When it comes to UX design, the simpler the better. No one likes a complicated process and UX’s purpose is to make life easier for the user. Use these hacks to make your website more user friendly.
Design With Data in Mind
Understand where and what your users are clicking on. We can use tools like Google Analytics to track who’s coming to the site and what they are clicking on, but it won’t tell us how long they hover on a specific area or what buttons they press. Utilize heat maps to decide on where to move things. For example, if your sign up button isn’t getting the clicks you want, rethinking the design and position might be a solution. Data trackers like Enhanced Link Attribution can be added as a Chrome extension and you can easily understand how people are interacting with your site.
Prototype With Paper
Sketch out your wireframes and prototypes on paper. Sketching out UX ideas will help you think out of the box without being restricted by programs and an overwhelming amount of tools. Using a classic pencil and paper will allow you to freely brainstorm and put together your design flows. This is extremely helpful when deciding your content hierarchy and planning out navigation.
Begin User Testing Now
First impressions are important. Start observing how your audience interacts with your website. Does the user follow the desired journey? Test initial impressions, completing a task, and any final thoughts that occur. Finally, instead of sticking to one niche, have a variety of people from different backgrounds test your site.
Create Contrast
In almost every website there is going to be a hierarchy of content. Instead of just making important text bigger, create a contrast with your text. It’s all about having the right weight, size, and color to create variation. When deciding on contrast, use different weights in font sizes to create a hierarchy. Use a bolder style for primary content and smaller weights for less important copy. Instead of thinking “the bigger the text the better”, remember the bigger the contrast the better.
Automate When Possible
Users are more willing to continue with a process when it’s quick and easy. Whether that be automatically filling in a city when entering a zip code, or saving user information for next time, automate what you can. This design hack makes it easy for the user not to go through the pain of searching for their wallet and entering all their personal info again and again.
