Basic Website User Experience & SEO
An excellent website user experience (UX) will keep people on your site longer and convert them more often. The thing is, too many business owners don't think about UX when building out a site. They need to think about planning the user experience by putting themselves in their prospects place as they go through the company's site. Business owners aren't even really sure what UX, if you ask them.
A really basic definition of website user experience is the way someone feels when she is interacting with a site. A "good" UX would mean she accomplished her mission on the site, whatever that was. A "bad" UX means she gave up on the site because it did not help her find the information she needed.
I'll go over some common website user experience elements every site should have, and why they're important for your SEO efforts. The two go hand in hand!
5 Basic Website User Experience Elements
Let's start with elements you should put front and center when creating or improving user experience on a website.
Navigation - your most important product and service pages should be no more than one click away from anywhere on a site. This means you need a crystal clear top and/or left hand side navigation bar, and the way the links are labeled or named should immediately be clear to the user as to what she can expect if she clicks on any label in any navigation scheme. If visitors go deeper into your site, view more pages and stay longer, these are good engagement metrics that Google considers for ranking pages. For example, common labels that make sense are these:
- Home
- Products
- Services
- Contact Us
Not so clear navigation labels I've come across are:
- Experience
- Users
Clear Calls To Action (CTA) - I can't tell you how many times I've looked at product and service pages that have no CTA. You can't assume folks know that they should call or email you. Or fill out your form to get a demo, white paper or free ebook. Be loud, be proud - use bright CTA buttons to get their attention! Again, those engagement metrics mentioned above should be as high as you can get them.
Lack Of Content - another favorite of mine. Don't assume your reader already understands your offering. Spell out everything - features, benefits, price, availability - all of it! Use simple language that's as non-technical as possible. Go in-depth on descriptions. Google tells us to write an adequate amount of content. That's vague and fairly unhelpful, but if you can answer these questions:
- Who
- What
- Why
- Where
- When
- How
By sketching out some basic information on a scratch pad, then fleshing it out, you should be able to come up with a few hundred words and verbs that will resonate with your target audience. The more information you publish, the more Google can get a sense of whether or not you actually know what the hell you're talking about.
Page Load Speed - who's going to hang around, waiting for a page to load? Nobody I know of, and it's no different when it comes to your own site. Get your friendly neighborhood web designer to minify, compress and organize all web page elements so they load quickly. Google is big on indexing and ranking mobile pages, and the speed load time is critical.
Short Order Experience - if you sell directly from your site, the fewer pieces of information you ask of the buyer, the more often they'll complete the sale. If you set up goals and funnels in Google Analytics, and you see a huge shopping cart abandon rate at the order form, look at it from the buyer's point of view. Do you really need 12 pieces of information, or can you cut it down to eight? Make it easy for folks to order from your site!
There are far more UX elements for your site, but these are the basics that most share in common. Get these right, and you'll increase your company's revenue.
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Until we meet again, stay safely between the ditches!
All the very best to you,
Nancy McDonald
Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
