5 ways to instantly improve the user experience of your website
We’ve got a list as long as our arm as to how you can optimise the user experience of your website and improve the way visitors interact with your site, but for the sake of time, we’ve picked out 5 themes that we see time and time again – and that will make the biggest difference.
Reduce line length
It’s said that the optimum line length is 50-60 characters per line (or roughly 15 words) and making sure you follow this rule will help people who view your website. If your line length is too long, reader’s struggle to follow the line and focus on the text. It also makes it tricky to continue onto the next line because your eyes have moved so far across the screen. On the other hand, if a line length is too narrow, the reader's eyes will have to move back and forth too frequently, creating a disrupting reading experience. Narrow line lengths can also lead readers to skip lines.
Make buttons easy to find
Imagine this scenario, you have a visitor on your website who wants to get in touch with you or make a purchase, but they can’t find a button that enables them to do so. They scroll back and forth, but still nothing… So they close the web page. A modern day horror story! Making sure there are buttons littered throughout your site might feel as though you’ve overcooked the experience, but it’s more important that the user can find this button as soon as they need one. And most people that are just having a scroll won’t notice them until they need them anyway!
Compress your images
We get it, updating your site isn’t a quick process, we know. But we also don’t want people to bounce from your site and miss all your hard work because your site is taking ages to load. Large image sizes (1MB+) can significantly slow down your site (particularly for users browsing via data) but compressing them is simple and easy and can prevent this issue. We recommend this site for JPGs and this one for PNGs. You’re welcome!
Check your site passes accessibility
We use this site – it’s super easy to insert your brand hex codes to check accessibility and alter the hues to find something that works.
Optimise for mobile
And last but not least, check if your website is mobile friendly. Sounds obvious, right? But most website builders are desktop friendly, meaning it’s very easy to get caught up in the larger visuals, and neglect those smaller screen sizes. You don’t just want a site that ‘works’ on mobile, you want one that responds regardless of the screen size. Get in touch and we can help you!
Give these changes a go and see how users benefit from a better site experience. If you’ve got questions (or would like assistance implementing site updates) please don’t hesitate to get in touch lucie@launch-studio.co.uk!
