User Experience (UX)

User experience (or UX) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction of your website by improving its design, navigation and usability. It is inherently important for your site to be a success and is closely related to search engine optimisation.

The job of search engine optimisation is to make your site found in search result. Once visitors are on your site, it is your product or service, along with the user experience, that will determine whether or not they will convert.

Don’t blame your SEO for bad UX

Many is a dissatisfied client who has blamed a lack of online sales on their SEO agency, when, in fact, it is their terrible website that is the culprit. As an SEO agent, it can feel like setting up an unbecoming friend on a blind date and having that friend call you the next day whining it didn’t go very well. Wake up, Sleeping Ugly! It’s time for some self improvement.

So, while it is great to aspire to high rankings from a mixture of great on page optimisation and a link profile that’s the envy of your industry, it is very important that you pay attention to how people are using your website.

User metrics matters for SEO

Moreover, Google does put stock in user metrics in its search rankings, despite any protests it does otherwise. If it sees that your site is appearing in search results more frequently in the last 3 months, through the concerted effort of your SEO agency building links or improving the keyword targeting, but it runs out your bounce rate on page 1 is a high 65%, Google will lower your rankings. People vote with their clicks, so you cannot ignore user design.

So, to start your job of improving your site’s user experience, first have a look at your Analytics package and look for any red flags. Is your bounce rate over 50%? Is your bounce rate much higher on mobile devices? Have these bounce rates increased over time despite the rankings and design staying the same? All of these can indicate a design and navigation refresh is needed.

Pretend you know nothing

As I have mentioned elsewhere on my site, you need to look at each page as if you were a potential customer that has never see your website before and imagine you want to undertake a desired conversion – reading more content, signing up to your newsletter, making an enquiry or making a purchase. If you’re not willing or able to do this on the page in question, you need to put into words what would make you do so. It could be a change in the design of the page. It could be writing new copy that’s more inviting. It could be adding better and more contrasting Call To Action. Whatever the case, making these changes should be a priority for your business from now on.

Usability labs

If you really want to get a good idea of how others view your site, usability labs can help. These labs people to use your site and get direct feedback. One such example Is UserBrain. Often, feedback from less than 20 visitors can be enough to resolve all major issues with your pages, provided you have a smaller site, naturally.

Convert the existing traffic

Once you’ve actioned all these changes, you should hopefully see an improvement in user metrics on your site, which means you’ll be able to convert more of your existing recurring visitors.