Posted on 15 March 2017

Is the world of online search heading towards a new reign; where user experience, not content, is king? Content is still an absolute essential, but in an online world where everyone is creating original content, how do you get a competitive edge? User Experience; it’s been estimated that experience will overtake price and produce as the key brand differentiator by 2020, so stand out from the crowd by optimising your user experience:

Optimise for mobile

Google’s new pet project! Their choice of undertaking is no mistake; time spent on mobiles overtook desktops & laptops in 2014, yet 96% of smartphone users have encountered sites that weren’t designed for mobile devices. Stop your audience clicking away in frustration!

Target your audience

Not someone else’s! If you type LOL, be sure you’re talking to a millennial; if your average audience is 80 years old and looking for knitting patterns, they might not understand. Engage your users with language and content targeted to them; entice them to stay longer and go to more pages, and you will be rewarded with higher rankings.

Page design

This should be clean, easy-to-read and pleasing to look at. Use easy-to-read colours, fonts and sizes, and have a spaced-out layout with plenty of white-space. Google’s homepage is over 88% white space, drawing you eye to the most important part – the search bar.

Navigation & Flow

Headers and menu bars should be easy to navigate, in turn making your site flow. It has been reported in this B2B Web Usability Report that, after reaching a company’s website via a referral site, 50% of visitors will use the navigation menu to orient themselves; so make sure that your navigation menu is simple to use! Make sure your menus take you to useful pages, don’t have contradicting messages from page to page and keep page design consistent.

Media & Social Media

Have you thought about using other media on your page? Video and infographics are a great way to give valuable content in a user-friendly way. Social media is also a great idea; include sharing buttons to get high quality traffic from a referral and link to your own social media pages – make it easy for your audience to let their friends know that you exist!

To Summarise:

Optimise for mobile
Target your audience’s demographics and preferences
Have a clean, easy-to-read page design
Use clear and simple navigation
Make use of social media, videos, infographics
Link to other relevant pages

Your users will thank you!