Whether you have decided to create a new website or upgrade your current one, individuals are always usually drawn to making sure their website looks as aesthetically pleasing as possible. While this area should be considered the key to any website design for a business is far larger than individual design elements. In fact, most website design should focus on user experience or UX, which should be the driving force behind all other decisions. Many businesses have fallen into the trap of simply looking to create a beautiful site, and then coming up short when it comes to functionality and UX. However, getting this right from the beginning is crucial to engaging and retaining customers/clients. Here are some tips on how to go about planning your website UX layout.
Experience First
Think of your website as a monotone collection of pages, no style, just substance. Think about what type of business you are and what you are offering your customers, more to the point, what do they wish to see when they reach your site. For example, if you sell electronic equipment then your homepage shouldn’t be about the business and its history, it should feature hot deals and promotions, with accessible links to each category.
Scanning Pages
Users don’t read websites when they first arrive, they scan and make a quick evaluation as to whether or not they can get what they want or if there is any value to be had. Therefore, it is key that during this scan, the customer are able to decipher your key message quickly and easily depending on the page they are looking at. For instance, if the page is a blog page, they should be able to determine this and the key stories in your blog with ease. Stick to visuals in order to help with this rather than long-handed content. It is also important to note that potential customers will do this on each page they view, which is why site speed and ease of access is so important.
Just Keep It Simple
For a long time, people tried to go too far with packing information and calls to action on their site, and the result is that visitors just felt overwhelmed and confused. For this reason, focus on simplicity and clarity in every step of your design. If customers wish to dig deeper then they will, but for the most part they just want each aspect of their user experience to be simple and clean from the pages available, to the layout and graphics used in the design.
Colours
Certain colours trigger different thoughts and ideas in our minds, and you have to consider this when designing the site. For instance, green triggers thoughts of money, red stirs up feelings of design and creativity and blue has a calming effect. Make sure to consider the psychological impact which colours can have before choosing, but also make sure the colours chosen are uniform across the site and link with your brand.
Biggest Complaints
To ensure that you are going to create the best website for UX, you need to reverse engineer this and first understand what the biggest complaints are with regards to user experience. Slow loading pages, too much information, hard to find menus and categories and broken links are amongst the biggest complaints, so ensure that your design addresses these issues.
Through effective planning, you can be sure that you create the best website for UX. Alternatively, look to hire a well-known web design agency who will be able to make sure that all of this can be taken care of. Allowing you to focus more on everyday business operations instead of website design.
