Understanding the importance of User Experience (UX) on your website

People often think a nice-looking website is enough to attract users and convince them to spend some time on it. The truth is, the visual appearance, while obviously important, is not as crucial as user experience.

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It encompasses the overall interaction that users have with a website, including its design, usability, accessibility, user interface and the emotions it evokes.

Understanding the importance of UX is essential for creating a website that effectively meets the needs and expectations of its users.

The benefits of a great user experience include:

• increased user satisfaction, which translates to longer visits to your website and future returns,
• better engagement and conversions, meaning your potential customers are more likely to explore many features you prepared for them and interact with your content, converting them into active customers and subscribers,
• increased credibility and trust, meaning users will perceive your brand as reliable and trustworthy,
• competitive advantage, meaning users will see your website as a more attractive one then the one belonging to your competitor,
• SEO benefits, which means a website’s user experience translates to better SEO score – good UX is more likely to rank higher in search engine results, leading to increased organic traffic and visibility among your target audience.

Essential elements of good User Experience (UX) design

To create a good user experience design (UX), it’s important to consider several essential elements, which will work together to ensure users can easily and effectively interact with your website or application. The main ones to consider include:

Navigation and information architecture

Navigation and information architecture determine how users navigate and interact with a website or application. An effective navigation and site architecture design ensure that users can find information easily, understand the structure of the site and accomplish their goals efficiently. Some main considerations here include clear, intuitive and consistent navigation across pages, logical information hierarchy, search functionality, clear headlines and familiar language for users.

Website speed and performance

Website speed and performance directly impact user satisfaction, engagement and overall experience. A slow loading website can lead to frustration, abandonment and a negative perception of your brand. Some things to consider when thinking about your website’s performance include minimising file sizes, optimising code and scripts and responsive design.

Responsive design and mobile optimisation

Responsive design and mobile optimisation are crucial aspects of UX design, particularly in today’s mobile-centric digital landscape. With the increasing use of smartphones and tablets, it’s essential to create a seamless and user-friendly experience across various devices and screen sizes.

Responsive design involves creating a website that automatically adapts and adjusts its layout, content and functionality based on the users’ screen size and device. It ensures that the website provides an optimal viewing and interaction experience, whether accessed on a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Mobile optimisation focuses on tailoring the user experience specifically for mobile devices. It goes beyond responsive design and considers the unique charactersists and limitations of mobile platforms.

Engaging and user-friendly content

Engaging and user-friendly content directly influences how users interact with your website or application. Well-crafted content helps users find information easily, understand your message, and stay engaged. Some key considerations for creating engaging and user-friendly content in UX design include clear and concise language used to convey your messages, scannable content, interesting visual elements, relevant organisation and storytelling.

Visual design and branding

Visual design and branding create a cohesive and memorable experience for website users. Visual design includes the use of colours, typography, imagery and other visual elements to convey information, evoke emotions, and establish a visual identity.

User journey and customer experiences

User journey and customer experiences focus on understanding and improving the interactions and experiences users have with a product or service throughout the entire process they go through in order to accomplish their goals.

Important steps to consider when creating user journey and customer experience include user research to gain insight into the target audiences’ needs, behaviour, motivation and pain points, mapping which involves visualising steps users take in order to accomplish their goal with a product, usually across channels over time, and seamless interactions with your web application.

Testing and feedback: how to improve UX continuously

Testing and feedback play a crucial role in continuously improving UX of a web product or service. By gathering insights from real users and incorporating customer feedback, UX designers can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.

Some effective strategies to continuously improve UX through testing and feedback include usability testing, A/B testing (which involves comparing two different versions of a design element or feature to determine which one performs better), prototyping , user interviews, analytics and user behaviour tracking, remote testing and collaborative design reviews.

Testing and feedback should always be treated as an iterative, ongoing process throughout the entire development lifecycle.

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Common UX/UI mistakes to avoid

Given the incredible importance of UX/UI design, it’s worth taking some time to get to know some common mistakes UX designers should be aware of to avoid them. All of them can have a negative impact on the user experience and hinder the effectiveness of UX design.

