How to improve user experience on a website

Author: Ryan Christopher Walsh

Table of contents:

  • Why good site structure matters
  • How to use H1 through to H6 tags correct
  • How good web design can help to improve dwell times
  • How to improve page speed
  • Why reducing bounce rates matter
  • How to better optimise your website for smartphones
  • How to improve the user experience on your website

You could honestly hire the best SEO consultant on the planet, yet if the web design is poor, then you won’t generate any more sales.

Good web design and offering a good user experience is therefore so important. The search engines, such Google are using RankBrain, which is powered by AI to monitor engagement signals.

Google’s RankBrain therefore asks questions such, how long has that shopper spent on the website (dwell times)?

How many visitors visited just one page, without visiting another? Then they left after a short period? That’s what we marketing consultants refer to as the bounce rate.

 

There are so many things that you could do, to improve your websites user experience, here’s just a few:

  • Good website architecture- this means how have all the pages been arranged?
  • Do you know how to add page titles, and use H1 to H6 to better optimise the content?
  • Have you used Google Page Speed Insights to speed up the page
  • Have you used spit testing to improve your websites mobile design?
  • Do you know to implement web design to improve the user experience?
  • What is website architecture? What does this mean?

 

Have you ever visited a website, where the layout is just not logical?

For example, the e-commerce website may sell thousands of products, trying to get to that product you want seems like trying to find a needle in hay-stack?

This poor website architecture.

It simply means that marketing agency and the web design agency haven’t thought about how shoppers flow through the website.

Is it an absolute breeze to get to the products you want?

Or is it, like an endless loop, where some visitors might even get frustrated leaving the website, increasing the bounce rate?

Therefore, you need to improve the page layout, here’s how you that.

Consider how leading companies in your business sector have arranged their products or services

  • Are there redundant pages that could be redirected or removed?
  • Could the main navigation be improved further?
  • Could there be greater use of visual elements to direct shoppers to the right page, such as for example a picture of fridge freezer?
  • Could some products be grouped together?
  • Could you help the customer to better find what they need by adding more sort options, such as arrange products by cheapest or most expensive?
  • Do you new product pages need to be added?

Make sure you add an XML sitemap. Plus, if you have modified and improved any pages, then do ask Googlebot to manually crawl and index that page.

Good use of page titles (H1-H6)

Sometimes, businesses just focus on word count when they are writing an article.

This is not a good idea, because, well you end up with 2,000 words in a giant block of text, which Googlebot, doesn’t know what the page is about.

Plus, people today are in more of a rush that ever, if they can’t get to the information they want, well they will just leave.

They leave, and perhaps visit a competitor’s website, where there are good use of page titles, they may skip to section they want to read more about.

They could then follow an internal link, and perhaps even purchase an item from that business.

Therefore, titles are important, they should have a logical flow throughout your businesses content marketing.

A lot of copywriters and marketing agencies refer to this, as the work having a “back-bone”.

This just means that you should use titles, such as H1 through to H6, and you can use these to structure your work.

Not only do they send a crystal clear message to the search engines such Google or Bing what the page is about, they also, help the shopper or the reader to skip to the section they really want to read more about.

Therefore, instead of writing huge slabs of text, which might be off putting to a reader, as they may not want to read entire 1000-word article.

They may just want to skip to part where they want there question answered.

Therefore, a top tip, especially now marketing agencies are optimising for GEO as well, is to write in a more conversational way.
Actually, we would recommend, not just writing in a conversational way, we would recommend actually setting the page up using FAQ style of writing. Then if you are using a quality CMS, such as WordPress, well you can just mark-up the titles using H1-H6 mark-up tools, which are in-built into the WordPress editor.

 

Improve page speed

Is your website like a Japanese bullet train- always on time and fast, and reliable?

Or is it more like a slow moving, coal burning locomotive.

You want your company website to be as fast as possible, as no shoppers want to visit a slow website.

Therefore, to improve the websites U.X, you want the website to load faster. You will want to reduce the server response times; a slow response time often increases the businesses bounce rate.

 

Therefore, top web design companies, work hard to make the website faster. You can use tools such as Google’s Page Speed insight tool, or

GTMetrix, to gain an understanding of how you can speed the website up.

A lot of marketing agencies understand that JavaScript can slow a website down, often web developers use Google Page Speed Insight tool, to understand where they can speed the website up.

 

Optimised for smartphones.

A huge number of shoppers will now use there smartphones to purchase products, its therefore important that the website is optimised for smartphones.

Therefore, its important to have a responsive design, where the main navigation is simple to use.

What else should we think about when improving a websites U.X?

Think about the font you use, and the colour contrast. For example, is the text a piece of cake to read?

Or does it mean that your eyes are strained, when you read the text, because the font or the colour constant, such as black background with a hard to read font, will strain the readers eyes.

This could itself cause a jump in the websites bounce rate, just based on the font used.

How can Ryan Christopher Walsh SEO help?

Well, we are one of the most established SEO companies. As part of our monthly SEO work, we can work hard to improve your businesses user experience.

We have some of the best SEO consultants working for us. If you would like a free, quote, why not call us?