Your website design assessment is critical to achieving the goals you’ve set out for your business.
Even if you’ve invested valuable resources into your site’s design, you should re-evaluate it in order to maximize its usability and effectiveness for you and your customers.
Technology, trends, and user expectations evolve over time—and so should your website. Keeping your site design fresh generates new interest in your products and services while ensuring that you meet the needs of current and future customers.
How Does Your Website Look?
The layout of your website is the first place to look when performing a self-assessment. The elements on your page create a flow and eye path that (ideally) lead visitors towards a specific destination.
Your site’s layout should be clearly organized to minimize confusion in the mind of the user. Content should be scannable so that the reader makes sense of it in the shortest amount of time.
Colors, fonts, and text sizes can work for or against you. So you need to evaluate how your site uses these elements and consider how you can improve them.
How Do Users Experience Your Site?
Your site’s functionality reinforces its ability to achieve your business goals. But there are different factors that make up your site’s user experience, so it can be difficult to know where to start.
Your audience must be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Today’s design trends have become intuitive for users, and your site should align itself with these new functionality designs and features.
Factors such as load time, navigation, and purchase checkout time all work to create the overarching experience your customers have on your site.
Making it easy for customers to find related products and content helps them make additional purchases and move further along in your sales process.
Consider how much information and content your site provides on a given page. Is it enough to answer the questions or objections that may come up in the mind of your users?
Is there so much information that the clarity of your content diminishes, creating friction that hurts your conversion rates?
Goal Achievement
Every website should serve a purpose. If you’re in eCommerce, your site’s design must revolve around increasing purchases of your products.
If your goal is content marketing, then your website should provide relevant and valuable information that solves the problems of your readers.
In either case, your website design assessment should meet the objectives of your business while making products and information easily accessible for readers.
Make the steps that move them towards a purchase clear. Your layout contributes to this process along with the content you provide users.
Consider the time it takes to complete a purchase, the number of pages and clicks required, and the payment security indicators that customers need when buying products online.
Use autofill, one-click, and other features that speed up the process and reduce the steps your customers need to take when completing a purchase. This creates a seamless experience and optimizes the process for future purchases.
Provide shopping cart summaries, estimated delivery dates, and pricing details to help users complete their purchases easily.
Taking a good look at how to make your site better isn’t always easy. It requires an open-mind and a willingness to take a critical look at what you may be doing wrong.
Optimizing your site’s layout and user experience improves its ability to serve your customers, increases your conversion rates, and grows your business in the long run.
If you think your site could use a reassessment, add your questions to the comments below so we can point you in the right direction in designing a more powerful website for your business.
