UX optimized webpage guide: UX optimization (user experience) within your website is extremely important to achieve success. User experience is all aspects of a person’s interaction with a digital system. This includes the interface, graphics, industrial design, and physical interaction.
We did a little research and leveraged UX to create a guide to the perfect fall weekend in Cincinnati. You will find the best places to go for coffee, brunch, dinner, dessert, and even events to attend. You can find that webpage here The Perfect Fall Weekend Guide Cincinnati Style. Below are just a few of the factors to consider when doing UX optimization on the web.
Responsiveness
What was once considered a “nice to have” feature is now critical. It’s safe to assume that half of the visitors on your webpage are viewing it on a mobile device or tablet. Your webpage has to “respond” to the device and display a customized and appropriate layout and format for that device. Showing a tiny version of a full-sized webpage layout on a phone screen is not acceptable. Google is penalizing sites that are not mobile friendly as well. The fall guide was built using WordPress with a responsive theme. Then additional customization was done for maximizing the use of space on larger screens by incorporating columns. The columns respond by collapsing to a single column on small devices.
Learnability
Learnability of a website is the ease with which users can learn it rapidly and remember it forever. This can be created by managing the learning curve. The learning curve is the flow of events on the website that allows users to come into contact with simple tasks at first, and as the user travels through the site it becomes increasingly complex.
The fall guide is very simple, but an example of learnability was resisting the temptation to add some extra large icons without any text. It would have looked cool, but that wasn’t optimal for all users. Not everyone is immediately familiar with the graphical icons so we instead used smaller, less distracting icons and added instructional words next to them. Both the icon and words link to the same place – so either can be used. The smaller icons and fonts matching the content size and color are less distracting. It’s easy to find them where you expect without breaking the flow of the guide.
Effectiveness
The effectiveness of your webpage can be determined by the ability of users to complete their desired tasks without encountering any problems or difficult situations. Your website is considered to be ineffective if a user visits and leaves without completing a task or finding the answer they were looking for. Functionality and accessibility are the two most important factors to consider to increase the effectiveness. The Fall Weekend Guide is not complex and we won’t be measuring the users ability to complete any desired tasks. We did design it to remove any obstacles to finding the perfect thing to do this fall weekend and provide some tools to do so (links for directions, phone numbers, more information).
Efficiency
The efficiency of your website determines the speed and ease of use that your visitors experience while using it. Having a clear “call to action” Is extremely important. This is what directs the customers. For example “Buy Now and Save”, “Place Your Order Here” or “Sign In”. It points the customer in the right direction. Creative headlines, enticing offers, and a narrow focus are all important factors to an efficient webpage. The Perfect Fall Weekend Guide Cincinnati Style has no strong call to action but was designed to be an easy to read and visually pleasing. Finally, creative headlines were used and the focus was narrowed (this was hard with all the great fall things to do in Greater Cincy).
Next time you want to find the best place to eat, get a drink or just have fun, hopefully, there will be a UX optimized website there to help.
If you are interested in having us help with your UX optimization Contact Us Now.