But have you ever thought about what your audiences need from your website and what a smooth user experience looks like for them?

According to Forrester Research, a smooth user experience can boost your website’s conversion rates by up to 200% (Yes, really!), But how do you make that happen?

Relax, we have got you covered. Here are five easy, practical, and yes, fun tips to turn your website into a user-friendly, conversion-generating machine. Let’s make your visitors feel at home and watch those improved conversions!

What Do Businesses Get Wrong About Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

While talking about conversion rate optimization (CRO), many businesses focus only on immediate tactics like A/B testing headlines or tweaking button colors. While these elements can impact, they often overlook the bigger picture: the overall user experience (UX). A common mistake is treating CRO as a not-important to consider rather than an integrated approach like a user journey. For example, a gaudy call-to-action might grab attention, but visitors will still abandon their carts if the navigation is clunky or the site is slow.

Another important misstep is ignoring the needs and behavior of the user. Businesses often implement generic CRO strategies without considering their users' specific preferences and pain points. For example, optimizing for desktop users when a significant portion of traffic comes from mobile can lead to missed opportunities. Understanding your audience through detailed analytics and user feedback is important. CRO is not just about increasing numbers; it's about creating a seamless, intuitive, and smooth experience that naturally leads to higher conversions.

But, What’s The Link Between UX And CRO?

Many businesses see CRO as a standalone effort focused only on increasing sales through quick fixes. However, CRO's success is improving the overall user experience (UX). For example, consider the checkout process: A streamlined and smooth checkout process reduces cart abandonment and leaves customers with a positive impression of your brand, increasing the likelihood of return visits and word-of-mouth referrals.

Moreover, other metrics like page load speed, mobile responsiveness, and clear navigation play important roles. A study by Google found that a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact conversion rates by up to 20%. Ensuring your website is fast and easy to navigate directly contributes to a better UX, which drives higher conversions. It's not just about tweaking individual elements but about viewing your website as a cohesive, user-centric ecosystem where every detail contributes to a smoother, more enjoyable user journey, ultimately leading to better conversion rates.

5 Tips To Improve Your UX And Boost Conversions

1. Focus on Building Trust

Your website likely asks users to spend money with you, which requires trust. Depending on your business, there might be ‘hidden’ costs, such as the effort needed to set up your solution.

To build this trust, you must ensure that your website appears credible and reliable, demonstrating that you will deliver on your promises.

(I) Use Trust Signals on Your Website

Trust signals are visual elements that showcase your authority, professionalism, and associations with other trustworthy providers. They help confirm that you are a genuine company with a healthy customer base. These can include:

1️⃣ Reviews and Testimonials: Real feedback from satisfied customers.

2️⃣ Payment Partner Logos: Include logos of trusted payment partners like Visa and Mastercard.

3️⃣ Security Information and Logos: Highlight your security measures with recognized symbols.

4️⃣ Return and Refund Policies: Clearly state your return and refund policies.

5️⃣ Pictures of Your Team and Premises: Show some behind-the-scenes of your business.

6️⃣ Social Media Links: Link your active and professional social media profiles.

(II) Empathize with Their Problems and Desires

Users want to check that you are an expert in their field, and your website should reflect an understanding of their challenges and needs. Empathy for users can't be faked. Invest time in understanding their problems and perspectives through focus groups, user interviews, and usability tests to build credibility.

Once you have a brief of your users’ behavior, you can:

1️⃣ Change Your Website Copy: Ensure your website copywriting reflects their problems, perspectives, and language.

2️⃣ Optimize Your Product or Service: Customize your offerings and guarantee that you address user pain points directly.

3️⃣ Create Informational Content: Develop content that showcases your expertise in areas where visitors need help.

(III) Remove Hurdles That Hurts Credibility

Improve your credibility by addressing common issues that reduce your website's professionalism:

1️⃣ Eliminate spelling, grammar errors, and typos.

2️⃣ Refine copywriting to match your audience's understanding, avoiding unnecessary jargon.

3️⃣ Regularly update your blog and social media with relevant, high-quality content.

4️⃣ Verify the functionality of internal and external links.

5️⃣ Address website bugs and display issues to ensure a seamless user experience.

2. Create engaging and intuitive visual UX

When optimizing your website's UX, tempt users with a creative and smooth design that impresses them and encourages them to navigate through the checkout process. However, the concept of usability and smooth user experience is true, particularly in SaaS or eCommerce websites where customers expect a standard look and feel.

