Most companies spend a lot of time and money to make sure their website is up to date and provides great experience for a user, but all-too-often small things get overlooked or ignored. While some of these things may seem like minor details, they come with a high, unfavorable price: Best-case scenario, a user stays on your site and has a negative experience. Worst-case scenario, the user leaves your site and your company loses potential business. Don’t let these silly mistakes happen to you! Here are some common UX faux-pas and how they can be easily fixed.
1. Poorly Structured Results Page
For B2C’s, a results page is a crucial part of the website; Typically, this is where a user will be browsing for products and may potentially choose one to purchase. Usually, a site’s result page is using a grid to display pictures of the results. All too often, however, sites don’t fill out the entire grid so there will be one or two empty spaces left out in the last row, even though it’s not actually the end of the results. Now maybe this is just my OCD kicking in but it drives me crazy! If I’m not paying attention, sometimes I'll think I’m at the end of the results and that I have nothing else to see and either leave the site or move onto something else. I only saw a page of results—and possibly missed out on the product I was looking for—because the results page was poorly structured. Not a mistake you want your users making.
Pro-tip:
Studies show that users are likely to view the content in the bottom right of a web page last. In the example above, even though there were more results to be shown, there was no clear call-to-action to view more results. While one solution is to make sure all grid spaces are filled if there are more results on another page, we should also make sure there is a clear call-to-action to click “Next” or “View More Results” once we scroll to the end. Nordstrom has a clear pagination at the bottom of their results lists that shows you what page you are on, and how many pages there are total, as well as a separate call-to-action to go to the next page.
2. Having to Call for Information
We’re not all phone people. Some would much rather fill out a contact form or send an email. It may come down to a personal preference, but only offering a phone number as a point of contact is an easy way lose out on potential business. .
Pro-tip:
Always include a contact form! Even if it’s just a simple email field with a comment box, this way your users can get in touch with you quickly, and when it’s convenient and top-of-mind. Be sure to only require the necessary information on a contact form. A user who just wants to ask a simple question about a product or your company, does not want to fill out 10 fields with alternate phone numbers, addresses, etc. Try to think about the goal of your contact form, and the least amount of information you need from a user to be successful.
3. Endless Scrolling with No Return
I don’t mind reading long articles or being presented with a long page, however, if there’s no easy way to get back to the top of the page or no easy way to access the navigation, we’ve got an issue. After finishing a long page, I may want to access another page on the site but if there’s no easy way to get back to the navigation, chances are I will just move on to something else, and most likely it will be off of your site. Another example is a results page with filters at the top. If the list is very long and I want to change my filters but I have to keep scrolling and scrolling to get back up there, I will probably just get frustrated.
Pro-tip:
A best practice for pages with a lot of content that you know will scroll forever, is to include a “back to top” link. One method is to use javascript to detect how far a user has scrolled, and decide when to show this link. Other sites always display a “back to top” link, typically in the bottom right corner. Sephora has a nice, small CTA to go back to the “Top”.
4. Not Optimized for Mobile
This applies to both mobile and desktop sites. If I’m browsing on my phone and need to click to ‘View the Full Site’ or request the desktop version to view information I need, something’s wrong. Most people are using their phones to browse the web which means most, if not all, of your site should be accessible and displayed properly on a mobile phone. The same rule applies to the desktop version of a site. If your site is so simplified that it takes me too many clicks and digging through a bunch of pages to find what I need, I’m going to give up before I get there.
Pro-tip:
Responsive design is key when it comes to usability. The magic of responsive design is that you can still show everything that is on your desktop site on a mobile device, you just have to reconfigure the layout so that it is easier to read and navigate. Make sure your navigation is clear and easily accessible, and your font sizes are proportional to the screen size. Even if you are building a “mobile mini” site, as we like to call them, make sure you plan ahead and include all necessary and important information that your users need access to, even on the go. BAO's responsive site looks great on mobile, tablet and desktop.
5. Information Overload
While it’s important to give the user all of the information they may need, there is a fine line between information and information overload. When your website presents all of the information at once, with no real content hierarchy, the actual important information will tend to get lost and the user spends longer digging for what they actually want to know. There needs to be a balance of presenting the user with just enough information to help them find out what they need to know or to help them get to that information. Don't bombard the user all at once with information they may not be interested in.
Pro-tip:
When planning your website, pay close attention to the content hierarchy. This comes into our process during the strategy phase while we are wireframing. It really allows the clients, and us, to focus on the content and figure out what is most important to users so we can prioritize and lay out the information architecture, while being thoughtful about user experience. One rule of thumb is that you do not need to put everything on the home page!
Is your site guilty of any of these offenders? Help make the visit to your site more positive for your users and consider these tips.
