6 UX Best Practices

How is the UX [user experience] of your website? The UX directly contributes to how people engage with your brand. If there is no value in the experience that they receive, then people will abandon all thought of becoming a prospect or customers. That is why following these UX best practices is so important. Without engagement, you have nothing.

1. Be Double-Minded.

A web site has gone beyond being a cool thing to see. Each domain has become a community. Even when there aren’t forums or discussion boards involved, people who use a specific domain on a regular basis will directly identify with it. This is why being double-minded in your approach to your UX is necessary. You must be able to show that belonging to your community has value and that it is easy to obtain that value with every visit.

2. Create a Path That Makes Sense with Visitor Behavior.

Let’s say that you’re driving from Seattle to Los Angeles. There are many routes you can take to get there and each has certain advantages. If you drive out to the coast and then go south, you can make it to LA and have ocean views almost all the time. You can drive inland and see the volcanoes of the Cascades. If you take the freeway, you’ll get there faster. In the end, everyone gets to the same result.

A majority of your website visitors are going to follow one route. Accommodate this route with your UX, but funnel the other route takers toward it as well so that everyone has a consistent experience. If no one arrives at the destination because your UX only focuses on certain dynamics, then everyone loses.

3. Consistency Throughout is 100% Necessary.

There are many different ways that a visitor may come to your site. They might come through CPC advertising, organic search results, or they might just type the domain address into their browser. Each method may result in a different landing page. If your UX is consistent on every page that is offered in both visual design and navigation, then you can actually drive people away.

Consistency through the sales process is also important. If there are changes to your visual appearance or your branding, then the change in UX will create confusion. What does confusion create? A high bounce rate.

4. Make it All About the Visitor.

A website should always be about the visitor. It should never be solely about the business. Unfortunately the UX that many visitors have today involves these three general components.

• There is a section of the website dedicated to all of the awards a business has won.
• The financial section of the website talks about all the profits that are being made.
• The language of the website is filled with industry jargon that only B2B visitors would be able to understand.

When a UX seems more like an ego trip than a place where prospects can research goods and services and make real decisions about value, then the clicks aren’t ever going to come. There might be thousands of clicks happening every day with those three common errors in place, but that doesn’t mean a domain is maximizing traffic. Maybe tens of thousands of clicks could happen with a better user experience.

5. Navigation Matters.

A website is a lot like a skyscraper. There are several entrance points where someone might enter the building. Each entrance is generally chosen based on that visitor’s personal preference. Without navigation, it would be impossible for someone to find which floor they needed to be on to accomplish their errands for the day. The same is true for your website.

People can land on many different pages thanks to how your site has been indexed. Your UX will bring all visitors to their specified location by making it easy to get around to each location. Tags are an easy way to improve navigation, breadcrumbs are useful, but your descriptions must be meaningful.

6. Go Social.

Linking your domain to a social location on today’s popular networks could be the final component of UX that you’re missing. Something as simple as a Facebook page can create an off-site place where community can be fostered. This gives you a secondary benefit as well: when people see their friends interacting with your brand, it makes them want to interact with it as well.

These UX best practices are simple to implement and in return, the ongoing results can give visitors a more meaningful experience. Implement them today and you may just see an incredible return for your effort.