In a previous blog we talked about why user experience is important. While there are many variables at work in how a person interacts with a website, everyone agrees that user satisfaction, also known as UX, has a huge impact on whether customers stay on or return to a website and eventually buy anything. Good web design is crucial to attracting and keeping a customer base. At Corporate Conversions we approach web design keeping both our clients and their customers in mind. Both have to be satisfied for our work to be a success. How do we do this?
Design for UX
First, a quick refresher on user experience (UX): A good website is designed to present the right information and guide customers to what they want to see and need to know about that company’s products or services. When we work with our clients we determine the answers to these questions together:
- How simple is it for your customers to get what they want from your website?
- Are there are parts of your website that customers rarely visit or even avoid?
- Is the site’s navigation structure intuitive? Is it simple to search?
- How fast can your customers find ways to contact your company?
- How hard is it to go through the contact process?
- Are your maps or other interactive features accurate, updated, and easy to use?
- Is it clear what your site’s labels and icons mean?
It’s our job to discover what’s working, what is not working, and how to fix it. Web design is not merely about how a site looks, but how it operates. This incorporates elements that customers see like the graphics and other visual elements and the page and blog content, but also back-end elements like search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords. We also make sure that the website will display correctly no matter what device people access it from.
Once we determine what is working, we restructure the website so that it’s intuitive and is subdivided into the elements that users will be searching for. We make the design straightforward, and we work with our clients to add content that will help answer users’ questions so they are not confused about products, services, or prices.
Testing for UX
After we have worked through the design process with our clients, we create or redesign the website to reflect it. When this is done, then we begin the testing process. Some of this process is invisible to our clients. We will make sure that on the back end of the site everything works well and operates error free. Some websites are straightforward. Others are complex with specialized features or plugins the client requests. When we’ve done our part, we turn the website over to the client, and they determine whether it looks and operates the way it should. Depending on the complexity of the site, this could be simple or it could involve live testing and a period of customer feedback.
Customer feedback is user experience. Our web design attempts to predict it, but it’s impossible to predict everything. This is why many of our clients continue to work with us after the design stage is over and the website has gone live – because Corporate Conversions also continues to monitor how the site performs and how users are interacting with it. This is done by monitoring user patterns with Google Analytics and tracking conversions and sales.
It often turns out that, over time, our clients discover new ways to engage their customer base or want to make changes or additions to their site to capture more traffic or improve user experience. That’s what we are here for. We want to make our web design collaborative and satisfy everyone who uses the site.
If you have any questions about your website or its design, contact us today. We would love to talk to you about improving your customers’ user experience.
