Effective user experience (UX) is something every website should have but it’s also something most people can’t quite figure out how to execute on their own site. Small businesses that don’t have big budgets find it particularly difficult to optimize for UX.
But I’d like to walk you through a couple simple changes you can make to the layout of information, the colour and the design that will help to improve the UX. Keep in mind though, these are not one-size-fits-all solutions. Best practices vary widely depending on the size of the business, the type of business and the products or services that are offered.
The first rule of UX is to format the information in a way that is logical and user friendly, but this will look quite different from one business to the next. The layout of information on web pages, including home pages and inner pages of the site, can be separated into three main areas:
One of the most common mistakes that I see is when the colour of the CTA is chosen to match the main logo colour. Even worse are sites that match CTAs to the titles and the main copy on the site.
The goal should not be to match or coordinate, so much as it is to use colours to send different messages to your user. The rule I like to follow it to “train” your sites visitors to associate different colours with different actions. What would you like them to do once they see a certain color?
Let’s say a site uses the colour orange for the main CTA. That site should then not use the colour orange for anything other than that those main CTAs. For secondary CTAs, you can change up the size and colour, and again for the tertiary.
In fact, for tertiary CTA’s, you can try presenting the CTA without a button and just as a simple direction like “read more”. This will help the user differentiate one action from the next.
When placing CTA’s in the main slides, be careful that they always stay on the same side, preferably the right hand side, and that the message makes reference to:
1. Answering the question that may have brought that user to your site in the first place
2. Giving them enough information to click on the CTA.
I hope this give you some insight into the look and flow of your site. There are many moving parts in creating good UX, but tackling these elements will make a big difference. Until next time….Olya out!
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