Did you know there is an entire field around studying how people use websites? User Experience designers do extensive work within a team to figure out pain points within a website or design and create solutions to solve them. Any time you have a positive experience on a website, whether you are cognizant of it or not, some level of user experience design has gone into it.
Sometimes user experience design is a carefully thought out navigation. We often think about typical groupings of pages, what pages the pages are titled, and if there are multiple navigation groups. There’s also consideration to if the use of a mega-menu is needed to aid users weeding through multiple categories of content.
A user experience (or UX) designer will also consider page layout. There are usually two main objectives when a user visits a site, to find information or to complete an action. Being able to quickly skim pages and find the appropriate section is key. Clear headlines, and verbiage organized in a simple way will always aid you during the process. If they can complete their objective without the hassle of looking through every page they are more likely to have a positive experience with your brand.
Age, socioeconomic status, gender, and location are also factors that UX designers consider when designing a site. We may consider font and font size for older clientele we know who may be experiencing sight degeneration as smaller fonts could lead to a negative experience for them. A gym website focusing on high intensity workouts might target males in their 20s who would react positively to high contrast and action words.
You can see that user experience design relates to all aspects of the website and creating the right combination of decisions to get the end users through the site without issues. User Experience design is often one invisible portion of the site because you don’t notice it when it’s good, but you really notice it when it’s bad. Here at Web Strategies, we always consider usability and design when creating a website, with your customers in mind. Give us a call if you’re experiencing some less than ideal usability on your site to discuss how we can get it back to its glory.