Ever found a site so difficult to interact with that you just left?

If you haven’t given thought to how your customers use your site, they could do the same thing.

Your site is how your customers learn that your business can solve their problems, so you need to make sure they have a good experience.

Here’s your checklist for ensuring your customers don’t drift away.

Navigation

How you set up your website should be based on how your users will interact with it. Can customers find the information they need? Are they able to discover other services/products you offer? Have you provided simple ways to order from or contact you?

Your primary menu options should at least address who you are, what you offer, and how to contact your business. You might even add a FAQ page if you are asked certain questions repeatedly.

Review each page as you would if you were your ideal customer – then get someone else to review it. Make sure users can connect to relevant info or resources on your site. If they can’t find what they need, they’ll go somewhere else. Your site is your chance to grab attention – help users find what they need.

Broken Links

Clicking on an inviting link and receiving a “Whoops! Page not found” note is a letdown. You were hoping to find an answer and hit a wall.

If you have broken links on your site, you’ll also frustrate your users. They’ll doubt you have the solutions they’re searching for and might not stick around to engage you further.

Don’t be overwhelmed thinking you have go through every page and every link. There are broken link checker plugins that you can download in the back end of your site that will do the searching for you. The plugin will let you know what’s broken and where, so you can update the link or remove it altogether.

Don’t want to download another plugin? Try out Broken Link Checker or Dead Link Checker. Both sites allow you to enter the URL of the page you want to audit and they’ll scan it for any busted links.

Set a reminder to try this out every quarter to spot check your site. The longer you let broken links go, the worse response you’ll get from users and even search engines. For example, your page rank on Google will drop if their bot determines that you have a ton of broken links.

Page Layout

Like navigation, page layout needs to consider how a user can easily interact with your site.

Are your pages cramped with text? Do you have enough whitespace on each page? You might think that you need to use all available space to reach your customer, but that’s not the route you should take. Don’t be afraid of whitespace, which is essentially just the blank space between text and images on your web page. It makes your page easier to read and lets the user focus on the most important parts.

Is there a clear call to action? While users are scanning your site, you need to be clear about what you want them to do. Tell them to place their order or schedule a service. Make it easy to do business with you by including buttons and forms that let them get the ball rolling.

Just make sure to avoid adding unnecessary content or multiple calls to action. You want to keep customers focused as they review your page. We already know your customers are in a hurry and want answers quickly, so your pages need to be easily readable. Keep your most important information at the top and use lists when you can to breakdown important information.

Page Speed

You’ve found the right site… but the page won’t load. How likely are you to return to that site again?

There are a ton of sites available to your customers and they have limited attention spans. If they can’t easily view yours, they might just reach out to your competition.

Cut down on the lag time for pages to load to reduce your chance of losing them. They want to interact with you now, so your site needs to be ready to meet their expectations.

Not sure how to gauge your page speed? Google has a tool for that. You can find it here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/?hl=en.

Spending time on user experience will make sure you’re getting the best responses to your website. Need help checking your page speed or with more website development? Contact us to see how we can improve your users’ experience.