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WEBENIZER https://hackernoon.com/u/webenizer What is user experience?
In web design, the user experience refers to how people interact with your website and how your website affects a user's interaction. Many different factors can affect a user's experience, including the visual design, usability, and information architecture.

Many people may confuse user interface with user experience. User interface only encompasses the design of a page, or what the user sees, such as buttons, text, images, navigation, etc. In essence, user interface is the look and feel of your site.

User experience encompasses a much wider range of elements than the user experience. The user interface does play a significant role in the user experience, but it's not the be all and end all. User experience must also consider how users feel and how easy it is to achieve their goals.

User experience has become an important aspect of web design. There are many different elements you can implement into a website to try and create a positive user experience. User experience has become important in web design to fulfil the users' needs and build loyalty.

Why is user experience important?
User experience is a vital component in today's web design. If your website fails to create a positive user experience, you'll struggle to connect with your customers. There are many reasons why user experience is so important in web design:


It helps to fulfil the users' needs and achieve their goals. This can help keep customers loyal to your brand.

You can better understand the customer journey and the steps a customer takes on your website before converting. An improved user flow also helps user achieve their goals quicker.

By better understanding the customer journey, you can make necessary changes that will help increase conversions on your site.

A positive user experience can benefit your SEO and search engine rankings.

Builds trust and credibility with your customers, both before and after purchase.

It can save your business time and money by minimising the cost of bugs and other development issues, alongside preventing usability issues further down the line.

Higher return on investment.

Positive word-of-mouth.

How do you create a positive user experience?
There are many elements you can implement to create a positive user experience. If you want to experience the benefits outlined above, consider these tips to help boost the user experience. Your customers will thank you for it!

1. Understand WEBENIZER your customers
The first and most important point is the plan and research. Otherwise, how will you know whether anything works? The same goes for creating a web design that optimises user experience. You need to conduct user research first to know what will work with your customers.

To understand your customers better and what works for them, you should develop buyer personas. These are semi-fictional representations of your customers based on data and insights. Understanding your customers will provide with details such as:


What do you customers/users like?

What are their needs/goals?

What challenges are they facing?

How do they like to receive their information?

By better understanding your customers, you're providing a strong basis for a positive user experience that is focused on your users. Use HubSpot's free Make My Persona tool to help you get started.

2. Use whitespace
Whitespace is one of those grey areas of web design. There is no doubt that use of whitespace in web design is good. But the problem is how much whitespace becomes too much? This is a problem many will struggle with, finding the balance between the amount of content and whitespace.

Whitespace is denoted by the areas of a web design that are left blank, displaying only the background. Whitespace can be the distance between written content, visual images or borders. Effective use of whitespace can help create a positive user experience by decluttering a page.

Too much whitespace, however, and a page can look unimpressive and empty. You should try experimenting to figure out how much whitespace to use. Also, try only incorporating elements into a web design that are essential and do not 'distract' a user.

3. Clarity and simplicity
If users have to spend a long time looking for something or have a hard time navigating your website, you are not making it easy. In most cases, users will bounce off your site if they struggle to easily interact and navigate. That's no good for creating a positive user experience.

Developing a clear, consistent, and simple (or minimalistic) design can help contribute towards an easier (and more positive) user experience.

4. Content hierarchy
Another element to consider in your web design is content hierarchy. A hierarchy is one of the best possible ways to help navigate users through your site. The same goes for your content.

How you organise the content of your site can make a big difference. Not only do you need emphasise more important, but you also need to consider the structure and arrangement of information on a page.

5. Mobile-friendly
Nowadays, more than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. So, if your website is not mobile-friendly, you're making things very difficult for a lot of your potential customers. That's because content can be hard to read and interaction may not be so easy if a web design is not mobile friendly.

A mobile friendly web design will be optimised to display on various screen sizes, including much smaller mobile screen sizes. A mobile friendly website will allow users to read and interact with a website without any readability or navigation issues.

Consider a responsive web design for both a mobile-friendly website and a positive user experience. A responsive web design automatically adjusts the layout of a page according to screen size. On mobile devices, elements are either resized or repositioned for a better user experience.

6. Minimise page speed
Page speed is a significant factor in creating a strong first impression. In fact, the longer it takes for your site to load, the higher your bounce rate will be. If your site is slow loading, users will look to your competitors instead.

Not only is page speed a ranking factor for SEO, but it is also a strong factor in creating a positive user experience. Ideally, your page should load in 3 seconds or less. To keep your page speed low, minify CSS and JavaScript, compress images, and limit resource heavy processes such as animations.

7. Use compelling call to actions
Call-to-actions are the pinnacle of a customer's journey by using buttons or links to encourage a user to take the next step towards conversion. To create a positive user experience, you need to be using call-to-actions.

As well as using call-to-actions, you also need to ensure they are compelling enough to encourage a user to click through. These need to stand out and be accessible. But you also need to be careful how many call-to-actions you have. Otherwise, it can confuse a user by providing too many options.

The language you use and the colour can make a big difference in whether a user acts on your call-to-actions. Using bright colours alongside active and time-based language is more likely to encourage a conversion.

8. Functionality
Functionality is a top factor for improving the usability of your website and providing a positive user experience. A functional web design makes sure that everything is working as it should.

That means images all load, links all work correctly, loading times are kept to a minimum, and the site doesn't crash. A website that does not function correctly only creates obstacles for your users.

9. Search
Everybody has been in the situation where you are looking for something, but can't find it. The same is true for websites. A search function has now become commonplace on websites to allow users to easily find what they are looking for.

Whether it be content or a product, search allow users to find something quickly and easily on a website based on the keywords they entered into the search bar. If you want to create a positive user experience on your site, you should implement a search function.

10. Layout
How your web design is laid out can make all the difference in how users interact with your page. It's no surprise then that the layout of a web design can influence user experience. Different layouts have been developed based on eye tracking research by tracking people's eye movements.

When it comes to content in web design, there are different layouts that can work effectively for creating a positive user experience. Firstly, the F-pattern layout indicates people eye movement follow an F shape pattern when looking a page. This layout is ideal for text-heavy pages.

For more visual pages, the Z-pattern is much more applicable. As with the F-pattern layout, WEBENIZER pages with visual content will move in a Z-pattern to naturally look and scan a page. Consider implementing these layouts for a positive user experience.




11. Testing
Our final web design essential for a positive user experience is testing. A/B testing is a method of control testing that allows you to test two (or more) variables in a design, to see which works best with users. This method of testing is based conversion goals, such as click-through or form submissions.

A/B testing is a user experience research methodology that tests two or more variants against one another to determine which performs best. During the test, users are shown a variant at random. Then, through statistical analysis, the best performing variant is determined based on a given goal.

A positive user experience has become an essential part of any web design. Not only does it provide many benefits to your customers, it can also help benefit your SEO too. Taking the time to address the points above could prove to be fruitful for developing customer loyalty and trust.