user assesses their level of satisfaction, involves several aspects. Think about the last time you searched for a product online. Your mind likely thinks of this as a very simple process; search, click, scroll, and you either found what you were looking for or you didn’t. But let’s dig deeper.
Where did you start your search? Why did you start there? Did you visit multiple websites? Did you find what you were looking for quickly? Did you experience any frustration while on one of those websites? Did you ever feel like you didn’t have enough information to make a decision? Did you find a website you particularly enjoyed? What made it enjoyable for you?
All of these questions are just part of what makes up a user's experience.
Why Does UX Matter for Your Business?
A business’s website is often the first interaction a potential customer has with the company, and you only have one chance to make a good first impression. According to Justin Misfud, founder of Usability Geek, 88% of online customers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.
How a Poor UX Can Hurt Your Business
A poor user experience can harm every aspect of your business, including brand reputation, growth prospects, and customer acquisition. Specific ways a bad UX can impact business success include:
- Loss of Revenue - If a user lands on your website and they experience friction, they will not hesitate to leave your website and go to a competitor’s. This results in a loss of conversions (i.e. checkouts, lead form submissions, service requests). For e-commerce sites, this can result in abandoned carts, leading to lower sales.
- Lower Search Engine Rankings - A poor UX can cause the users to quickly leave the website, increasing the bounce rate (the percentage of users who leave a page without interacting with it). Search engines like Google assess webpage experience using Core Web Vitals and other user experience factors to generate an experience score. A high bounce rate can negatively impact a webpage’s score, causing it to rank lower in search results.
- Negative Brand Perception - A poor first impression can hurt a brand’s authority and credibility as it causes the user to lose trust in the brand. Slow page load times, broken links, and cluttered navigation can cause the user to feel annoyed and stressed. These feelings are then associated with the brand, leading to a poor overall perception.
Common UX Mistakes That Could Be Hurting Your Website
Many businesses lose valuable leads and sales due to a poor user experience. Some of the most common mistakes include:
- Poor Mobile Experience - Search engines take the mobile webpage version into consideration before other devices. More than half of website traffic comes from mobile devices, yet many sites are not optimized for mobile screen sizes.
- Cluttered Navigation - Users have little patience; they need to find what they are searching for quickly. An over categorized or non-intuitive navigation can cause users to become frustrated and leave.
- Slow Page Load Times - We have all experienced clicking a link only to watch the loading icon spin for what feels like forever. But it is likely that we didn’t stick around for more than 5-10 seconds. A good page load time is 2-3 seconds and for every 1-second delay after that, conversions decrease by 7%!
- Complicated Lead Forms/Checkout Process - It has been proven that the more steps a user must take to complete an action, the more likely they are to abandon that action, such as a checkout or lead form. Requiring the user to fill in too many fields, or requiring excessive steps, can cause fatigue and anxiety, leading to higher abandonment rates.
- Poor Skimmability - Blocks of copy on a page are overwhelming to the user, making it difficult to find the information they need quickly and causing a decrease in user engagement. This can also worsen the mobile experience by making the user scroll further down the page to find what they are looking for.
How You Can Improve Your Website’s UX
Improving UX is often referred to as UX Optimization and can overlap with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization). These are some ways you can improve your website experience, leading to increased conversions.
- Clear CTA Buttons - Making Call to Action (CTA) buttons (i.e. “Contact Us”) noticeable and easy to find can help the user convert faster.
- Clean and Simple Navigation - Ensuring the navigation menus are clear and logical can make finding information easy. This is especially important on mobile devices where screen space is limited. A clean and clear navigation can reduce excessive scrolling and confusion.
- Simple Lead Forms/Checkout Process - By only requiring the information that is truly necessary for the business, users are more likely to complete the form or checkout, reducing lead form/cart abandonment.
- Mobile Friendliness - A mobile friendly design automatically adjusts the content to fit smaller screens. Eliminating the need to zoom or scroll excessively can help the user navigate and quickly find what they are looking for. This can include collapsible menus, touch-friendly buttons, and sticky navigation menus (menus that stay in place as user scrolls).
- Fast Page Load Speed - Search engines prioritize fast-loading websites when determining page ranking. A faster load time can also reduce frustration, increase conversions, and encourage repeat visits.
How High10 Can Help Your Website Stand Out
- UX Meets SEO - High10 Digital specializes in improving websites to be user-friendly and search-engine optimized with our robust SEO+ plan.
- Custom UX Audits - We understand your business is unique. We analyze your website’s strengths and weaknesses to develop customized UX optimization strategies.
- Data Driven UX Optimization - UX can be subjective, but we take an objective approach using data and research insights to improve your website’s user experience.
- Ongoing Website Maintenance and Optimization - We don’t believe in a “set it and forget it” approach. We continually make improvements and enhancements based on evolving user behavior and business goals.
From first impressions to customer retention, the way a user interacts with your website has a direct impact on your business’s success. A seamless user experience can build trust, boost engagement, and increase conversions, helping to drive business growth. On the flip-side, a poor UX can lead to a negative brand perception, lost revenue, and damage SEO performance. By optimizing UX, your website can help you meet your business goals by meeting the needs and expectations of your users.
Whether it is simplifying navigation, improving mobile responsiveness, or reducing page load times, making these adjustments today can lead to bigger wins tomorrow. At High10 Digital, we specialize in transforming websites to provide a superior UX backed by data-driven insights. If you are ready to take the next step in elevating your brand, we are here to help. Why wait? Schedule a consultation today.