When developing a website, it is all too easy to concentrate on the design and layout of the site and forget the most important aspect – the user experience. You only have about 15 seconds to make a favorable impression on your audience. If they cannot easily accomplish their goals, they will take their business elsewhere.
Image Courtesy of Shutterstock
In order to improve your user experience (UX) you will need to look at everything from your page load times to your point of sales software. With just a few tools, you can not only drive more traffic to your site, you can improve conversions, as well.
The first step toward improving your UX is to collect data. MouseStat allows you to watch all of your visitors’ mouse movements, scrolls, clicks, and keystrokes as a movie. Interactive heat maps allow you to see which areas of the page attract attention and which confuse users, making it perfect for A/B. These real-time heatmaps give you an inside glimpse into where your visitors are dropping in the sales conversion funnel and where exactly you should place your call-to-action button and ads.
All good, usable sites start off with a plan. If you’re a visual person, mind maps and flowcharts are helpful for creating any necessary diagrams. XMind offers a simple-to-use tool that provides various chart structures, all of which can be easily implemented within a single mind map.
Team members can share the charts with each other via Local Network Sharing saving time on emails, or get feedback by uploading it to their online mind map library. For ease of use, you can export to different file types: PDF, Word, PPT, Excel, and SVG.
UXPin allows you to apply the data you collected to create interactive prototypes of your site. It offers a huge library of UI elements, templates, and a drag and drop interface, making it easy for everyone to collaborate on the project.
Unlike other similar services, UXPin is a browser-based service that saves your projects to the cloud. Some benefits of this include no installs or updates for the software, real-time collaboration, and disaster protection. UXPin is such a useful tool that companies like Google and Salesforce have used it to prototype their own redesigns.
While heatmaps and analytics will give you a good idea of what works on your site, they can’t replace direct user feedback. TryMyUI provides you with a narrated video of each user as they navigate your site and try to perform the tasks that you want. You can pinpoint the amount of users you want to take part in your survey and their demographic profile to better suit your needs.
The video component of TryMyUI is what really makes this stand out from the other survey tools available. Not only do you get to see every click and scroll, you get to hear them voice their irritation on certain components of your UX. Companies like YouTube and CNN have made great use out of this service.
Nothing loses customers faster than slow loading pages. In fact, most people have problems waiting even 250 milliseconds for a page to load. If your site takes upwards of 2 seconds, your audience will leave before they even get a chance to look at your products. Google PageSpeed analyzes a web page and gives suggestions on how to make it faster on both mobile and desktop computers. It’s a very straightforward yet simple tool that can drastically improve your UX.
Google Analytics might be able to provide you with deep insights into your page data, but it doesn’t have the human focus like KISSMetrics does. While a premium tool, KISSMetrics provides highly flexible data reporting options that tracks your customers’ interactions with your site. It will identify exactly where and how they are disconnecting throughout your entire conversion funnel.
You can also group people into different demographics, behaviors, and more to get in-depth analysis on what works on your site and what doesn’t. It’s one of the only analytics tools that provides you with a more personal data set and it is used by thousands of companies, including MailChimp and WordPress.
There are dozens of different browsers available so there are hundreds of ways your website can look and behave. CrossBrowserTesting ensures that your user experience is consistent across all browsers and platforms. Compare layouts in different browsers to make sure that they look the same and even interact with them to verify that your site functions properly.
Besides desktop browsers, you can also test across multiple mobile browsers to ensure responsiveness. If you do happen to find a bug, simply take a screenshot and submit it to their bug tracking system. Of all the browser testing tools, CrossBrowser Testing offers the most complete tool set.
Don’t Let Poor UX Scare Away Customers
A well planned user experience will have a positive impact on your business. Use all available resources, including your own customers, to tweak your site as necessary for best results.
