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User Experience (UX) is one of the capstones of good website design; in short, it’s what provides user satisfaction with your site, making people glad they checked you out on the Web—and more likely to do so again. UX entails a number of facets, but what it boils down to is providing maximum usability, efficiency, and accessibility to visitors who seek certain information.

This isn’t anything to relegate to second-tier status: Good UX is closely linked with conversion rates, and it can also help you improve SEO rankings. How can you proactively boost your website’s UX value, though? Here are five strategies our team recommends.

How to Improve Your Website UX

Start with a Strong Homepage

Most of your website visitors will come in through the home page, and as such, it should set the tone. Your home page should encapsulate the main messages of your website, though not all of them: Basically, you want to give visitors a reason to stick around without making the home page too busy or cluttered.

Some specific tips:

• Keep your home page relatively succinct, focused on truly essential information
• Make it clear how users can find additional information—i.e. how to navigate to other pages of the site
• Focus on the benefits you offer your customers and clients—what’s in it for them?
• Put the most important information above the fold—i.e. placed high enough that it can be seen without scrolling.

Make Sure Your Site Loads Quickly

Your website loading speed is a key Google ranking factor, and it also impacts user satisfaction. Even a delay of two or three seconds can significantly increase the risk of users fleeing your website.

Run some speed tests, ideally on different devices and with different browsers. If your site is slow to load, consider ways to speed things along—specifically by removing slow-loading content such as graphics, complex scripts, videos, etc.

Focus on Readability

It’s vitally important that your website visitors be able to find the information they seek—quickly and without any hassle. This means it should be quite easy for someone to skim through your site and zero in on the content they’re looking for.

Some strategies:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
• Allow plenty of white space on your site.
• Use bullet points, numbered lists, and section sub-headings wherever possible.
• Avoid long, unbroken blocks of text.

Fix Broken Links

There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking a link and being taken to a 404 page. One of the healthiest habits you can form, from a UX perspective, is simply staying on top of broken links.

Audit your site on a regular basis, and make sure the links are all working as intended—and that includes both internal and external links. And if you spot any busted ones, repair or redirect the URL.

Provide Clear Calls to Action

The call to action is generally regarded as a conversion tool—and it is. Believe it or not, though, it can also help enhance the user experience. Remember that one of the keys to good UX is providing a clear path through your website—and a clear call to action helps show your visitors how best to proceed, and what steps they should take after digesting your information.

Does Your Site Offer Strong UX?

If you’re worried your website doesn’t offer an appealing user experience, we invite you to have your site audited—and potentially revamped. Driven2020 offers expertise here: We design websites that drive traffic, offer the user a hassle-free experience, and help generate strong rankings and consistent conversions for your business. Don’t delay. Contact Driven2020 today and request a website audit!