Essential tips to improve your web design in 2023

Can visitors find out what you do within five seconds of landing on your website? Users could navigate to the blog easily if necessary. Does your pricing layout make it easy to understand? Is your website low in bounce rates?

You might need to reevaluate the way you have been designing and optimizing your website.

Websites are more successful when they have a design that integrates with your website’s functionality and user experience.

Even professional website designers can easily overlook these important updates, believing that they are not top of the list. A successful website will have both great content and a user experience that is exceptional.

It is not a good idea to spend time creating great content for your blog or service pages only to have it go unnoticed by design flaws, navigation problems, confusing layouts, or missed conversion opportunities.

Website user experience is a broad umbrella. It can be confusing to grasp all the details and figure out the most important issues to address.

Plan!

Once you have acknowledged that your site needs improvements, it is time to go backward and make a plan that outlines how you will address them.

Start by mapping your customer journey starting from the moment someone visits your site to the moment they become customers.

This will help you to think about what pages they are going to visit, what content they are going to read, and what offers they are going to convert to. This will allow you to design a website that helps nurture leads via the sales funnel.

Leadfeeder’s customer journey maps have always been a favorite of mine. It doesn’t have to be as graphic as Leadfeeder did but it conveys the message. It shows what visitors do on their site and the commonalities that occur between customers who visit it.

Interviewing customers is a great way to get this information if you have difficulty compiling it or lack a CRM. You can ask your customers for 15-30 minutes to ask them questions. You don’t have to interview everyone, but it is a good idea to get as many as possible.

Next, you can use this data to map your strategy. This will allow you to identify the most important touch points on your website and the areas where your users interact.

These touchpoints should allow you to identify the emotions, thoughts, goals, and pain points that each touchpoint is trying to evoke.

These questions will guide you in your design decisions. What imagery will best address these areas? How about a specific color scheme? Start by creating a customer journey map. This will allow you to answer these questions and reinforce your design.

Reduce friction and distractions

Some elements of your website will detract from the message and value you are trying to convey. Complex animations, long content, and stocky website images are all examples.

With an audience that only has consistent brand guidelines that you can use.

This section should include information about font styles, colors, and iconography. It’s easy to make pages look cluttered for companies without this information. It’s possible to start seeing arbitrary colors, different font styles, and sizes. This can lead to visual confusion and distract from your message.

Avoid too many interactions or animations on a page. It can be overwhelming to scroll through a page and notice every button pulse or section of icons with their own animation. This can distract from the page’s content and make it feel uninteresting.

One reason is that they make it difficult for users to see where their eyes should be. Do you prefer one of the red buttons or both? Or the hello bar? Perhaps the top of your navigation?

It is important to determine where your users want their attention to be when they visit the page, and in what order. The current color scheme creates friction when trying to accomplish this.

There are also areas with inconsistent spacing. The hello bar’s hanger (‘you!”) creates a second line that could be easily fixed if there was an increase in the container’s width around the text. Also, the H1 is not vertically centered in white. This draws your attention to the “issue” and not the bulk of the message.

The grey section below the header has a button that doesn’t provide much context and feels like it’s sandwiched between an image. It’s unclear if the button is supposed to be below the image or if it should directly relate to it. Is the site loading incorrectly? This internal dispute creates friction and confusion.

There is very little space for distraction in the hero image. The hero image is not too detailed and is covered with a white overlay, which allows it to stand out rather than disappear into the image.

These details can make or break your website experience. They will help users understand your goals and leave less room for confusion.

Social proof is a plus

You are likely to shop on Amazon like most people and gravitate towards products with at least four to five-star reviews. These reviews come from customers who have had positive experiences with the product.

These reviews give us confidence in the product’s ability to deliver on its promises. This in turn pushes me to buy it.

This same effect can be applied to your website and product. Studies show that prospects are 58% more likely to purchase your product if they see testimonials from real people.

How should your testimonials look visually so that they create trust with your users?

There are several strategies that you can use. First, think about the format you would like to use for your testimonials. Do you prefer to text or video? Video testimonials have always been the best. Because the medium is more engaging and keeps users’ attention longer, it also creates a stronger human connection by allowing them to hear voices and see the faces of real people.

Text testimonials are also an option. However, they can be designed and properly incorporated to help build trust with users.

Upland Adestra, a UK-based enterprise email and marketing automation company, is located in London. There are four videos on the testimonial page. They all have their own sections.

Instead of placing videos in random order, Upland separated them. Upland also accompanied each video with a header and a sentence explaining the result or benefit that the client received from working with Upland. Users now have context for what they’ll hear in the videos.