Have you heard the term “user-friendly” website and wondered what it meant and why it mattered? User experience (or UX) is the art of making a website straight forward and easy to use. Your clients or customers will be the ones using your website, so you must design your website for them. Making your site simple and user-friendly will ensure that your clients will stay on your site longer and hopefully purchase your product or opt-in to your email list.
In this blog post I will highlight five ways you can make your website user-friendly and get you on track to more website conversions and more revenue!
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Peek User Testing
A quick and free way to receive some honest feedback on your website is to submit your site to Peek for a review. You share your URL and email address and within 24-hours, you will receive a video of a real person reviewing your website. I recently had this website reviewed reviewed by Peek and while the tester didn’t have many issues, he did have some good suggestions. You can get the feel of a review by watching my Peek video . (Note: Normally the videos are only about 5 minutes long, but my reviewer took his time!)
When watching your Peek video, remember that the reviewer has never visited your website, so if they find it confusing or difficult to navigate, others might too. Even if the reviewer is not your idea client, their feedback is still valuable. They will look at your website from an entirely new viewpoint and suggest new ways to better your website.
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Google Analytics
If you don’t have Google Analytics (GA) setup on your website, please do so now! Google has instructions here. This free service is an industry standard and you can learn so much about your visitors and website by reviewing your analytics. When signed into GA, click the “Behaviors” tab on the left navigation and then “Behavior Flow”. Google visually shows you how visitors are navigating your website. If it looks like a high number are taking unnecessary steps or exiting your website at checkout, for example, making some changes for better user experience might end up getting you more sales or clients.
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Survey
Put together a simple survey about your website and ask for volunteers in different business oriented Facebook groups to complete it. If you don’t network in Facebook groups, I highly recommend it. If you are just starting out, connect with other biz ladies in the Being Boss and Savvy Business Owners groups.
When building your survey, keep it simple and ask volunteers to go through a process like selecting an item and putting in the shopping cart or reviewing your sales page and selecting a service. You can ask them if it was easy to complete the task and what issues they encountered. You can also ask questions similar to what the Peek reviewers answer. All of this feedback will help you to determine if your website is easy to use and user-friendly.
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INTERVIEW A Friend
If you are just starting out or making adjustments to your website, ask a friend who is not overly familiar with your website to review it. If you connect via Google hangout, your friend can share their screen and you can watch her navigate your website. This method is really useful because you can actually watch your friend navigate the site and understand why they might have gotten confused or left the site.
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Work with me
If you want to make sure your website is user-friendly, but are still feeling overwhelmed or unsure of where to start, we can work together to create a plan of action to get your website working for you. Schedule a strategy session today or email me to build a custom package. If you aren’t ready to take the leap yet, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter filled with inspiration and tips to help create a strong web presence.