The Impact of Good UX on Your Conversion Rates

Business websites all share a simple goal – to boost engagement and drive conversion rates. Whether that’s purchasing your product, signing up to your newsletter, or just sending you an enquiry, every website has been created with a desired action in mind.

User experience and conversion rate optimisation go hand in hand. These two fundamental practices work together and aim to guide your user smoothly through the funnel to complete those desired actions.

How to Evaluate the Design of a Website

What is UX Design?

Not to be confused with UI design, which is focussed primarily on the visual details, UX design focuses on making things easy and enjoyable to use. It’s a fundamental aspect of any successful website, utilising research and analysis to optimise website usability, navigation, messaging, calls to action and fostering a positive user experience.

What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

CRO is the process of improving your website to encourage more users to take desired actions. This involves identifying potential problem areas in your funnel that may be hindering conversions, coming up with hypotheses for improvements, and testing each one to highlight their impact on conversions. These tests yield valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to implement meaningful changes to your website.

Here, we’ll explore the role of UX design in this partnership and offer some actionable practices to help lay the foundation to boosting your CRO efforts. 

UX Practices to Help Boost CRO

First Impressions Matter

Users make very quick decisions based on their first impression – in fact, it can take as little as 0.05 seconds for them to form an opinion on your website and, by extension, your business. Here’s just a few top tips to make an impact straightaway:

• Optimise “Above The Fold” Content – This is the most valuable real estate on a page. While the design of this can vary, the most important thing is to encourage scrolling and engagement with clear messaging, visual cues and calls to action. 
• Explain The What, How and Why – Be clear and concise with your messaging; tell the user what you do, how you do it and why they should choose you. This clear value proposition validates their needs and allows them to quickly move onto the next action.
• Don’t Overcomplicate It – Users love simple and familiar designs, so stick with tried and tested elements, layouts and functionality they’re already familiar with. If people are spending more time figuring out how to use your website than actually engaging and clicking that call to action, you’re definitely missing opportunities!
• Improve Load Speeds – 40% of users will completely abandon a website when the images don’t load or the page takes too long to load. Make it lightning fast or you could be losing potential customers through your website.

Sam’s Pro Tip: “Above the fold” is an important space with high visibility, but don’t be tempted to overload it with competing actions and messages. Keep it simple and focused on  a single action.

Learn About Your Users

Making assumptions and not conducting thorough research can result in not understanding users as well as we might think. 

UX as a practice supports and advocates for users, putting them and their experience first, so it’s important to observe their motivations, needs, expectations and goals to optimise your website experience.

Utilising both qualitative research (analytics and tracking data) and quantitative research (surveys, interviews, usability tests etc), you can paint a strong and realistic picture of your users which can inform your design decisions and, ultimately, lead to a more positive experience for them.

Sam’s Pro Tip: Don’t underestimate the value in user research. This will highlight what they actually want, not what you think they need. Always start your processes with research, otherwise, you’re just shooting in the dark.

Utilise Social Proof

Human psychology is at the core of UX design, and studies have shown that humans are more likely to follow the actions of others when making decisions. This makes social proof a major factor in decision making. 

In fact, the average person reads at least 10 online reviews before making a purchase and a 4-star rating or higher is a deciding factor for 57% of users.

Utilising social proof on your website can have a huge impact on the experience –  it’s a reliable, informative, and cost-effective way to build trust and add invaluable credibility to your business. 

Sam’s Pro Tip: If you’ve got positive reviews on your Google Business Profile (or other review platforms) or case studies, make sure they’re on your website for all to see!

Keep Content Skimmable & Universal

Nowadays, attention spans are short and users want to read the information they need without having to root through a wall of text to find it. 

By making website content concise and skimmable, you’re able to break up large amounts of text into more manageable blocks. 

It’s always best to keep things simple and easy to understand with your content. Messaging with too much technical jargon or unnecessary complexity can be confusing for your users. 

At the end of the day, the way you talk about your product or service should be crystal clear, using language that anyone can understand without second glance.

Sam’s Pro Tip: Utilise headings and formatting to highlight key information; larger and bolder text will always attract more attention than ordinary text. 

Consistent Experience Across All Devices

Studies have shown that 85% of users expect a consistent experience across different devices, and are 5 times more likely to leave a website if it’s not mobile-friendly. 

Also, these Mobile Device Internet Usage Stats show the importance of mobile-friendly websites:

• 60.67% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.
• 92.3% of internet users access the internet using a mobile phone.
• There are approximately 4.32 billion active mobile internet users.
• Africa has the highest proportion of internet traffic from mobile devices – 69.13%.
• There will be over 1 billion 5G connections worldwide by 2025

With the continued increase of mobile device use…

… it’s become essential to create a seamless experience regardless of the device used to access your website. You can avoid this pitfall by adopting a “mobile first approach”. That’s making sure experiences are optimised across all device types.

Sam’s Pro Tip: Test, test, test. If you’ve designed a new website or feature, always test it across different devices to ensure the experience is consistent.

Ensure Your Website is Accessible

Web accessibility is crucial, not only for CRO but also to accommodate the diverse needs of website users. 

Creating an inclusive website ensures that yours can offer a positive experience to all users and limit any barriers or frustrations that could inhibit their browsing.

From using appropriate alt text on your images, fixing colour contrast issues to optimising keyboard navigation, there are a number of measures you can take to maximise your website’s accessibility. 

Sam’s Pro Tip: Tools like PageSpeed Insights and AXE are an easy way to identify any potential issues that need addressing.

Wrapping Up

UX Design and CRO are a dynamic duo that work together to create great website experiences. 

When you work towards improving your website’s overall UX, you’re able to pave the way for higher conversions.

Remember though, there’s no perfect, one-size-fits-all way to increase website conversions. What works for one may not work for the other, so while the practices we’ve covered in this post are a great starting point, it’s crucial that you test your own website to identify potential improvements that will work for your users.

Is your website converting as well as you’d like? At Logic Design, we design websites to meet your objectives and turn visitors into customers. 

Take a look through our case studies or contact us today by calling 01473 934050, emailing hello@logicdesign.co.uk, or leaving us a message on our contact page.