Building a website is a complex task. From design and functionality to content and marketing, there’re tons of factors that go into creating a successful website. But one of the most overlooked aspects of any website is its user interface (UI).
User interface may seem like an unimportant detail to those who are not designers or developers. But the fact is that UI elements can impact your return on investment (ROI) in dramatic ways.
Many website owners assume that the user interface is just about pretty graphics and stylish fonts. But the truth is that it is more than just these elements. It also includes the small things that eventually add up to affect your brand presence.
Making little UI tweaks can lead to an enjoyable browsing experience for your website users, ultimately resulting in higher conversion rates–sometimes considerably!
So what kind of UI tweaks could you make to improve your website’s usability and boost your ROI? Let’s have a look!
1. Make Effective Use of White Space
White space or negative space are terms used to describe the areas on your website that are left blank. This may be around images, between paragraphs, or even just blank spaces within a column of text. Unfortunately, white space is one of those design elements that doesn’t get as much attention as it should.
It’s easy for beginners to think that all a website needs is lots of colours and images in order to be beautiful or interesting. However, the truth is that a simple colour palette with plenty of white space can make for a very attractive website, especially when combined with excellent typography and layout design.
Ample use of white space in a website can dramatically declutter your website, draw focus, and improve readability and legibility. Failure to use enough white space makes it difficult for visitors to find important information or read what is written on the page. This, in turn, translates to lower conversion rates and lower ROI.
2. Optimize Your Calls to Action
You know how when you’re scrolling through a website, and there’s something that catches your attention! You may not consciously notice it, but some element on the page draws your subconscious mind. The psychology behind this phenomenon is called “nudging,” which basically means presenting cues, so people make decisions in ways they might not have otherwise.
The best type of nudging can be found within CTA design: anything that gets someone to take action by making it easy for them to do so! But sometimes, the next steps for the users are less clear – they don’t know how to take action on what they’ve just seen. That’s why it’s crucial to optimize the CTAs on your website, making it easier for users to take action.
Here’re the tweaks you can make to your CTAs to make them more effective and results-oriented:
- Your CTAs must appeal to your website users’ self-interests for them to be more compelling and persuasive. Use words that motivate and inspire them, such as “Grab Your Free Gift!”
- Use words that trigger your website visitors into taking action. Some examples include:
- Get Your Free Quote
- Book a Free Consultation
- Get Free Access Now
- Join Now
- Integrate larger clickable areas on your CTA buttons, so mobile users can click them easily.
3. Improve Your Website Layout
Sure, you have a new website, and it looks great! But what does that mean for your business? Well, if you’re like most people, then the answer is nothing. Your site will get lost in the noise of other sites with flashy designs or sophisticated layouts. You might be wondering why you should care about something as small as design when there are so many other things to worry about (like traffic).
Well, a simple design can make your site stand out from the crowd–no matter how noisy it gets. Suppose your goal is to grow your business and make more money through increased web traffic and conversions. In that case, the first thing you should do is simplify your website layout.
Here are three benefits of a simple website design:
- A simpler site takes less time to create, which means you don’t have to spend as much on designing the site.
- You can add new content quickly because it’s not complicated with many different elements.
- It allows your customers to focus more on what they’re looking for without being distracted by other elements on the page.
Remember that it’s not about the uniqueness or sophistication of your website design at the end of the day but about your ROI and what your target audience wants. Users want to navigate a website easily and find what they’re looking for quickly. As such, you should keep things simple, without clutter or confusion for visitors, so it won’t interrupt their experience on your site!
4. Ensure Your Website Loads Fast
It turns out, site speed plays a vital role in achieving your business goals because of how consumers use the internet today. Load times are significant because people have less patience than ever before! This means if your load time exceeds 3 seconds, then you might lose up to 20% of visitors from that one page alone! And those visitors will leave in frustration, meaning you’ll have a hard time convincing them to return to your site.
And when you lose potential customers, it ultimately harms your ROI. For this reason, you need to make sure that people are happy with how quickly your site loads before they give up and go somewhere else.
In most cases, putting too many elements on your site affects its speed. Consider eliminating images and videos from above the fold to reduce the page size. It is also a good idea to use icon fonts instead of icon images to ensure the site loads faster, and the navigation isn’t difficult. Also, consider optimizing images with tools like ImageOptim before uploading them to your site.
Here’re more tips to improve your site speed:
- Improve server response time
- Minimize HTTP requests
- Reduce redirects
- Use a reliable hosting service
- Consider switching to VPS hosting (instead of shared hosting)
- Enable compression
- Put new features on your website only when necessary
- Reduce CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
- Enable browser caching
- Use a CDN