Avoiding mistakes is an excellent way to think about the user experience of your website. The reason is simple: by taking care of some elements of your web project, you can welcome the user in the best possible way. And you are cashing in on a number of benefits that are difficult to collect in a different way.
For example, everything related to SEO. Today it is impossible to divide the experience of the people who arrive on the web page and its positioning in the SERP. If only because Google wants to give the best possible result and realizes if a page does not meet the needs.
You can create the best content possible, but if you don’t pay attention to user experience mistakes, you risk making a hole in the water. That’s why today, I want to give you some simple (but essential) tips to improve everything related to the reader’s business.
The Topic of THIS POST
- 1 Slow and difficult web pages to load
- 2 No music automatically, thanks
- 3 Unclear navigation labels
- 4 Beware of broken links and 404 pages
- 5 Don’t stop at the responsive site
- 6 Simplify reading and making decisions
- 7 Don’t overdo it with banners and advertisements
- 8 Make Content Available: Search
- 9 Beware of overcrowded menus
- 10 The main user experience mistakes
Slow and difficult web pages to load
Right to start with this point: the pages must be fast easy to load. The user experience suffers from this factor, and Google itself has identified a decisive point to implement. In fact, the loading speed of web pages has long been a ranking factor.
Of course, it won’t be a decisive point for positioning, but it makes you understand what the meaning of your business is. Google wants to offer useful and quality content, which also means making sure that users move better on web pages.
What to do in these cases? Make sure your loading times are minimal. In this way, you will give an extra advantage to your resources, both on search engines but above all for the user who wants to read your content. To learn more, you can read the Google press release dedicated to the Speed Update.
No automatic music, thanks
Even if this is one of the workhorses of the user experience, it is fair to repeat it. Never put music – and audio in general – automatically on the home page or on any page. This is the best way to force people to close the page and leave. Do you want this? I guess not.
Unclear navigation labels
The user experience passes from navigation, from moving from one point to another on the site. This happens in different ways, but the navigation menu is one of the deciding factors. That’s why the first piece of advice is this: use simple, easy-to-understand navigation labels.
The importance of anchor text, according to Steve Krug.
I am referring to the anchor text you use to suggest what is on the other side of the link. The hyperlink is a bridge that connects different resources, and your job is to decrease the uncertainties. And this is the leitmotif that guides you towards the next paragraph.
Beware of broken links and 404 pages.
One of the cornerstones of the user experience: minimizing 404 errors and checking the goodness of the links. This is the compass to avoid that clicking on a link leads to a useless resource. For this, you have to use Broken Link Checker, the plugin capable of detecting broken links.
Then you have to optimize the 404 page to make it navigable. Having resources not found on a website is normal, and it’s your job to make sure there are the right redirects when needed. But if necessary, the 404 page must be a hub for resuming navigation.
Don’t stop at the responsive site.
You have a mobile-friendly template, so you think you’ve done your job? Error, you need to go further and think about how and what to do to make your website mobile-friendly.
Speed, already mentioned, is the first step. Then you have to evaluate the distances between the elements, the length of the paragraphs, the order of the visual, and the good functionality of the links. What works for the desktop may be too small or too large for mobile.
Simplify reading and making decisions
Simplicity is one of the parameters that guide your work to reduce UX errors. The first phase: the texts must be designed to improve readability, then divided into paragraphs and defined with the right formatting. The essential points to be respected:
- Bulleted lists to define multiple elements.
- H2 and H3 to introduce specific topics.
- Good sized font for easier reading.
- Sans serif font instead of the serif.
- Flag alignment for text.
Yes, the text is aligned with a flag because the justified one tends to leave unnatural spaces between words. And this is an obstacle to good readability, with net consequences on the user experience.
It also optimizes call-to-action texts to make your message clear, trying to avoid too many calls to action in one space. As a rule, there should be one, at most another secondary one. But you must avoid confusing the reader.
Don’t overdo it with banners and advertisements.
Some time ago, Google released an update aimed only at mobile, to penalize pages with advertising and interstitial messages, which are usually very intrusive, capable of completely hiding the content. So Google is against pop-ups and adv? No, but this is a signal.
A central signal that must guide your attention for the user experience: do not let interruptions become the protagonists on a web page and always keep the course towards the true goal. That is to focus on the inbound marketing strategy.
Make Content Available: Search
Internal research must always be present on every page of the website. The field must be visible; the default icon to indicate this section is that of the magnifying glass. Make sure the results pages are easy to navigate and not too challenging to flip through.
Beware of overcrowded menus.
The second tip for managing the browsing experience. After improving your labels, make sure you create lean and easy-to-use menus. For example, try to avoid useless links capable of stealing attention at the expense of the elements that are truly important for your business. This is important for the user experience but also to suggest to Google what is most relevant on a website.
Above all, pay attention to the drop-down menus: if they are too long and nested, they risk bogging down the navigation. In these cases, a good mega menu can be useful, perhaps with images that simplify decisions. Even in this case, however, you must carefully study the needs of the users.
The main user experience mistakes
Today I have listed the problems related to the user experience of a website. In most cases, these steps are about simple common sense, but if you want to learn more, you need to study user behavior on your resources.
To do this, I recommend the Hotjar program, which creates heat maps and records the behavior of people on the pages. So you can understand what they do, how they move and if there are any navigation problems. Do you want to add some advice? Do you move like this ivf insurance people do too? Leave your opinion in the comments.
