If you run a website, then your primary aim should be to make the website as easy to use as possible. The user experience of a modern website is one of the primary driving factors in your number of sales. If your website is slow, stodgy, and hard to navigate, people will leave. They will go to visit your competitors instead. If your website is very slick, smooth, mobile-friendly, and responsive, though, you can really benefit from more sales.
How, though, does the user experience impact your performance as a business moving forward?
Rapid loading times are essential
Today, you have a few short seconds for someone to be able to click through to your website. If they have to wait more than a few seconds, they will likely click back and go to the next page on the search engine list. People are impatient, and if your website is not loading fast enough you are losing lots of potential business.
Make sure that you focus on getting your website loading quickly. Removing back-end bloat, compressing image content and similar can go a long way to making sure load times are consistent.
Painless scrolling and navigation
Users want to be able to highlight parts of your website and scroll, both on desktop and mobile, without distractions. This means that annoying pop-ups, dropdown menus, and other issues that could block their screen visibility should be brought to an absolute minimum.
While some parts of your website will work well by breaking them down into menus, scrolling and navigation matters. Make sure that users can easily navigate your website without having to fight through ads, pop-ups, and other screens that distract. Too many of these obstacles will see users clicking back instead of hanging around.
Easy to manage purchases and checkouts
From having a quick checkout that allows for purchases on guest accounts to having a checkout accessed in a few clicks, purchase options really matter. Users want to make sure that they can find what they want, put it in their shopping cart, and then make the payment.
Ensuring that your website is both SSL-secured and offers various purchase options is very important. This should mean having access to checkout without having to go through extensive screens simply to pay. The easier you make it to pay, the more likely someone is to complete their transaction.
Diverse purchase options
You should do everything you can to offer diversity in the purchase options. This includes both how people can pay and what they can pay with. It should also include diverse options for delivery, collection, etc. where possible.
You need to give people as many options as possible. At the very least you should be able to take credit card, debit card, and online transaction options like PayPal. If you can, though, offer options for monthly payment through platforms like Klarna. Offering diversity in payment options and checkout options, pain-free website navigation, and rapid loading times is essential.
If you want to deliver a positive user experience, then it is essential that you focus on the above. These are the hallmarks of a website worth visiting and buying from. Does your website meet those standards?