Your website is your digital handshake. It is the face of your business and tells people what they can expect from your company. To ensure this first impression is the right one, you must avoid the negative aspects of a website that impact a user’s experience.
The negative aspects of a website are broken down into two categories: visual and behind the scenes.
Negative Visual Aspects of a Website
These are the aspects that affect the user experience of a website on a sensory level and involve sight and identity or connection.
Sight
Upon first glance, your website must look organized, clean, and structured. Do not have links that go to dead ends. Ensure it is easy to navigate, especially the ‘contact us’ or purchasing pages. You should also avoid too much text on each page. Entice users; don’t overwhelm them.
Identity
The goal of creating a positive website user experience is to quickly establish your brand identity and help a user relate to you.
Your website should clearly convey who you are, why you stand out, and what you value. Ask yourself why a user should choose your product or service over a competitor. If the answer is customer service, community giving, or industry expertise, highlight that.
Again, forcing a customer to search for information that’s hidden three pages down in a long menu contributes to a negative website user experience. Make your mission visible.
Negative Behind-the-Scenes Aspects of a Website
These aspects affect the user experience even though they have nothing to do with what the user sees on the screen. These aspects are often overlooked, which is a shame because they are essential. Behind-the-scenes elements include compatibility and paying attention to your hosting or domain.
Compatibility
In 2011, Pew Research Center determined that 35% of Americans owned a mobile phone. That number is now 95%. Your website must be smartphone friendly. Reliance on smartphones, instead of broadband to access the internet, is on the rise. If your site is not smartphone compatible, you are frustrating a substantial segment of your target market.
Hosting & Domain
Hosting time and domain names expire; that is a lesson far too many business owners learned the hard way–even Microsoft struggled with it. Imagine a potential client typing in your web address only to find the domain name has been taken over by a less-than-reputable business or bought up and put out of commission by a competitor. That is not the way to create a positive website user experience. Stay on top of your subscriptions!
Trust Outreach Digital Marketing to Design Your Website
Small business owners are often swayed by ads for free website templates online, but without knowing the proper amount of text on a page, how to structure menus, ways to optimize content with keywords, how to register domain names, and more, owners are hurting their website.
Trust Outreach Digital Marketing and our years of website development experience. We offer a free website audit and can create a website that gives your customers the user experience they want.