Differentiating from other websites in the same industry is always a challenge. However, industry leaders and CEOs continue to mimic what was done before and steer clear of innovation, creativity, and disruptive web design decisions – why?
According to Small Biz Genius, only 55% of enterprise leaders conduct UX testing, to begin with, however, 75% of users judge websites on aesthetics alone. 44% of users will go as far as to spread negative word of mouth about websites with poor user experience (UX) to help avoid them.
In the age of instant information access and higher-than-ever customer expectations, great UX does matter for website content design. Let’s talk about how enterprise leaders and decision-makers can improve the UX of their websites to increase engagement and convert more leads going into 2022.
Why Enterprise Leaders Should Improve their Website’s UX?
Why place such a high emphasis on UX instead of crafting better content or investing more into paid ads? While users may come to your website via paid-per-click (PPC) or YouTube ads, they might not stick around for long.
Good UX is what will retain customers and clients for your brand more than any other form of marketing. Judging by Tech Jury, 80% of internet users visit websites via smartphones, with 53% leaving a website after 3 seconds due to poor UX design.
Is your website mobile-friendly? How fast does it load? How effective are your calls to action and subscription incentives? There is a lot more to UX design than meets the eye at first glance. Here are several great reasons to focus on website UX improvement moving forward:
- Positively affect how people experience the content on your website
- Raise your website’s search engine results page (SERP) ranking on search engines
- Increase the mileage of your content pieces, including blog posts and product descriptions
- Use UGC Creators to Expand Your Brand Storytelling
- Create a cohesive, uniform browsing experience throughout your website
Improve the UX for your Website Content for the Better
Settle on your Target Audience and Cater to their Expectations
The foremost element of good UX design is knowing who your target audience is. This goes for everything from blog websites, industry news publications, as well as eCommerce and SaaS businesses. Your website’s navigation, written content, and calls to action need to speak to specific audience profiles.
A good example of a properly-designed, successful website UX can be found in Duolingo. The website, which represents a language-learning platform, is designed to allow for seamless, personalized learning. It takes only a few clicks for users to start learning whichever language they want, without unnecessary popups, hidden menus, or mandatory forms.
Given that Duolingo has a clear audience (i.e. language learners), it’s easy to determine what a learner would like to do on their landing page. You need to apply the same content design principle to your company’s website to make it more engaging, and your conversion rates will reflect that.
Make Sure to Always Provide your Users with Tangible, Reliable Information
Once you start building your reputation as a reliable source of services and information, you should maintain that brand image. Losing your reputation as a result of using poor or unreliable data in your content is a bad idea. Based on Finances Online, content websites have a 40-60% bounce rate, with 80% of customers ready to pay more for better UX on a website. It is pivotal that you don’t gamble with your audience’s trust and loyalty in terms of data.
Always make sure that the content you’re presenting to your visitors is truthful, verifiable, and relevant to your company, just like a writing assignment. If your target audience consists of students and millennials, they will be especially critical of professional writers with unreliable sources. When a student thinks, “I’d like someone to write my thesis for me”, they need to use a reliable writing service, such as WritersPerHour to do so.
The same applies to your UX writing and content design. Double-check your sources, links, and citations before associating anything with your brand name. This is what separates successful enterprise leaders from those that fail to meet audience demands and fall to the wayside.
Design your Navigation and Content with Actual Users in Mind
When it comes to navigating your website, you want to make sure that the experience is as smooth and user-friendly as possible. Websites with poor, slow, and unresponsive navigation will increase your bounce rates and lower your brand’s authority on the market. You want to achieve the opposite effect.
Let’s take a look at The Year of Greta, a website dedicated to Greta Thunberg, a Swedish environmental activist. Greta is an influential figure who speaks to people who share her world views and principles – thus, the website caters to those users. It is designed as a sneak-peek into Greta’s life beyond her activism. It is designed with advanced dynamic scrolling features, which are not often seen in UX design – and that’s what makes it great.
The website doesn’t contain any unnecessary information or content unrelated to Greta (i.e. the subject of the website). As an enterprise leader, you should aim to achieve much of the same with your own website’s UX. Filter out unnecessary information and content not only to appeal to users but to improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) and subsequent search ranking.
Emphasize Content Interaction and Takeaways in your UX Design
While long-form content is important for SEO purposes, it’s also important that your users find value in it as quickly as possible. User engagement rates have plummeted over the years due to social media content becoming shorter and more appealing compared to blog posts.
Enterprise leaders can mitigate that by formatting their web pages properly to accommodate for skimming and scanning. Make it easier for people to find valuable takeaways from your content with snippets, bullet points, bolded lettering, etc.
Use visuals with text embedded into them and make liberal use of video, voice-over, and short-form calls to action. Your website should be snappy, visually captivating, and actionable first and foremost. This is what will elevate your website’s UX above the competition and improve its long-term profitability.
Apply Consistent Design and Writing Principles Across your Website
Consistency is one of the most elementary requirements of a great UX for website content design. Given that your website is likely to have more than one page, each page should be consistent in its tone, design, writing, and SEO. This will help create static websites having a more uniform experience and make the websites more memorable for your visitors.
Khan Academy is a good example of a website whose UX is consistent across the board. It is a digital learning platform designed with K-12 and university students in mind. Each of its courses features the same visual style, navigation element placement, and messaging.
For enterprise leaders, this means that their websites should be as consistent as possible throughout their many pages. This will help not only in terms of appeal for end-users but also for SEO web crawlers who will deem the content on it valuable.
Into a UX-Centric Website Content Future (Conclusion)
There’s no denying that the web of tomorrow will be UX-focused in its presentation and design. It’s important then for enterprise leaders to prepare on time and meet their audience’s demands properly. Start by performing a website and content audit on exiting navigation, calls to action, SEO, and value proposition.
What’s missing from your website today and can be improved before 2022 rolls around? There are always things that you can do to make your UX more appealing and engaging for your target audience. Don’t wait for your bounce rate to rise and conversion to fall before you act – start improving your website content UX today.
