So, you’ve managed to drive a lot of traffic to your website, but you aren’t quite getting any tangible results in terms of new customers. Why?
Clearly, you’re having some trouble with the conversion side of things. Don’t be discouraged; it happens to everyone. Fortunately, there are specific UX-related things you can do to fix the problem.
We’ve consulted with a California web design company and explored all the metrics you should pay attention to when improving your UX design. These, along with a few straightforward tips, should help you turn your website into a conversion machine.
But first, let’s talk about why UX matters for conversions in the first place.
How Does UX Impact Conversion Rates?
If you want to understand why your website isn’t converting as much as you’d like, you should have at least a tangential grasp of user experience and how it can impact your chances of converting a prospect.
Even if you’ve never had any contact with the term user experience, you can probably ascertain that it has to do with how users feel when interacting with a site or app. This makes it relatively easy to do at least some analysis without using any fancy tools.
All you need to do is ask yourself some questions:
- How does my website make users feel?
- Is it easy to navigate and use?
- Does it portray my company’s values and qualities?
- Can prospects find all my contact information easily?
These, and other similar questions, can help you create an idea of the website you’d like to develop and what you want it to achieve.
The Most Important Metrics When It Comes to UX
Now that you’re familiar with UX design basics, we can focus on the most important data. Unfortunately, there’s no magic UX number to measure the quality of the user experience on a website.
However, there is a set of metrics that provide insight into your website’s performance. Let’s explore them:
- Pageviews — If users tend to visit more than one page on your site, this is generally a good sign, as it shows interest and engagement.
- Dwell time — This metric is similar to the previous one, as it measures the total time a user spends on your website before returning to search results. Google considers higher dwell times to signify a better user experience.
- Time on page — Another metric that is similar to the previous one we listed. This one focuses on the total time a user spends on your site before going anywhere else.
- Bounce rate — This measures the percentage of users that only visit one page of your website before leaving. A high bounce rate is generally considered bad, but it can be misleading. Your website might be giving the customer all they need on one page, in which case they will have a great user experience despite the high bounce rate.
- Conversion rate — In the simplest of terms, this is a measure of how many visits result in a conversion. Depending on the website’s goal, a conversion can be defined in various ways, affecting the result of the metric.
- Shopping cart abandonment — This metric is exclusive to ecommerce websites. These are often built to nudge users toward making a purchase, but the work of the UX designer hardly ends there. Companies tend to overlook UX once the user has added an item to their shopping cart. Considering the fact that users abandon their shopping carts an astonishing 69.80% of the time, this is worth looking into.
- Registrations, subscriptions, leads and sales — The most obvious item on this list is similar to the conversion rate we mentioned earlier, except this is an absolute number, rather than a percentage. Basically, you’ll want to think about the number of conversions your site should generate within a specific period. If you’re not hitting that number (and if you’re reading this post, you’re probably not), it is time to try out one of the tips we have prepared below.
Tips to Increase Your Conversion Rates by Improving UX
Even though the main idea behind this post was to explain the metrics relevant to UX, we can’t help but provide a few simple tips you can use to improve your conversions:
- Use Videos on Your Landing Pages — Videos may be the best way to increase conversions due to their ability to spur positive action. In fact, they can increase conversion rates by as much as 80%, according to some studies.
- Strategically Place Your CTAs — This tip is relatively straightforward, but it is surprising how many businesses fail to implement it correctly. Just place your CTAs where users will see them. The simplest way to do that is always to keep your CTA buttons above the page fold.
- Create a Sense of Scarcity and Urgency with Your CTA Headlines — Your CTA copy makes a difference. Your audience has probably seen a button that says Sign Up a million times. CTA buttons and headlines give you an excellent opportunity to improve UX by providing users with an original experience. Effective CTAs make users more likely to pull the trigger, so utilize them to the fullest extent.
- Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed — Your website’s loading time is incredibly important. In fact, it is one of the most notable conversion killers, as studies have shown that more than 50% of users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
- Improve Readability — Spacing, quantity, and size of your text can all have a significant impact on your conversion rates. People like to consume the content of a web page with ease, without straining their eyes or getting lost in run-on sentences. Hiring a professional content editor to have a look at your website can be an excellent investment.
In summary, the way to improve your conversions by fixing your UX is to have a well-designed, snappy, and responsive website with relevant and easy-to-consume content.