In terms of web design, one of the most important considerations for any design or functionality option should be the user experience (UX). With anywhere between 60 and 80% of shopping carts abandoned on eCommerce websites, and more than 90% of users abandoning websites that cause frustration or problems, user experience should be the primary focus of design attention. However, this is often forgotten or neglected while visual design choices take precedence. So what are the biggest barriers to effective web design UX? Well, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design professionals. We work with a variety of companies across Manchester, and the North West, including those in Blackburn and Chorley, to provide high quality web design solutions. As a result, we have produced this guide to help you overcome the most common UX obstacles.
What are the most common barriers to effective web design UX?
There are several barriers to producing a website that delivers a top notch UX. These barriers include:
- Understanding the needs of the user
- Visual design choices
UX and understanding the needs of the user
To deliver a completely positive user experience, you need to thoroughly anticipate and understand the needs of your website users. For many companies, this simply means taking an educated guess at what website users want, but this is not enough. For a truly effective user experience, you need to consider what your users actually need. So, how can you establish this? Well, there are several things you can do, including:
- Selecting people to test your website and provide honest feedback- ask your family, friends, or reach out to your followers on social media to test your new website design and user interface and provide honest feedback about their experience on your website. Make sure you also ask some specific questions, such as “did all of the website pages load promptly”, “was the call to action button obvious and clear”, and “how simple as it to fill in the online form”. This can help provide specific feedback on aspects of your design.
- Working with a market research company to test your website- if your personal network is too small, you could opt to work with a market research company to complete a large number of website surveys from the average user. This will provide a lot more data, and this can be very beneficial for making UX improvements. However, this is something you will need to spend money on.
Visual design choices and UX
Another of the barriers to effective web design UX are the visual design choices. Whether its related to your company branding, or your design preferences, colour schemes, imagery and typography styles can become a barrier to UX, when these are not considered in light of the user specific requirements. This could include:
- colour schemes or typography that make font difficult to read
- animations and illustrations that distract users
- unclear call to action button
This is why any design choices you make need to be considered in association with the UX.
For more information or advice, or for high quality, professional web design solutions, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.