A strong online presence is critical for the success of any business, in any industry. This is especially true for new small business owners trying to make their mark online. However, simply having a website and a few social media accounts for a business will not cut it in today’s digital age.
You need to not only capture your target audience, but also keep interest with powerful user experience (UX) design and navigation.
Sadly, so many new small business owners miss the mark when it comes to UX. Everything—from a user-friendly payment processing platform like Paylidify, to user-friendly product galleries—play a role in shaping each user visit. They fail to see the importance of user experience and engagement when a potential customer lands on their website. Yes, knowing how to build a website is important. But implementing key UX aspects into that website is important as well.
“With a clear focus on the user, UX design seeks to unlock the inner workings of an audience’s needs and how they expect a website to function, look and feel,” Goran Paunovic explained in a recent Forbes article. To help, we compiled a list of UX tips for your new small business website design. Let’s dive in!
1. Make page speed a top priority
There are a variety of UX tips to employ, but top design agencies in this Medium article agree that none is as important as page speed. Page speed is the time it takes for the pages on your website to load when a potential customer tries to access your site. If a page does not load within three seconds or less, you may be losing customers to competitors with lightning-fast page speed.
How do you know if page speed is an issue? You can check via Google PageSpeed Insights, or Pingdom. Identify all pages that are slow, and then fix them. You can look at optimizing images, cleaning up code, using video plugins instead of embedding video files, and getting rid of any WordPress plugins you don’t need.
2. Have lots of white space on your website pages
The more white space, or open space you have on your website’s pages, the better. What is white space? This is the open areas around the main content of your web pages, and the border space on your pages as well. A good white space example is MailChimp’s home page. Why is this so important? The use of white space can increase your customer’s attention on-page by more than 20 percent, according to a Crazy Egg blog on the topic. If you need help getting inspired, there are some resources to find some new ideas.
3. Use lists to showcase high-level important points
Lists that employ bullet points or clever icons can make a big difference when it comes to your website’s user experience. Why? It gives your potential customers a very clear, concise, and a quick overview of your value proposition. You can use lists to showcase ways your small business can solve their problems, your key solutions, benefits, and the features and/or services your small business provides. Use lists as much as you can, but don’t overdo it.
4. Place enticing call to actions throughout each website page
Having a call to action at the beginning of your home page is certainly important. It is usually a clever bolded message, call to action phrase, and button. Small business owners new to building a website accomplish this without a problem. But they fail at having more call to actions throughout their website pages.
The more call to actions the better, and it is a great way to get internal linking achieved as well. If you have content about a product or service vertical, have a call to action to order the product or a button that takes the user to the specific service page to learn more. This is part of your sales funnel and it remains critical to the success of your small business online.
5. Make your website as visual as possible
Consumers are more visual than ever before. Chances are, most potential customers that land on your website will not be reading all that much text. They would rather be enticed by an image or watch a video explaining just what your small business does, and how it helps them solving a problem. You can use freelancer sites like Fiverr to find video developers for a very affordable price. Get visual and make your UX as powerful as possible. Some galleries, like webdesign-inspiration.com, feature the best website designs from famous agencies and creative designers.
In conclusion . . .
The five UX tips above are only the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more to consider and employ for your new small business website. The above, however, among the most important to get started on right away. It could very well make the difference in increasing your conversion rate. Are you a small business owner with user experience tips? Share it with us today.
