Are you familiar with the term “UX”? Do you know how good your website’s UX is? We’re going to assume that you know nothing about it, just to be safe. Sorry. We know you are smart. We just want to be beneficial to all of our readers, regardless of UX IQ.
To put it plainly, UX stands for User Experience and it refers to the experience a person has when they use your website. It’s an essential aspect of web design and maintenance. Most of us have been on a website that we found distracting, slow, unorganized, or just downright ugly. Those websites have poor UX.
When you land one of those poor UX websites, what happens? You might spend a few minutes trying to get the answer to your question or finding the product that you were looking for. But if it takes too long for you, you get frustrated and quit. You’ll find another website to give you your answer or sell you a similar product. This is the importance of good UX.
But what about your website? What happens when a first-time visitor lands on your home page? Does it load quickly enough? Are they immediately sure that they’re in the right place? Is it easy to get to where they want to go next? It can be tough to measure your UX because of course, you are familiar with your own website. If you aren’t… big yikes. Familiarize yourself ASAP. Anyways, here are a few strategies you can use to measure the UX of your website.
Forms
Does your website have forms? If so, continue reading. If not, you can skip down to the next UX measuring strategy. We’ve all been there. You’re about to fill out a form online and then you scroll down to see that the form is just way too long. Or it asks for some strangely specific or unnecessary information, so you leave. It’s not worth the time or the privacy breach. Take a moment to review the forms on your website. How quickly can they be filled out and are there any sections that a user might be uncomfortable with?
A quick way to get an idea of what users do when they see your form is to use a tool like Hotjar. It will tell you which forms tend to be started but not completed and which sections people decline to fill out. It can even provide you with a video recording that shows you exactly how users are interacting with the form. The users remain anonymous but you can see exactly where they clicked and when they left.
Website Navigation
What if you could see what visitors are doing and where they’re clicking when they land on your website? That would be like seeing what menu items customers at a restaurant look at the most. Basically a superpower akin to X-Ray vision. Heat maps are your UX superpower. Crazy Egg is the Robin to your Batman. They provide a heat map service that tells you where most of your website visitors are clicking when they arrive.
You might notice that your website visitors prefer certain buttons or pages, but they aren’t clicking your call to action as much as they should be. Use this information to make your call to action more prominent and to find a way to minimize the other buttons or pages.
Hey, Will You Use My Website?
You don’t always need to hire an expert to check the status of your website’s UX. Simply repeat the question above to people outside of your company. Ask your friends, your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend, heck, even ask your mom and dad!
You can gain valuable insight from any first time user about what works well and what doesn’t on your website. Ask them to navigate through multiple pages, fill out a form, complete a purchase if they can. Did the pages load quickly? What was too time-consuming? Depending on what you want visitors to do on your website, you can get feedback on how quick and easy it is to accomplish that goal. Then you can ask them how they’re doing, but only after the important stuff.
Which Page Did You Like & How Long Were You There?
Try tracking your page views and time on page. If a user is willing to spend some time on your site, it’s usually an indicator that they are enjoying themselves. If they’re spending entirely too long on a certain page, it could be possible that they had trouble finding what they were looking for.
Look for indicators like users leaving your site after spending time on a page, but before converting. Conversion will vary from site to site. It could be signing up for a newsletter or clicking a call to action. Did they spend some time on your site, but then leave when they encountered your form? Check the length and details of the form.
Ask Your Customers
Your customers are the ones who visited your site and more than likely performed the action that you intended when the site was designed. So let’s keep it simple: just ask them. Send out a SHORT customer success survey to ask for their feedback about your website. Everybody has an opinion, and most love to be asked what theirs is. It makes us feel important.
Ask if they’d recommend you to others and if they accomplished the goals they had when they visited your site. Was it easy to reach that goal or was it a little more difficult than it needed to be? Use the responses to make necessary changes to your website. You want the process to be as seamless as possible, so it’s always good to learn about and eliminate any obstacles.
Effective websites can be pretty darn difficult. From SEO to UX and all of the other cool marketing terms, one can easily feel overwhelmed and lost. Don’t worry, we packed a map and we’ll help you get your website on track. You bring the snacks.