Even with a conventional design approach, continuously evaluate the usability and accessibility of your content:

1️⃣ Ensure pages are appropriately structured in length.

2️⃣ Make essential call-to-action (CTA) buttons easy to locate.

3️⃣ Simplify navigation to key pages through the intuitive home page and sub-menu designs.

(I) Utilize Heatmaps to Gain Insights Into User Interactions

The heatmap tool tracks how users interact with individual pages, tracking scrolling, clicks (or taps), and mouse movements. These insights are invaluable for optimizing page layouts and improving overall user experience (UX). For example, scroll heatmaps indicate how far down a page users typically scroll, providing insights into the effectiveness of your page structure.

But there’s much more you can get from heatmaps. For example, riyo.ai’s Engagement Zones combine data from clicks, scrolls, and hover maps. By analyzing these hot spots of your website, you can pinpoint which areas of your page attract the most engagement.

This insight is much needed to understand what gets users’ attention and identify any distractions from important page elements.

(II) Get User Feedback to Understand What Works

The feedback feature or tool is a widget that users can click to share their thoughts about your site. Users can quickly submit their feedback, suggestions, or queries through forms, and the UBA tool will capture them and solve the query as soon as possible.

While users may not dictate UX changes directly, their feedback is valuable for identifying broken or poorly functioning on-page elements that need optimization for a better overall user experience.

(Marker.io: Users’ choice as best feedback form tool for website - 2024)

Yes, users may not point out specific UX changes. Still, their feedback can be incredibly valuable in identifying and fixing bugs or problematic on-page elements to improve the overall UX.

3. Check whether visitors have achieved their goals or not

Users visiting your site pursue various goals, which can be categorized into two main types.

👉 Macro goal: This bound their overarching objective, such as "obtain a new qualification to advance my career."

👉 Micro goals: These are the smaller, task-oriented objectives users aim to accomplish during their individual journeys, like "compare this programming course with others from similar providers."

Understanding the macro and micro goals at each stage of their journey allows you to customize your website's UX to meet their needs.

(I) Understand Your Users’ Jobs To Be Done

The jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework provides insights into users' macro goals. Unlike traditional marketing, which relies on personas and demographics, JTBD focuses on why people seek a product and the specific outcomes they expect from it.

While typically used in product development, applying JTBD principles to your website's UX involves conducting user interviews within this framework. These interviews reveal users' primary goals, guiding the development of your product, navigation, and site content.

(II) Map out your customer journeys

Develop a customer journey map that outlines the steps users take before, during, and after interacting with your site. This map helps define users' goals at each stage of their journey.

If you have conducted JTBD, you likely understand how customers discover and use products. However, additional research may be necessary to comprehend user paths and their specific goals along these paths fully.

(III) Audit Usability of Each Page

Now that you have mapped out your customer journey, assess how effectively each part of your website supports users in achieving their goals.

1️⃣ Could additional information aid decision-making?

2️⃣ Is there potentially distracting content that does not align with users’ goals?

3️⃣ Could restructuring content, such as relocating or recreating key call-to-action buttons, expedite goal attainment?

(IV) Optimize Website Navigation

Site menus and navigation bars are often overlooked, yet they are important in helping users meet their objectives. Consider the following strategies to improve them:

1️⃣ Utilize Google Analytics' Next Page Path report (now GA4) to identify frequently visited pages from your home and category pages.

2️⃣ Review click maps to determine which menu items receive the most and least clicks.

3️⃣ Rearrange menu bars and sub-menus to prioritize access to key pages.

4️⃣ Limit the primary menu bar to fewer than eight links.

5️⃣ Set clear, goal-oriented menu labels without unnecessary creative flair.

4. Find and fix the friction immediately

Friction can be anything that hinders or delays users from finding what they need on your website. It can manifest in various forms, such as:

• Broken links
• Poorly displayed page elements
• Slow-loading pages
• Confusing copy or page layout
• Lack of guidance

Removing friction from your site provides users a smoother journey towards their goals, leading to a better user experience (UX) and increased conversions.

