How Website Design Affects A User’s Experience

Many factors can affect a user’s enjoyment and satisfaction while perusing a website, but web design is the most influential. Most people would agree that an aesthetically pleasing website is key.

But beauty isn’t enough to keep users on your site or motivate them to tell their friends about the products or services you offer. For that to happen, you need a few more essential design elements. Before we explore these, let’s see what the term user experience even means.

What is user experience (UX)?

In this context, user experience (UX) is the overall experience a person has when interacting with a website. It can be measured by how easy and enjoyable the site is to navigate, among other factors. If a user’s experience is positive, it will be meaningful, relevant, and successful in achieving a defined goal.

How does web design provide a great user experience?

Web designers provide a great user experience when they keep the user’s consumption and needs in mind. UX web designers don’t just focus on creating usable sites. They also concentrate on other aspects of the user experience, such as efficiency, pleasure, and fun.*

Since users’ needs vary widely, a good user experience meets particular needs in specific contexts. Yet, there are some common questions that web designers try to address to help ensure their design will appeal to as many users as possible.

These are:

• What – looks at functionality and features
• How – addresses accessibility and aesthetics
• Why – questions users’ motivations, values, and views

What makes a successful website?

A successful website has high rankings and conversion rates. Below are some key attributes of a well-designed website.

Responsive

A website with a responsive design will automatically scale to the screen size on which it’s viewed. With 50% or more of all web searches performed on mobile devices, this website design feature is increasingly important. The web design Sydney company Australian Internet Advertising, specialises in this type of design.

Professional

A polished looking website can help instill confidence in your company with potential customers. Factual and consistent information offers legitimacy and can help users trust your site.

These details all contribute to a great user experience:

• intelligent page layout
• unified design elements
• suitable and consistent typography
• equitable distribution of information

Informative

With so much information on the web, users want to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. In web design, above the fold content is located prominently near the top of the homepage. More specifically, it’s what you see on the screen when you first open a site, regardless of the device you’re using.

A few essential elements every homepage should include above the fold are:

• your company logo
• navigational buttons
• your promise of value
• calls to action (CTAs)
• a visual image of your product

Captivating

If you’re one of the 55% of average readers whose attention span lasts for only 15 seconds*, you’ll agree there isn’t much time for a website to convince you it has something you want. With captivating and well-placed content, the odds of holding a user’s attention improve substantially. A first impression can hook or sink a potential customer.

Some components of web design that can help capture users’ attention are:

• interesting animation
• a winning combination of colors
• visually eye-catching and unique banners

Web design can have a big impact on whether a user will have a great user experience. A well-designed website will grab a user’s attention and keep the reader scrolling. When all the ingredients of a site have to fit into the palm of your hand, sometimes simple is best.