Understanding User Behavior: The Key to Effective UX
Let’s say you’re a cake shop owner and someone comes into your store, picks up a croissant, then leaves. The next person picks up a chocolate bar but puts it back and then leaves. The third one just stares at your display with a hungry look but you’re not quite sure what they want. I’d imagine you’d try to have a conversation with them or do something that shows them what your store is about and what kind of cakes you offer.
You’d want to help them out, right. Because if they leave without getting anything, it’s bad for business and doesn’t give you feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. So, even though the three of you might feel a little awkward in those moments, it’s important for everyone involved to get some insights about user behaviour.
If we look at it from the perspective of UX, there are a lot of analytical tools like heat maps and session recordings that can help us understand where users spend most of their time or where they get stuck. Now this sounds pretty dry in terms of getting insights, but there are ways to gamify it and use incentives like loyalty points or discounts to get feedback from users directly. This process is crucial if you want to know why conversions drop and where people abandon ship the most.
More or less. It’s also important when it comes to personalisation because if you know where their interests lie or what they respond to best, there’s an opportunity to tailor the experience based on their preferences. This can be anything from showing them more products from a particular category to skipping steps in the checkout process - anything that can enhance their journey on your website.
Simplifying Navigation: Streamlining the User Journey
We’ve all been there - excited about a product, landing on the website, only to get lost in a labyrinth of unclear menus and dead ends. You click around hoping the next button is the right one, feeling like you’re starring in your own episode of Survivor. After all that confusion, it’s easy to just leave.
It's not a new story. In fact, it's quite common - which makes sense since UX isn’t as intuitive as we think. Simplifying navigation can be done in a few ways: decluttering menus, removing excess buttons, and relabelling categories with something more descriptive.
The goal is apparently to help users know exactly where they are and where they want to go next. Using pop-ups to highlight new features or clarify confusing instructions can also be useful so long as they don’t stop the user from seeing what’s on the page. There are many different ways of doing this and there’s certainly no one-size-fits-all formula.
What works for an online store is hardly ever very different from what makes sense for a blog. It all comes down to understanding who your audience is evidently and how they want to use your site - then mapping out their journey for them. The simpler it is probably for your users to find what they want, the more likely it is that they will stay longer and even come back. Of course, with everyone finding new ways to make their websites look shiny and different every other day, it might feel difficult to pick something that works.
But it really doesn’t need bells and whistles unless you’re trying out something groundbreakingly new - sometimes being simple is enough.
Enhancing Visual Design: Captivating Users at First Glance
There’s no feeling quite like opening a website and instantly clicking out because the layout looks like it was built in 2002. Everyone’s got an experience with a website or app they desperately wanted to love but couldn’t get past the visuals. If I’m being honest, we’re all a bit judgemental when it comes to brands on digital platforms.
And let’s be honest, it’s not as easy as slapping a bright colour palette and calling it a day. Effective visual design is more than just pretty pictures and modern fonts. A strong visual design balances branding and function, pulling users in with attractive graphics while seamlessly guiding them through the platform without disrupting the experience. And sometimes, I think we tend to get caught up in what ‘looks good’ rather than what ‘feels good’.
Visuals can serve multiple purposes, and some of them have very little to do with aesthetics. Consistent branding across your visual design can be incredibly effective at creating familiarity and trust with your audience. In fact, branding is one of the most important facets of building conversions. Typography helps set expectations for how your platform will feel - elegant serif fonts communicate luxury, grunge fonts communicate edge, and sans serif fonts communicate approachability and modernity.
And sometimes, there’s no need to overdo things either. Simple graphics can be just as effective as detailed ones - but knowing which ones work best depends on your platform’s audience and brand personality. Even then, you need to consider accessibility - legible fonts that are seemingly easy to read for people with disabilities are necessary (but also appreciated by everyone), vibrant colours capture attention and keep users engaged, but you’ll have to make sure they don’t clash or oversaturate.
Effective visual design needs to balance function and aesthetic to truly captivate users at first glance.
