Your website is often the first point of contact potential customers have with your business. Whether you’re running an e-commerce site, are a service provider, or are promoting your brand, the User Experience (UX) of your website plays a critical role in how people view and choose to engage with your business. Having a visually appealing or “pretty” website is important. But a pretty website that isn’t easy for clients to use can be ugly for your business. UX is about making sure that visitors to your website can easily navigate it, find the information they need, and achieve their goal (often the same as your goal for them) without being frustrated by what we call “pain points.”

Investing in UX is essential as a part of making the online presence of your business as effective as possible. Partnering with a marketing agency that understands the importance of UX and can provide these services will help your website perform better, rank higher in search engines, and convert more of your visitors into customers.

What exactly is User Experience (UX)?

User Experience refers to the overall experience visitors have when they visit and engage with your website or app. It involves numerous aspects: how easy it is to navigate your site, whether information is clear, relevant and understandable to customers, and how effortlessly users can accomplish their goal, such as purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, or booking a service. 

Good UX is about making your website easily understandable, efficient, and an enjoyable experience for users. Though always part of the process, UX is not really just about making your website look good. Design matters, but should always be a part of reducing complications in the user journey of your visitors and making sure they are left with a positive impression of their experience and thus, your business.

Why UX Matters

UX is far more important to a business than just how impressive or pretty its website looks. UX affects everything from a customer’s first impression of your business, to their interactions with you, and to their overall opinion of how things went; and these things leads all the way to your bottom line. 

Here are some reasons why UX considerations should always be a primary part of your website build and edits:

1. First Impressions Matter

Website visitors form an opinion of a business within seconds of landing on its website. A professional looking and easy-to-use website makes your business look trustworthy and credible. A cluttered or outdated design creates doubt in the minds of these potential customers, making them wonder if the services you provide or the products you sell are similarly inferior. Users often make judgments about a business’s credibility based on their website experience alone, meaning a bad user experience directly impacts your business’s capacity not only to attract, but also to retain customers.

2. This is the Way

You, as the business owner, establish the goal you want for visitors to your site. Whether you want visitors to purchase a product, contact you, or just form a positive impression of your brand, UX plays a pivotal role in guiding them to take these actions. Effective UX and User Interface (UI) design makes such actions easier for a customer to complete by placing clear calls-to-action (CTAs) in strategic locations on each page and making sure users don’t encounter unnecessary confusion or extra effort in the process of reaching that goal. 

A correctly designed website will have simple navigation, clear, concise content and an intuitive flow that leads users naturally toward the “conversion point”; that is, where they go from an interested visitor to a user who has performed the desired goal. Confusing, outdated design, unclear customer paths and poor UX principles can leave your visitors frustrated and cause them to leave your site without doing what you want them to do, costing you their business

3. Building Trust and Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is one of the best ways for your business to succeed. The only thing better than a customer choosing your product for the first time is them choosing it a second and third time. Positive user experiences create trust in your brand and help make this happen. When your customers can easily find what they’re looking for on your site and complete goals efficiently, they’re more likely to have a favorable view of your business and this builds brand loyalty. These customers are more likely to return and recommend your business to their friends and family, and leave reviews on sites like Google.

Poor UX can lead to customer frustration, abandonment of your site, and negative reviews. When your main competitors are just one Google search and click away, bad UX translates to lost business.

4. UX and SEO: User Experience as a Marketing Tool

UX doesn’t just impact how visitors feel about and interact with your site. It can also improve organic visibility and better ranking on search engines like Google. Search engine optimization (SEO) and UX are closely intertwined. Search engines prioritize websites that appear to give a positive experience for users, which is why optimizing UX on your site in the following ways is integral to improving your SEO:

a. Mobile Optimization

The majority of traffic on most websites now comes from phones and other mobile technology. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer a mobile-friendly experience. If your website doesn’t perform well on mobile devices you’ll lose both traffic and rankings. If it’s hard to navigate your site on a phone, if images and buttons are too small or don’t show correctly, then you have a mobile responsiveness problem. A responsive site design that responds to any screen size is crucial for SEO and user experience, because it makes sure that visitors can easily work with your website no matter how they’re accessing it.

b. Page Load Time

The speed at which your site pages load is another important factor in UX and SEO. Slow-loading pages frustrate users, causing them to hit the back button and look somewhere else. Google recognizes this, and page speed is factored into its ranking algorithms. If your website takes too long to load  – or even just certain pages on it do  –  users will leave quickly without interacting and Google will lower your priority in searches. Good loading-speed is a part of UX and provides a better experience for your visitors, helping your site to rank higher in search results.

c. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate refers to what percentage  of visitors leave your website after looking at only one page. A high bounce rate tells search engines that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for, which can indicate they are having a poor experience, whether that be load times, bad information, or a confusing experience. Search engines see this and lower the rankings of sites with high bounce rates. You can reduce bounce rates with good UX by making content easier to find and understand, making navigation simple and clear, and making sure that everything on your website is relevant to your customer’s end goal.

d. Engagement

How long a user stays on your site after clicking a Google search result is incredibly important. Well designed UX encourages website visitors to spend more time on your website, exploring its pages and completing desired actions. The longer users stay on your site and engage after clicking your result in a search, the more search engines see giving this result as a positive and improve your ranking because you have demonstrated relevance.

UX Is a Marathon

Good UX isn’t a one-time thing, it’s a process that requires maintenance like any other part of your business. Technology and user expectations are constantly changing, as the suddenly ubiquitous AI chatbots on business websites has illustrated. Businesses should always be aware of their customers’  experience and improve their websites to stay on pace or even hopefully ahead of their competitors.

This is one reason that working with a marketing agency like Wild Iris that understands the importance of UX provides real value to your business. As your marketing partner, we can keep an eye on your site’s UX, analyze feedback you get from users, and make adjustments that ensure your site stays at the top of the SEO game through UX.

Let Wild Iris Marketing help make your website’s UX a tool to increase your SEO ranking and improve your customer experience. Reach out to us to schedule a consultation and discuss your needs!