Website user experience mistakes to avoid
Your website’s user experience (UX) is critical for your website’s success. Shaping an amazing user experience needs to be incorporated into virtually every aspect of your website design. Good or great user experience has the power to boost virtually all elements of your website including your credibility, trustworthiness and reliability while increasing the overall perception of your brand. At the same time, bad user experience can have devastating effects on attracting or maintaining visitor’s attention and thus furthering your strategic goals.
If you’re wondering… What makes a good website user experience? How do I create a user experience for my website? What are some common website user experience mistakes?
Here are some of the common issues that can contribute to poor website user experience - non-responsive design, slow load times, complicated navigation, cluttered or confusing content. Let’s dive into it.
Non-responsive design
One of the biggest mistakes that you could be making for your business is to neglect responsive or mobile-friendly website design. I’m surprised to say it but I do still keep seeing this mistake being made over and over again, to varying degrees, but still… This is a major issue that needs to be addressed. Website design (or re design) that includes mobile optimization as one of the steps of the process is critical for your success as a business.
So what is responsive design?
Responsive website design ensures that your website adapts to different screen sizes while maintaining stunning visuals and functionality thus ensuring a good mobile user experience. When talking about responsive or mobile-friendly design there’s a distinction I’d like to make. There’s the aesthetic aspect of mobile-friendly website design - everything looks neat, on brand, professional and aesthetically pleasing. But there’s the second aspect - the functional part of mobile friendly website design.
The aesthetically pleasing bit needs no further explanation - your website should look amazing no matter which device is used to access it.
When talking about the functional part of mobile friendly website design I mean that mobile users have different needs & expectations that need to be met accordingly. This is an equally important aspect to consider when designing the mobile version of your website rather than just the aesthetics. Mobile users want a seamless, quick and easy experience that allows them to quickly find the information they’re looking for and easily take the action they want to take. In contrast to desktop users, mobile users have even less patience and attention span as they are likely scrolling your website on the go or in a busy environment with many distractions. Also, mobile device screens are significantly smaller and use different dimensions (vertical smartphone screen vs horizontal desktops). So the mobile version of your website and the mobile user experience needs to be designed with these factors in mind.
Why does responsive design matter?
There are several reasons why your website should be responsive or mobile-friendly. Overall, you want to do everything in your power to ensure that your website gives an amazing impression and experience to your users in any way possible, including mobile-friendly website design. Responsive design specifically is important because mobile device users make up most of the traffic and it’s also an SEO ranking.
Looking at the statistics, more than 50% of internet traffic (that’s right, the whole INTERNET) comes from mobile devices. We live in a mobile-first world where mobile users make up the majority of most website traffic.
Another reason why mobile-friendly website design is important is because it’s an SEO ranking factor. Yep, you heard that right, all your pages should be mobile-friendly or you’ll get punished by ranking lower in search results and making it much harder for visitors to find you. Google tracks this on an individual-page level and assigns a pass or fail scoring for each of your pages. In case of notable mobile usability issues Google will assign your page a failing status that will impact your SEO efforts.
I keep saying this and I’ll keep repeating it, it’s a non-negotiable, your website NEEDS to be responsive and optimized for mobile devices. It’s a major red flag if your website is not optimized for mobile devices as it has the potential to completely derail all your other marketing and sales efforts. Just think about it from your own perspective - if you land on a website that appears glitchy or not properly set up for your mobile device, it speaks very negatively about the business.
So please take away this - a mobile-friendly website is essential for businesses in order to reach your target audience and to make a lasting impression on them. By designing your website to be responsive to all devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) and strategically shaping a great mobile user experience you will increase your chances of converting users into paying clients.
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Slow load times
If your website takes a long time to load it can lead to a (very) poor user experience. We all have ever-decreasing attention spans and a very low patience. If a website takes even a little longer to load than you’d like it to then it will instantly impact your experience.
Why does this matter?
At its worst, slow loading times frustrate your visitors to the point that they leave the website before it even fully loads, which is too early for them to engage with your content or take the desired action. I was to highlight a few points why this matters a lot.
Firstly, annoying and frustrating your visitors is never a good idea. Too slow loading times can cause a high bounce rate and low engagement metrics which in turn has a negative impact on the website's reputation. To an extent, slow loading times also impact your SEO as it’s one of the many factors in the ranking algorithm. If your website speed is sub-optimal it may further harm your search engine ranking and the traffic you see on your site.
