In the technological world we live in, the pillar of marketing consists of two forms of design known as “UI” and “UX.” Oftentimes, they’re lumped together and illustrate how poor or how well a website is designed and how a user experiences the product. UI stands for User Interface, which is best defined as the overall look and feel, the presentation and interactivity of a product. On the other hand, UX stands for User Experience or the usability and ease of use towards its end users. In this episode of the Life Improvement Media blog, we will be discussing today’s most important and essential website components.
When you visit a new website for the first time, you will notice immediately how well the UI and UX were designed. More often than not, it’s a fast pass or fail—fast as in under a minute. This is not unusual because people are quick to judge. You can gauge how well your designs are working based on your bounce rate. A bounce rate is how soon after landing on your page, your visitors leave. We’ll get into the underlying metrics in future blogs this month.
User Interface Design—Top Website Components
We’re covering the top components that a successful website needs. Based on your business or brand, you might not need every single one. However, comb through the below options to see which will best compliment your business’ website and products.
For those of us who are in sales and marketing, having a call-to-action (CTA) is critical. You have to give visitors a reason to take action to either learn or buy. During the design phase, ensure the CTA or button to sign up for your service is visible. A nice trick to use is the trick of space. Putting lots of space around the sign-up button will bring visitors’ eyes to the action. Thinking of the button as a real start button will tell customers what they can expect. For example, “go” or “join” is not as powerful as “Enroll Today” or “Skyrocket Your Business.”
Giving your visitors and regular users a way to search or navigate your site is helpful. Some websites have search bars at the top. This option is very useful when searching for specifics such as keywords, terms, and verbiage written in blogs. Websites heavy with written content—blogs, articles, a research database and so on—would benefit greatly from a search bar. On the other hand, a site map or informational footer is the route to go when using a website with many sections and pages. You’ll notice the difference between a standard footer and an informational footer simply by the size. Here are two differences:
- Informational footer: Helium Radio
- Basic Footer: Justin J. Ulrich
User Experience Design—Top Website Components
Navigation is key when it comes to UX. The denser the content on your website, the beefier your menus and navigation could become. No matter how many public pages your website boasts, the menus should remain simplistic. A drop-down menu (or several) can organize everything into a manageable list for the end user. Depending on how your website is designed, it may make more sense to have a primary menu and a secondary menu. One of our clients has a perfect example of a double menu: FotoBox Live. You can see the primary menu has a transparent black background, while the secondary menu has a red background above it. These examples will give you some ideas to start or adjust your existing website.
In what ways can visitors contact you? Be sure to include all the necessary modes of contact for your website. Many businesses go overboard when they try to win over visitors. Keep it simple. It would be a smart idea to include multiple “Contact Us” modules across your web page. We feel that you should have a separate “Contact Us” page and a handful of “Contact Us” boxes scattered on other pages. A great example of this principle can also be found on the FotoBox Live site. We suggested placing CTAs and prompting users to request a quote for their photo booths from whatever page they moved to. This way, users didn’t have to find the one and the only button to take action. We duplicated it onto every major informational page.
Checklist And Recap
- UI: Call-to-action (CTA)
- UI: Search bar / Informational footer
- UX: Navigation
- UX: Contact
How many of these major components do you have? Follow-up question: could any of them be simplified or improved to better convert visitors into customers? Your CTA could be modified to garner more attention or duplicated to other informational pages regarding your product or service. It’s not always a matter of “what can I change?” Most times the question you should be asking is “What can I add or enhance?” Another question to concern yourself with is “How can I be different than the rest?”
Be sure to enter to win our free website giveaway if you haven’t already! Our contest runs from now until January 31st, 2018 at 6 pm! Enter here to win an exceptional website from our team: https://limginc.lpages.co/new-year-new-brand/
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