Creating a simple, effective, and even enjoyable user experience is vital for any website or application. Whether you’re building a simple informative site or a robust Ecommerce app, when visitors come to you they should be able to easily find the information they’re looking for, and feel encouraged to either continue interacting with you or make the conversion from visitor to patron.
A big part of making that conversion comes down to User Experience. A poorly designed UX can make your site confusing, difficult to navigate, and discouraging for users. Think about it–if you’re considering buying a product from a company, but their website is full of nonsensical graphics, confusing layouts, and uninformative content, are you going to feel compelled to make a purchase? Probably not. You’d be more likely to check out a competitor at this point, and see if there’s another way to get what you’re looking for.
The User Experience plays a critical role in how visitors perceive your website and, by extension, your company. This makes it vital to provide an intuitive, informative and, above all, useful UX. As the world continues to make sites and apps that are more usable, you can expect these three facets of UX to be a big focus this year.
Accessibility/ADA Compliance
A great deal of web design and research revolves around determining what makes a design effective and impactful for the average user. The idea behind that approach is fairly intuitive–who wouldn’t want their website to have the greatest appeal for the greatest number of users?
The problem, however, is that what might be functional or visually appealing for one user could be cumbersome for another. People with visual impairments may have trouble seeing certain colors, or text that is too close in shade to its background. Likewise, videos without audio can be similarly problematic, and video or audio media without text descriptions can prove useless to those with hearing impairments.
Websites that are functional for the greatest number of users will be those that can actually be used by everyone. Expect to see more sites that meet ADA compliance, and if yours doesn’t then be sure to make it more accessible.
Interactive Help
FAQ sections have long been a standard for many sites across the web, but a personalized approach to answering questions is becoming more and more popular. Virtual assistants who can field questions and help visitors find what they’re looking for are becoming increasingly prevalent, and it isn’t just live customer assistants who are filling this role.
Advances in AI chatbots have made it possible to have a virtual assistant field questions from visitors at any time of day. Chatbots like Chatobook and Zendesk’s Answer Bot allow businesses to answer their customer’s questions on their websites and social platforms without having to dedicate an employee to monitoring incoming messages. This gives visitors a fast and intuitive way to literally ask their questions and get the answers they want.
Simplifying the Buyer’s Journey
It feels like everyone is online these days, but while the ubiquity of computers and smartphones might give you potential access to plenty of new customers, it doesn’t give you unlimited access to their attention span. This is a trend that has been going on for years, and it will only become more refined: websites will focus on moving visitors closer and closer to becoming customers with every click.
Rather than providing encyclopedic knowledge about products and businesses, sites will be designed around getting each visitor one step closer to conversion. Whether it’s by linking blog posts to product pages, adding compelling calls to action, or decluttering the screen and removing excessive or confusing options for users to click on, the user experience on today’s web will be simple and straightforward. Visitors should be able to find what they’re looking for within a couple clicks of the homepage, and encouraged to take action once they get to the page they were looking for.
Remember, your site is only useful to you if it encourages visitors to do business with you, and providing a great user experience plays a big part in giving them that encouragement. A straightforward, interactive User Experience can help visitors find answers, and encourage them to convert
into customers.
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