Website Basics: What You Need To Know to Build A Successful Website
If you want to reduce the bounce rate on your website, you have to boost the customer experience. The user experience is one of the most important factors when ranking your website on search engines. A bad user experience will only result in high bounce rates.
High bounce rates show that visitors and customers aren’t enjoying the experience they are getting. Using tools such as Crazy Egg will allow you to see what people are doing on your site, what they click on, how far they scroll, etc.
Google Analytics, along with other analytical software, will allow you to see what you rank for, what your visitors are looking for, and why maybe a change will keep your customers on your site longer.
So it doesn’t matter if what you are selling on the site is precisely what they need; if the experience is terrible, they’ll bounce and look elsewhere.
Engagement is almost inevitable when the experience is so good and will keep them coming back for more. The more engagement you have on your site, the better it will rank, and the more people will want to come back to your site again and again.
Below are five ways you can boost customer experience on your website.
1. Make the Site Mobile Friendly
It’s not enough for a site to be compatible with mobile devices; it has to be user-friendly as well. When loaded on mobile devices, some sites aren’t fully functional or don’t quite fit right.
Then you get that message asking you to load on a desktop for a better experience. Now that’s not a great rerouting system for mobile users who make up over 50% of website users.
People shop with mobile phones on the go, in the restroom, while watching TV, while eating, and while doing just about anything that allows them to use their phones.
You don’t want to lose these people because your website is struggling to fit into their devices.
2. Avoid Intricate Themes and Plugins
Some of the high-quality themes and plugins you add to your online site can make it lag, which can be very annoying.
Some themes delay the loading pages, and while navigating through the site, may create some glitches due to some videos or other large-sized web design features.
The entire design experience creates an unattractive view for both mobile and desktop users. So go simple with the design of the user interface. The goal is for products to get the needed engagement and not to look pretty only.
No one wants to hang around a site where it’s challenging to navigate. However, some simpler designs look beautiful regardless, and they won’t create problems for you or your customers.
3. Make It Easy to Navigate with Site Search
An easy-to-navigate layout helps encourage navigation around the site and boosts the experience positively.
Using site search can also help users find products or whatever they need seamlessly and faster. The stress of scrolling and looking for specific needs on the site is avoided with a functioning site search which your customers will thank you for.
4. Less is Always More with Content and Post
Don’t clutter your site with wordy, unnecessary content. Most site visitors know where to go when they want to read lengthy posts.
They are on your site for a specific purpose, and that’s for finding products or services that they can view and recommend to their colleagues. So, find a way to cut the fluff out of your content and posts.
Make the posts simpler to understand by using relatable and transitional words. Trim the longer sentences by eliminating redundant words and replacing them with power words across all your posts.
And since the attention span of humans is getting shorter by the day, ensure your content is well written with the correct elements to grip readers’ attention and make them commit to the site.
5. Incorporate Live Chats
Live chats can be a beneficial experience for most customers visiting your site. With a chatbot feature, customers can have their questions answered instantly whenever the customer needs them.
Granted, sometimes it can be annoying to have these chatbots popping up when navigating around the site, but they certainly come in handy when there’s a need. And having it and not needing it is much better than needing it and not having it.
Think of all the time it will take a customer to send an email inquiring about something they’d like to know about your products or services and then not getting a reply until hours or days.
You can a with a live chatbot that supplies all the answers the customer throws at it. If the bot feature is too expensive, hiring a customer representative to watch the site and respond whenever a customer needs is an option.