Some of the most common mistakes to take into consideration include:

• Poor or confusing navigation that frustrate users and make it difficult for them to find the information they are looking for. Things to avoid are overcrowded menus, ambiguous labels or hidden navigation elements.
• Lack of visual hierarchy, which may lead to users struggling to quickly scan the content of the page and prioritise information on it, meaning elements that should be prominent may get lost, leading to confusion. What we may do is to divide the text into clearly defined sections and work on our heading structure.
• Overwhelming or cluttered interfaces which may make it difficult for users to focus on key information. Remember to use white space effectively to give key elements on your website room to breathe. Another important tip is to differentiate elements that are clickable from the not-clickable ones and to give clickable elements enough space – a crucial feature for mobile users.
• Inconsistent or poorly designed forms, used for user interaction such as sign-up processes or contact forms. When the forms are well organised and labelled they are much more understandable and inviting for users, making it more probable they will fill them in.
• Lack of responsive design , crucial especially for mobile devices. When designing it’s worth taking into consideration different types of resolution and the landscape, as well as portrait orientation.
• Ignoring accessibility guidelines which can exclude users with disabilities from accessing and using your web product. Inclusive design is adjusted to all users, no matter their skills and condition.
• Poor readability and typography choices. It’s important to select the appropriate type and size of the font, to limit in a given section the amount and width of text to ensure readability.
• Neglecting performance and loading times which may lead to users feeling frustrated and therefore to higher bounce rates. Taking into consideration the performance is one of the key aspects when working on design.

Remember that regular testing, attention to usability, improving of the product based on the feedback and recommendations, and adherence to best practices are all essential in achieving a positive user interface.

UX audit: identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement

A great way to improve your product’s or website’s user experience, enhance user engagement and conversion rates, optimise processes as well as identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, as well as making the product up-to-date with the latest trends and customer expectations is a UX audit. It involves reviewing the design, usability and overall user experience to uncover areas that may be causing friction or hindering user satisfaction.

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A UX audit enables you to identify areas for improvement as well as prioritise and implement changes that enhance user experience, improve user satisfaction and drive better business outcomes.

If you are keen to start working on your website’s UX design straight away, or would like to speak to someone on how to do it, do get in touch with our team. For the last 23 years we have been advising our clients on how to improve their web products, helping them achieving their goals. We are happy to share our experience with you any time!

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Designing for everyone: why accessibility in design isn’t optional anymore?

Supporting all groups of users – regardless of any type of disabilities they may possess – is worth the investment, and not only because it can increase your potential customer base.

Ensuring that products and digital services are accessible throughout design helps make them useable and pleasant for as many users as possible. Not only does this approach encourage innovation, but it also shows a dedication to doing the right thing by society and operating ethically and focusing on specific needs of our customers.

Including Making accessibility a priority from the start of the design process can save money in the long run by avoiding expensive retrofits and upgrades, so it’s a good choice for businesses.

There’s much more to it, and this should be considered from three different aspects:

Legal issues

For example, in the US, all public services must comply with laws regarding accessibility, and a lawsuit may be expected if a public service is shown to discriminate against people based on their abilities.

Legal requirements have led to a growing awareness and adherence to accessibility standards among businesses and organisations. There have been several cases with service providers being put on the defence for violating accessibility laws.

Moral issues

Accessibility is an internationally protected human right – no one should be put at a disadvantage simply because they have a disability; this pertains to both public and private services.

Ensuring that web pages are designed with accessibility in mind is critical, as it enables people with disabilities to have equal access to information and services online.

Plus, on a basic human level, including people with disabilities in your business strategies is the right thing to do since we’re all human beings.

Accessibility guidelines as a marketing differentiator

Investing in accessibility improves your corporate image – it helps you build a positive reputation and positions companies as innovative and user-friendly.

Creating accessible products and services by applying universal design principles is a smart strategic decision that benefits all customers, not just those with impairments.

SEO-wise, it’s a win-win since search engines are giving preference to sites that cater to a broader range of users, including people with physical impairments.

Why accessibility is important and why should businesses care about it?

To illustrate the scale of the problem of accessible design (and how serious it has become), we need to realise that – according to the WHO – 1 billion people all over the world currently possess a form of disability.

This amounts to 15% of humanity, which is a significant percentage of the population and should motivate all of us to integrate disability inclusion within our corporate strategies and promote it within our internal and external environments.

Companies increasingly prioritise the accessible visual layout of digital platforms. The use of large, legible fonts, a well-balanced colour scheme, upload images with alt text, and a high contrast between text and backdrop all contribute to an improved user experience and increased usability for visually impaired users.

For people with cognitive disabilities, it means making sure everything is easy to understand and use.

Aside from being the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, this inclusive strategy is smart business since it attracts a broader range of customers and shows that the company cares about people from all walks of life, which is good for its reputation and bottom line.

Read more about UX and inclusive design:

• Human-Centered Design: how empathy and innovation shape IT products

• How to create an effective UX Design Roadmap?

