Online success is all about creating meaningful and compelling experiences for your target audience. You don’t just push out offers to your prospective customers — you need to real them in with intriguing content, win their trust with accurate information, and wait for them to express their intent to convert. How do you usually expect to get that? Due to UX design, of course!
Veteran marketers can design a user experience map that would lead customers closer and closer to a sale. It may sound like a long shot, but as long as you follow a strategic approach and pay attention to your audience’s needs, you should be able to get reliable results. In this post, we’ll show you how to increase conversions by addressing the most crucial factors that affect UX design.
Slow Loading Times
We live in a digital age where most consumers are accustomed to instant gratification. If they go online to find answers to their problems, they want it fast. Take too long to present your value propositions and you could lose their interest forever. According to statistics, 40 percent of online users abandon desktop websites that take over 3 seconds to load. This increases to 53 percent for users on mobile websites, which is why it’s crucial for website owners to employ every strategy they can use to improve their website’s load speed.
Fortunately, there are several ways to remedy a website’s performance problems. Google PageSpeed Insights is an excellent starting point since it can provide you with a list of optimization suggestions. You simply need to enter your website’s URL to initiate a complete website analysis.
Some of the typical optimizations that most websites need are browser caching, image compression, code minification, and GZIP compression. For e-commerce stores and other content-heavy sites, a CDN can reduce latency by distributing the load of data transfer across multiple proxy servers.
Bad Timing
Other than blog content, an e-commerce website must also pay attention to the timing of certain types of content.
This is especially true when crafting promotional newsletters. If you want to maximize your conversion rate, you need to personalize the timing of your content based on your audience’s previous interactions with your brand.
With an email marketing platform like MailChimp, you can automate an email workflow that responds to various user activity, such as abandoning a cart, making a purchase, or subscribing to your mailing list. This will give you an opportunity to target prospects when they could be vulnerable to certain offers.
Awkward or Disjointed Copy
There’s nothing more disruptive to your audience’s experience than poorly-written web copy. Let’s face it, if you run a website, you’ve probably considered outsourcing your content from service providers or freelancers. Chances are, you’ve encountered third-parties that offer content writing services for very low prices. But in exchange for your savings, you are often met with subpar, non-engaging articles that are flat-out disappointing.
Remember, quality content takes a lot more than perfect grammar. You need someone dependable who can capture your brand’s value propositions and translate them into readable and frictionless form. A typical strategy is to look for native English speakers who can communicate effortlessly well using the language. But since they are generally more expensive, you should still look for potential freelancers with a firm grasp of the fundamentals of native English writing.
Here is a list of qualifications you should look for if you plan to hunt for freelancer writers who fit the bill:
- Experience in your niche
- Can commit for the long-term
- Professional and coachable attitude
- Online marketing savvy
- An updated writing portfolio
Unoptimized Mobile Experience
Finally, a lot of marketers believe that having a responsive website is enough to provide mobile users with a good experience. This is a mistake that could cost them over half of their potential customers, considering the fact that there’s now more traffic coming from mobile devices than desktops.
What you need to do is develop marketing strategies that connect with your audience on a more personal level. Rather than sticking to the experience on your mobile website, leverage content distribution channels that they enjoy on the mobile platform, particularly social media apps and geofenced push notifications for maximum user engagement. In simple terms, geofencing describes the practice of sending relevant marketing content based on a lead’s physical location. Some examples of geofenced interactions are:
- Automated review request as customers leave your physical store
- Sale notifications for nearby establishments
- Alerts for nearby events your customers might be interested in
- Gentle reminders of product alternatives when customers enter a competitor’s store
Mismatched User Need and Content Topic
To provide your audience with an experience that leads to conversions, you need to make sure your content matches their intent. A lot of marketers make the mistake of implementing a one-size-fits-all content strategy, which treats all users as if they have the exact same goals. This, however, could generate a wave of unsatisfied users who couldn’t find what they’re looking for in your site.
Proper keyword research is the key to a more tailored content experience for your audience. If you are building links for SEO, focus on the keyword intent before developing content around them — it may dictate the experience your organic traffic will get. The keyword “wedding photographer for hire,” for example, is more likely to be used by users who are ready to convert, unlike audiences who type in “wedding photography.” Those are potential leads who are ready for promotional content and landing pages with aggressive calls to action.
A keyword research tool like LongTailPro will help you find keyword ideas with commercial intent. After expanding your seed keyword into long-tail suggestions, simply create a filter to scrape off keywords with commercial terms, like “hire,” “purchase,” “for sale,” or “services.”
Conclusion
Online marketing involves so much more than just generating traffic. It requires brands to empathize with their target audience, address their pain points, and provide them with an experience they will be thankful for.
The tips above are more than enough to help you address UX design issues that might be present in your website. Just be patient and remember that a captivating user experience isn’t just about the creation of quality content — it’s also about the execution.