Second, slow loading times can also impact how well or how easily your website converts visitors into paying customers. If your website takes too long to load for your audience's patience then it will discourage or even prevent them from taking your desired action (buy, subscribe, sign-up etc).
Third, slow loading times reduce user engagement as they leave the site earlier and don’t spend as much time viewing and interacting with your website's content. Visitors are a lot more likely to engage with and spend time on a website that loads quickly and easily.
Lastly, poor loading times can hamper mobile users' experience more than for desktop users. If your website loading time is poor on a desktop where you usually have a more stable internet connection, then imagine what it looks like to someone who’s on a mobile device and may have a slightly worse internet connection? Slow load times can be particularly problematic to someone who’s on the go, has a slower internet connection and has even less attention or patience.
What causes it?
Slow load times can be caused by a number of factors. Most commonly, it’s due to too large file sizes (images or videos), too many images or videos (even if they’re optimized) or poor server performance.
When it comes to images and videos causing slow load times this is good news as this is very much within your control. This tends to be an issue for photographers and videographers specifically as their websites tend to quickly fill up with images and videos (no surprise). This, in turn, drives up the ‘weight’ of the website and can cause an issue for your website loading times. In order to avoid having any issues with that, you need to reduce the amount of images and video on your site & you need to properly optimize them for use on your website. Follow the industry-wide best practice rules for your image and video optimization.
Poor server performance is outside of your direct control once you have your website up and running. You should choose a reliable server that you host your website on.
Tip - test your website speed here, this can be a handy tool to identify any issues with your website speed for both mobile and desktop experiences. Use this tool to test the overall performance of your website and identify any areas that may need to be optimized. Bear in mind that this tool evaluates the overall performance of your site and there may be findings or factors that are outside of your control that may be related to or inherent to the website building platform you use.
Complicated navigation
Your navigation is important because it’s one of the main things that directly impact your user experience. Visitors should be able to find what they're looking for on your website quickly and easily. If your site's structure and therefore navigation is not set-up with the user experience in mind then your visitors are not going to have a good experience, get annoyed and leave without investing more time in finding out what you offer and if they want to purchase it.
So here are the things to avoid:
Confusing navigation - if the layout, structure or hierarchy of your website and thus your navigation doesn't make logical sense or lacks organization then visitors can’t find the information they’re looking for.
Complicated navigation - too cluttered, too granular or in any other way overcomplicated structure.
Ambiguous wording - navigation should be to the point and clear so don’t use too many words, lengthy descriptions and ambiguous or vague descriptions.
Hidden/hard to find navigation - your navigation should be SUPER obvious and easy to locate and use so make sure it’s not hidden, hard to notice, or located in a hard to find spot.
Broken links - broken links or landing on the wrong page quickly diminishes the trustworthiness of your website.
Inconsistent navigation - your navigation should be consistent across all pages in terms of location, structure and design.
Search functionality - in cases where your website contains a large amount of information and it’s inevitable to have a complex structure then offering search functionality would be beneficial for a better user experience. The most common example here would be blogs, consider introducing a search functionality, categories and tagging for better navigation.
Cluttered or confusing content
If your website is cluttered with too much content or images that can be distracting and overwhelming for your website visitors. At the same time, confusing or unclear content will also lead to a poor user experience.
Less really is more in website design and guiding your user experience. If your website is too cluttered with information or images then it creates a bad impression, it’s distracting and it makes it difficult for visitors to find what they're looking for, leading to a poor user experience.
At the same time, if your website copy is poorly written, confusing, or hard to understand then not even the most beautiful website design will be able to create a good user experience. Content and design go hand in hand and your website visitors will appreciate clear and concise information that guides them through the site towards the desired action.
Focus on creating a good user experience through a strategic layout and structure of your content and website copy and make sure you are selective with what information you place on your website - all contents should be carefully curated to further your strategic goals in terms of quantity and quality.
In conclusion, your website’s user experience has a major impact on the success of your website as a whole. Make sure that you strategically and purposefully shape a great user experience on your website as part of your website design. While the above list doesn't cover all aspects of shaping a user experience, I hope that this information is useful for understanding how you should be thinking about and shaping your website’s user experience.
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