• Mockup vs Prototype vs MVP — what’s the difference?

How to improve accessibility in products and services?

Improving accessibility these days is not that complicated – there are some pretty clear guidelines that you can follow, so you don’t have to grope around in the dark.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (approved as an international standard ISO/IEC 40500:2012) can provide you with a set of criteria to meet in order to make sure your service is friendly to all users.

There are several areas for designers to take under consideration:

• Keyboard navigation – your site and the functionality of your content should be accessible from a keyboard.

• Focus order – tabs should follow a common reading order, from left to right and top to bottom, like in a book.

• Use of colour (e.g. background colors) – an optimised contrast ratio should be used throughout your entire site or app. Plus, colours shouldn’t be the one and only method of conveying or differentiating information – they should be supported by texts or forms.

• Content alternatives and facilitation – this should be implemented for text, images and videos, including: screen readers, large print, and the use of symbols, etc. (without losing content structure or information).

• Content presentation – your content shouldn’t be presented in a way that is known to cause seizures; it should be understandable, easy to follow, and users should have enough time to read and use it.

• Audio accessibility – incorporate features like subtitles, provide transcripts, and sign language for audio and video content to make sure that users with hearing impairments can access the information.

• Responsive design – ensuring your website or application is fully functional across different devices and screen sizes is vital. This not only improves usability for all users but particularly benefits those with motor disabilities who might rely on specific devices.

This all adds up to the concept of accessible design – a methodology that assumes learning from human diversity, adapting to it, and fighting exclusion based on disabilities.

Benefits of designing for accessibility

The benefits of investing in accessibility and betting on inclusive design are quite tangible:

Larger groups of people using the service

Reducing the number of barriers that exclude people from using a service naturally expands its user group. This not only includes people with permanent disabilities but also users with temporary and situational disabilities.

And this is a significant change because, for example, according to the research conducted by Microsoft, “In the United States, 26,000 people a year suffer from loss of upper extremities.

But when we include people with temporary and situational impairments, the number is greater than 20M.” And when we consider this on a worldwide basis – the number should, of course, be multiplied.

Mitigating legal and reputational risks

Improving public opinion and avoiding legal trouble caused by noncompliance are two benefits of taking proactive steps to make things accessible. The company’s reputation and bottom line could take a hit if this area is ignored.

Alternatively, universal design helps the business comply with regulations while simultaneously improving its reputation as an inclusive and socially conscious organisation.

Implementing this method can strengthen customer loyalty and appeal to conscientious consumers, positioning the business favourably.

Boosting UX (usability) and engagement

Improvements in accessibility also entail many benefits that can be enjoyed by users without any known disabilities. Optimised code makes a site or an app work faster, and a simplified layout is more readable and intuitive for everyone.

Also, browser and mobile compatibility helps people navigate through your service or product, no matter what kind of browser or device they use.

Enhanced Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Less access barriers result in more time spent on your site – which, in turn, is considered an excellent sign for SEO by the Google algorithm.

Plus, graphics and videos within a site – with additional text descriptions for assistive technologies (like screen readers) – make it easier to search, so the site automatically ranks higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

Accessible design as innovation stimulus

Designers often face the challenge of implementing innovative solutions that benefit all users when re-evaluating existing sites for accessibility.

For instance, the focus indicators, which highlight interactive elements as a user navigates with a keyboard, can help those with motor or visual impairments and also improve the overall user experience.

This kind of innovation usually leads to cleaner and more intuitive interfaces that a broader audience appreciates.

By emphasising accessible design, companies can discover new ways to solve problems, making their products more user-friendly and innovative.

How to include accessibility in the product development cycle?

Improving accessibility is a multi-step process that ensures your service or product is accessible to everyone, enhancing its visibility and functionality.

For example, integrating advanced technologies like Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence can create more human-like interactions between users and your web/app platforms.

The future also holds promising developments like enhanced voice recognition systems, driverless cars, and sophisticated image-processing technologies.

At Future Processing, we are equipped to assist you at every stage of the accessibility design process. Our expertise extends from initial audits, accessible design, product design consulting to the implementation of cutting-edge software solutions that make your product more inclusive.

We offer comprehensive accessibility audits, among other software evaluations, to identify areas for improvement and provide tailored solutions.

By partnering with us, you gain access to our knowledge and resources to make your product not just compliant but also a leader in accessible and innovative design.

If you’re interested in learning how we can help your product meet and exceed accessibility standards while benefiting from the latest technological advancements, contact us for more information.