For many people, your website may be the first contact they have with your brand.

The look, feel, content and user friendliness must all ensure that visitors understand that you are professional and provide good quality products or services.

I always remember my marketing lecturer many years ago telling us that if passengers were sitting on a plane and the food tray was dirty, they would start worrying about the maintenance and safety of the plane’s engines. People judge on what is easy for them to see, so regardless of how great your product or service is, if your website is clunky or slow or doesn’t provide a nice experience, they will likely assume that your product or service isn’t up to scratch.

A good UX could boost conversion rates by as much as 400% and a bad UX could mean that less than a quarter would revisit your site.

So what makes a great website?

• Customer centric

Consider your audience and make sure that the look and feel of the website is one that is attractive to your target audience.

Make sure that it is as easy to view and navigate on desktop as on mobile.

• Intuition

Make sure that you stick the important page elements where users are used to seeing them. Navigation bar at the top, homepage link should be the first one they see. Categories need to be organised and displayed in a way that makes sense. Contact details accessible at the bottom and at a contact page.

Visitors aren’t going to spend time trying to work out where you have put stuff and if not immediately obvious, they will get frustrated

• Less is more

It is tempting to jam pack each page to make sure that visitors don’t miss anything. But it is counterintuitive. Really think about what is important. By prioritising content and having thoughtful links, visitors are more likely to consume what you provide

• Offer guidance

Like with all marketing, make sure that you clearly guide the visitor through what they should read – on the page and what they should do afterwards. Or where they can find further relevant information.

I often end up on webpages that because they have been optimised for search engines (SEO) are actually really user unfriendly, with reams of text before I actually get to read what I am interested in.

You can still have a lot of content, but maybe break it up with graphics or have the interesting information at the top.

• Page speed

This is usually no longer a problem, but I still see some websites that are slow to load, so it is important that this is checked as people won’t hang around waiting for your page to load.

Larsen Marketing works with your graphic designer and/or web developer (or we can recommend ones that we have worked with) to make sure that your website provides the best UX possible.