Losing Readers? Keep Them on Your Website By Improving User Experience

Your Website Needs More Than Curb Appeal

Spammy looking websites are a HUGE turn off for visitors.

Let’s say you’re looking for a new home and you find a house that has amazing curb appeal. The description depicts a welcoming neighborhood and all of the amenities you need and want. In fact, it’s so inspiring that you begin to envision plans for each room: dinner parties, cozy reading nooks, and more. You excitedly arrange a tour to inspect the house with the realtor.

As you enter the house, your reality shatters like a brick thrown through a glass window. You wonder if somehow someone has stolen your promising vision and exchanged it with a house with leaking windows, a roof that’s badly in need of repairs, a cracked foundation, a condemned furnace, pests – lots of pests – and you can only imagine so many more unseen issues.

If you’re like most people, you head for the exit as fast as you possibly can.

Like buying a home, it often takes much more than the curb appeal of a great article to maintain a visitor’s attention on a website. An article can build up your platform by promoting your authority as a leading source in your niche, but your website needs to maintain their interest.

Provide a great user experience and hold onto their attention by giving the design of your website a little love with these 7 tips.

7 Tips to Improving Your Website’s Appeal

• Navigation – Your website’s curb appeal also needs functional design. Be visually appealing and ensure everything has an appropriate place on your website for easy navigation. Avoid placing too many calls to action via excessive ads, links, etc. by ensuring your visitor clearly knows where to go because each page is unique and the website flows consistently.
   
• Content – Is your website ready to meet your visitor’s cravings for content? Ebooks, articles, newsroom, connected social media, newsletters, etc. – provide fresh, quality, transparent, and original content. From press releases to video to competitions, there are countless mediums or strategies to create a content rich website. Test them to find those that best reach and engage your audience.
   
• Contact – In case of an “emergency,” help your visitors contact you. Have you ever hunted for a company’s phone number, email, mailing address, or at least a contact form, only to give up? Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes. If they want to contact you, that is huge! Include a Contact Us page with the necessary information so you provide a good user experience and start a healthy conversation.
   
• Search – Many content-oriented websites have tons of content and it can frazzle a visitor’s composure if they have to click excessively to reach the content they need. Include accurate search fields in your website design to help visitors quickly find what they’re looking for – don’t forget to test it, as common search terms that come back with 0 results can be frustrating. Make sure it works!
   
• Social – Be inviting with a comfortable “social place” for visitors to meet. Social media gains more traction with users every day – list the social media sites you’re active on so your visitors can more easily connect with you on their terms. Some of your visitors may be specific and prefer to communicate with you or your brand via a different site, so having these sites listed on your pages is a must.
   
• Reviews and Testimonials – Provide visitors with reviews and testimonials to help increase trust and your authority. Ask customers, clients, or “neighbors” (your peers) to provide reviews and testimonials of your organization, product, and services – it never hurts to ask and it’s great feedback that you can use to improve your organization.
   
• Blog – Allow your style and personality to shine with more personalized tips and insights on your blog to make your information, services, or products memorable. A blog also helps visitors open up to discussion, helps you find out what they need or want, and deepens their engagement by providing opportunities to say, “Great points! It’s great you’re discussing this, I have the perfect product for you!”

Study your website and consider the user experience from your visitor’s perspective. Do you (as a visitor) feel comfortable? Is there enough engaging content? Will you want to return? If not, then try any or all of the above tips to improve the design of your website to make it user friendly and maintain the interest of your visitors.

What tips would you add to our list? Let us know in the comments section below – we’d love to hear from you!

Posted by Vanessa, Editorial Manager on June 7, 2013 at 9:00 am | 4,379 views