Swift Six: Using UX to turn visitors into customers

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Hello and welcome to another 123-reg Swift Six! This week I am going to be talking about six ways in which you can use good UX to convert more of your website’s visitors into customers.So what do I mean by UX? I mean user experience or usability. What that means with regard to websites is creating pages that make it easy for users to complete a particular goal. So, through effective use of words, of images, of layout, it’s making it easy for that website’s visitor to carry out a particular action.

So what’s the first thing that you can do? Well, the first thing you need to understand is what the page goal is for each page of your website. So, every page on your website should have a page goal and that is an action that you want your website’s visitor to take once they’ve engaged with the page. That goal or that action might be to proceed to the next page, it might be to navigate deeper to certain products, it might be to sign up to a newsletter. Understand what that goal is and then make sure that your images, that your copy, that your headline is focused on pushing that user, that website visitor towards that goal.

The second thing is to talk about benefits rather than features of your product or service. So, a good example of this is – if you are selling something technical, like for example a washing machine – a feature of that washing machine might be that it dries at 1200 revolutions per minute. So that’s a feature, what’s the benefit to the user? It makes their clothes dry really quickly. So make sure that, within your website copy, you are talking about the benefits of your product or service and not just the features of what you do.

So, the third thing is – try not to use jargon. You’re working in a particular industry, you’re interacting with people inside your business, within other similar businesses, with suppliers. It might be that you refer to particular topics, products, services with technical jargon. Make sure that, when you’re talking to your users, that you don’t use the same jargon because the chances are that they won’t know what these words mean. Try to think about their level of knowledge and the type of words they use to describe what you do and write your website with that in mind rather than your industry experience and your level of jargon.

So the fourth thing is to be consistent. So what I mean by this is, when it comes to your website, don’t try to be too original, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. There are web-wide standards that you need to conform to because users are very used to finding information on a website in a particular way. For example, if they want to know your contact details, they’re always going to look into the footer because they’ve got used to seeing contact details into the footer of a website. So make sure that you include those and, within your website, make sure that you are consistent too. So make sure that the layouts of most of your pages are similar, make sure that you use the same font throughout the site, make sure that you don’t use loads of different font sizes, make sure that your images are always of a particular type and positioned in a particular way on the page. Make sure that your call-to-action buttons are always in a consistent place. Consistency is really the key to good UX so it’s a really strong one to follow for that.

The fifth thing is – try not to distract your users with irrelevant information. So, if each page has a goal and you want your visitor to complete that page, to go towards that goal, then don’t try to distract them by bringing in irrelevant information that stops them actually achieving that goal. Make sure that you cut out the stuff that is irrelevant, although it might be interesting, and keep it just focused so you’re not distracting that user.

The sixth thing is to try to provide enough information to the user at the point that they require that information. So a good example of this is, if the user is buying something from you and they’re getting it delivered, you need to tell them how long it will take before it gets delivered. If they’re buying a technical product, they might want to know if your technical product is compatible with another technical product from another company. If you offer a low cost service, then make it clear to them the area that you can cover. Be sure to give people enough information in order to make a decision and to buy from you.

So that was the 123-reg Swift Six ‘How to use good UX to convert more of your website visitors into customers’ and I’ll see you next time!