(I) Identify Pages with Frictions

Start by pinpointing the parts of your site showing the highest signs of friction. Check for:

1️⃣ Page frequently visited just before users contact customer support

2️⃣ Pages where visitors often leave negative feedback

3️⃣ Pages with recent drops in conversions

4️⃣ Pages with unusually high exit rates

While it's normal for users to leave after visiting pages like ‘Contact Us,’ high exit rates on a product, checkout, or other conversion-focused pages indicate the need for closer examination to address friction.

(II) Identify Rage Click

‘Rage clicks’ occur when users repeatedly click the same spot in frustration, often due to non-functional forms or non-clickable elements that appear clickable. User analytics tools can track rage clicks, helping you identify frustrating elements on your page. You can generate a rage-click map from the session recording to see which elements receive the most aggravated clicking.

(III) Identify the Source of Friction

Next, analyze the individual pages and elements where issues occur. Here are two methods:

1️⃣ Visit the page yourself to identify non-functional elements.

2️⃣ View session recordings of the page to fix user journeys.

riyo.ai’s session recordings show exactly what each user experienced in real-time, helping you discover device- or browser-specific issues.

(IV) Find if Same Issues Occurs Elsewhere

Sometimes, the same issues occur on various pages of the same website; other times, they are recurring problems affecting multiple users. Look for patterns to determine the nature of each issue. For example, if a user can’t add a product to their cart, use heatmaps to check if this issue occurs on other product pages.

(V) Get Issues Fix Quickly

Addressing bugs and issues can significantly improve conversions. Report problems immediately to your design and development teams, including any relevant recordings or customer support tickets, to provide quick fixes.

5. Your website must be accessible for all devices

The key principle of UX is ensuring content is accessible across all devices and browsers. While most companies test their website designs on mobile, bugs, and issues often need to be noticed initially. Additionally, mobile and tablet browsing differ significantly from desktop browsing, making it important to continuously improve the user experience based on user feedback.

(I) Ensure Your Website is Responsive

Use Google's free Mobile-Friendly Test tool to verify your site's performance on mobile devices. Simply enter your URL for a quick assessment and a preview of how your site appears on mobile.

(II) Update Page Elements for Mobile Optimization

Even if your page is responsive, be mindful of small UX elements often overlooked on mobile websites. For example:

1️⃣ Non-optimized pop-ups can be difficult to close or interact with.

2️⃣ Auto-playing media can be intrusive and consume excessive data.

3️⃣ Long drop-down menus may not display well on mobile devices.

Regularly review and update these elements to ensure a seamless mobile user experience.

Did you know? Effective UX design starts with getting to know your users!

UX and conversion rate optimization (CRO) are actually linked because both prioritize the user. Good UX helps you meet your customers' needs more effectively, ensuring a faster and more satisfying journey.

However, achieving this requires understanding your users and their perspectives. To improve conversions, you need user behavior analytics tools that offer a comprehensive, 360-degree view of your users. With accurate data, you can eliminate guesswork and create experiences that resonate with your audience.

FAQs

(1) What are the 7 key factors of user experience?

The seven key user experience (UX) factors include usability, accessibility, desirability, findability, credibility, usefulness, and value.

(2) How can user experience be improved?

Better user experience focuses on user-centric design principles. Understand your users through research and feedback, simplify navigation, and ensure intuitive site design. Optimize load times, ensure mobile responsiveness, provide clear content, and use visuals effectively. Regularly test for usability issues, incorporate accessibility features, and continuously update the site to keep it relevant and engaging.

(3) What are the 5 Es of user experience?

The 5 Es of user experience are effective, efficient, engaging, error-tolerant, and easy to learn.

(4) What is the conversion rate in marketing?

In marketing, the conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete a desired action on a website, such as purchasing, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. It is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors and multiplying by 100. A high conversion rate indicates effective marketing strategies and a well-optimized website.

(5) What is conversion in UX design?

In UX design, conversion refers to successfully completing a specific user goal on a website, such as purchasing a product, downloading a resource, or subscribing to a service. Conversions are key indicators of how well a website meets its users’ needs and business objectives. Good UX design aims to facilitate these conversions by providing a seamless and intuitive user journey.

(6) How can you increase the conversion rate through UX?

To increase the conversion rate through UX, you must create a user-friendly, engaging website by understanding user needs and behaviors through research and analytics. Simplify navigation, reduce friction points, use clear call-to-action buttons, optimize load times, and ensure mobile-friendliness. Continuously test and refine the design based on user feedback and behavior data.