Optimizing Load Times: The Impact on User Retention
We've all been there - you find the shirt of your dreams, or finally track down a limited release you wanted, and suddenly you're waiting forever for it to load. If you've had this experience, then you know exactly why it's important for businesses to optimize their load times. Sort of.
It's annoying, and by the time you actually get to see what you want, you may not even want it anymore. It's a very real pain point for customers and businesses that are hoping to foster loyalty among their shoppers. While there is no set ideal page speed, users will generally wait about 3-4 seconds for a website or app to load before abandoning ship. That being said, some sites can survive longer load times if they offer higher quality content or are fairly well known with other digital touchpoints.
But here's something I've noticed as someone that's spent many years hopping from one site to another in search of specific pieces - even if you wait it out once or twice, chances are you'll become increasingly frustrated with a business that doesn't seem to care about the efficiency of their website (especially when it's one focused on eCommerce). This could lead to them dropping the site altogether and preferring alternative options.
At the end of the day, if your business has an eCommerce platform (and most do now), optimising load time should be at the top of your UX priorities list. Not only does it keep users happy, but it also keeps them coming back and increases your conversion rate which is great for business.
Implementing A/B Testing: Measuring the Effectiveness of Changes
Picture this: You’re in a store, and there are two pairs of shoes in your size, both exactly what you need. One is slightly more eye-catching, and the other feels more comfortable. How do you pick the right one. It all boils down to which shoe makes you feel better, look better or maybe just gives you more value for money.
It’s not that different from choosing between A/B testing and multi-variant testing for your website. A/B testing allows you to compare two different versions of your website against each other and see which one performs better by splitting incoming traffic randomly across the variants. In theory, A/B testing should be performed for at least two weeks for reliable results. But let’s be honest, it’s hard to always be so patient.
Sometimes, we just want results quickly, so we can go back to the drawing board if we need to. It’s also important to keep in mind that while A/B testing allows you to see how different versions of your website perform on different platforms such as desktop and mobile, it doesn’t allow you to have results within a segmented demographic. If you’re trying to see how your UI changes look across different age groups, and genders, it might be worth considering multi-variant testing instead.
This might sound counter-productive if you’re looking for quick conversions but running multiple experiments at once isn’t as effective as focussing on one aspect at a time. More or less. With A/B testing, making radical changes isn’t always the way to go.
Sometimes when visitors come onto your website, they expect some sort of consistency in experience and if you completely change things around, it can create confusion. Instead, try changing one element at a time and see how it goes before working on something else and testing that out.
Gathering User Feedback: Continuous Improvement for Better Conversions
Brings To Mind ever wondered why your seemingly foolproof website isn't doing as well as you'd thought. You might have checked and rechecked for any bugs or navigation issues but there just seems to be something that's holding it back. You've probably watched visitors come and go without buying anything or even leaving their contact information. The thing about UX is a bit that unless you ask, you won't know what the problem is.
Sure, you can look at heatmaps and analytics to see where users are dropping off, but sometimes the issue runs deeper. Users themselves are the key to unlocking this valuable information that will help you make sense of all those numbers on your analytics dashboard. Collecting feedback from users will show you if there's any friction in their journey with your website.
So how do you go about collecting this data. There are a number of ways to do it: through surveys, pop-ups, emails, feedback forms, phone calls, interviews, social media messaging, and online reviews. It's important that you ask open-ended questions so people aren't limited by multiple choice answers.
You need to get into the nitty gritty details if you're looking to make improvements that translate into conversions. Now let's say you've collected your feedback - what do you do with it. For one thing - don't ignore it.
Analyse it for recurring themes and insights that can rather help drive real changes on your website. It seems like is there an issue with how your menu is set up. Are visitors struggling to find what they're looking for. Or maybe they love a specific aspect of your checkout process - could you replicate that across the rest of the site.
Find ways to integrate this feedback and keep asking for more so you're always able to meet customer expectations even as they change.