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With so many websites competing for consumer attention, yours must stand out as one with an exceptional user experience. Consumers today want their digital experiences to be pleasant and relevant to their needs. When a website fails to meet these expectations, they will quickly abandon it.
Your website’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) significantly impact visitors’ perception of your business. A website that looks good and functions well is more likely to keep visitors engaged and encourage them to return.
In this blog, we will explore the influence of UI and UX on website traffic and discuss why businesses should prioritize designing beautiful, functional websites as part of their online business strategy.
UI and UX are closely related and essential in encouraging positive online interactions between your customers and your business. UI refers to the visual elements of a website, such as a layout, typography, and colour scheme, while UX refers to how users interact with the website.
A website with a clear and intuitive interface and seamless UX will encourage visitors to stay on the site longer and interact with it more deeply. This can lead to several benefits, including increased traffic, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, improving user experience and interface design can significantly increase conversion lift, potentially up to 83%.
Fortunately, website builders like Squarespace and WordPress make it easy to build, design, and optimize your site, even without a bachelor’s in engineering or graphic design. These platforms offer numerous website templates that you can customize to match your branding, along with plugins you can use to equip your site with user-friendly features.
Because internet users have a decreasing attention span, businesses must ensure they make a positive first impression from one glance at their website. Researchers have found that people can form an opinion on a website in as fast as 50 milliseconds, which means that you have a very narrow window to convince visitors to stay and interact with your site. A well-designed website with a user-friendly interface can help you do just that.
High bounce rates are a significant obstacle to data collection. When visitors leave your website before completing any actions, you lose the opportunity to gain insights into their behaviour and preferences.
A 2023 report from NewVantage Partners showed that over 90% of firms that invested in analytics experienced a return in measurable business value, suggesting that businesses that fail to address high bounce rates are missing out on significant opportunities.
A high bounce rate can be caused by various factors, like a lack of relevant content, a poor website design, or an unclear navigation system. As much as 90% of people would leave a site solely due to poor design, according to FinancesOnline.
Meanwhile, as much as 88% are less likely to return to a website after having a bad user experience. By optimizing UI/UX design and providing a smooth and intuitive user experience, you can entice and keep visitors engaged on your website, resulting in more opportunities to collect data.
UI and UX design is crucial to search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google constantly refine their algorithms to provide searchers with the best possible answers to their questions. As the internet becomes littered with low-quality sites, they now consider factors like user experience, page load speed, and mobile-friendliness indicators of a website’s quality and relevance.
Good UI and UX design can help you improve on all of these factors, leading to a higher search engine result placement. A well-designed website will typically be simple to navigate, have clear calls to action, and load quickly on desktop and mobile devices. These make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website and for users to find the information they need when they visit from the search results.
A well-designed website can also ensure that your content is structured in a way that is easy to find via voice search, which is becoming increasingly popular. Over 40% of U.S. adults now use voice assistants to conduct searches each day, according to DemandSage.
Slow website loading times are a major pain point for users and can significantly diminish their perception of your site. According to Kissmetrics, 47% of internet users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds. Even users who stay on your site will be less likely to convert or revisit: every three seconds of waiting time diminishes customer satisfaction by a whopping 16%.
Various design and user experience elements like image sizes, code efficiency, and server response time can all impact how fast and smoothly your website runs. By optimising these elements according to the principles of UI and UX design, you can improve your website performance.
The ultimate goal of any website is to drive conversions, whether that means getting visitors to sign up for a newsletter, make a purchase, or contact the business. However, poor design can make it difficult for visitors to complete these actions.
Good design can help create a positive customer experience, making them more likely to revisit and purchase from your site. In contrast, neglecting UI and UX can directly lead to visitors jumping to competitors: a 2022 report from Verint showed that 64% of consumers have switched to a competitor after a poor customer experience.
Researchers have found that 75% of internet users judge a website’s credibility based on its design. This means that the look of your site and works can make or break visitors’ perceptions of your brand. A visually appealing, professional, and user-friendly UI/UX design conveys authority and trust, while a poorly designed website can make your brand look unprofessional and untrustworthy.
Social media has made word-of-mouth marketing more powerful than ever. According to Smartly.io, 57% of U.S. adults use social media to discover new brands. A well-designed website is more likely to be shared on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, resulting in brand awareness and website traffic spikes.
However, social media can also be a double-edged sword. Unsatisfied visitors can easily share negative feedback on their social media profiles, damaging your brand reputation.
Research shows that approximately 44% of internet users would tell their friends about a bad experience with a website, with 13% saying they would share their bad experiences with 15 or more people. This is why it is so important to invest in creating a website that is both visually appealing and user-friendly.
Investing in your website’s user experience and interface design is not just about aesthetics; it directly influences traffic and user engagement. The statistics speak for themselves: well-designed websites can result in numerous positive outcomes for your business. By prioritising UI and UX, you can create a compelling digital experience that attracts visitors, keeps them engaged, and generates consistent conversions.
