Is your website easy to navigate? Your site may be visually appealing but does it sell your business effectively online? Improving usability increases revenue. It is vital to take a close look at your website from time to time, imagining yourself as your potential online customer and asking the question:
Can potential customers attracted by rich content and smart design actually find and purchase what they are looking for from this website?
In this blog we give you 4 simple ways to ensure your website continually offers the best user experience.
Broken links on webpages
We’ve all been there the dreaded “404 error”. Broken links are not just annoying and unsightly. A single broken link has the potential to:
• Seriously impact your search engine rankings
• Jeopardise your site’s overall user experience
• Cause users to click off your site entirely, which will mean loss of customers and revenue!
What causes broken links and what can be done?
Broken links are commonly caused by either forgetting to change internal links when renaming or moving a webpage, linking to content which has been previously deleted or moved or by linking to a third party webpage. Remembering to change internal links when you move/rename a webpage and removing links to dead content can protect against those pesky “404 errors”.
Broken images on webpages
We all know what broken images are; they are the little icons (like a piece of paper ripped in half) that show up in place of an image on a site. They make a website look low quality, poorly managed and as with broken links they detract from the overall user experience.
What causes broken images and what can be done?
Broken images may appear if the original image does not exist anymore, the image may not be named correctly, or the code used to identify the image may be incorrect. Double checking the names and code names of your images may highlight simple corrections needed. If the image is dead, you can remove or replace it with another to improve the user experience.
Having email addresses that are non-clickable
Non-clickable email addresses are a big problem that affects user experience. Non-clickable email addresses disrupt the consumer’s path to contacting the seller for sales enquiries or customer care. As a direct result of this online retailers can lose business.
The ease at which a user can navigate through your website is vital to experiencing online success. Being too heavy on text or images can make navigation (especially from a mobile device) a nightmare.
There should be a clear and concise “call to action” from your landing pages. This may be in the form of a “buy now” button, a contact form or even a “click to call” button.
You must ensure that users are subtly reminded to contact you or buy from you throughout their time spent on your site.
If you are experiencing trouble correcting any of the problems above call one of our webmasters on 01 4404001 or Email Us we’d be happy to help.