Why Your Business Website Needs to Be User-Friendly: A Guide for Success

Starting and running a website isn’t easy. If you are in charge of one then you need to optimise it so that it runs as well as it possibly can. Unfortunately, the process of optimising a website isn’t easy. It can actually take years of research and studying before an individual can effectively optimise theirs.

In this post, you will learn why your website needs to be user-friendly. For the purpose of it, the terms “user-friendly” and “optimised” will be synonymous since they are one and the same. The better optimised your site is, the more user-friendly it will be.

Achieve Good Design

Before explaining why your business needs to be user-friendly it’s first necessary to briefly touch upon how to achieve such a site. If you want to know how to make your website design stand out and more importantly than that, make it a website that is easy to use, you need a professional’s support. Unless you have training in website design there is no way you will be able to optimise your site. Website design and optimisation take years of learning to master. If you do plan on hiring a website designer then read their reviews and make sure their customers think of them highly before doing business with them.

Increase Web Traffic

Did you know that by improving your site’s performance you can actually increase the amount of traffic that comes to it? When people use a website that is optimised and offers a quality product or service, they tell their loved ones. Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most effective, desired types. Of course, by optimising your site you can also increase its rank on SERPs, but that is something that will be covered in more detail later.

Increased traffic to your site makes it more likely that somebody will buy products or services from you. You do need to ensure that your site is designed in such a way that it makes it obvious what it is that you offer. Increased traffic is useless if you are not actively trying to sell products to people. When you are having your site built, tell the designer to include lots of CTAs (call-to-actions) and content explaining what the services or products you offer are.

Improve User Experience

An optimised site is a pleasant one to use. People have a very low tolerance for badly designed websites today. Years ago they were acceptable, back when the internet was in its infancy. Now there is so much competition online that if you have a badly designed website there is no way you can compete with rival businesses. It’s also worth noting that if your website isn’t designed very well there is a strong chance users of it are going to leave negative reviews on your website’s review page, venting their frustration and annoyance at how it performs.

On the topic of reviews, if you want your website to become more popular (and your business to make more sales) then you need to invest a lot of time and money into getting more of them. Positive reviews can be very good for your business’s reputation and profits. You can even buy fake reviews if you want. If fake reviews are something you are considering buying then you need to make sure that you purchase them from a reliable company, as some fake review firms offer ones that do not exactly look genuine and aren’t the best for attracting new clients.

Forge Long-term Relationships

When a customer visits your site, uses it, purchases products from you and has a good experience doing all of this then you are significantly more likely to return and do business with you again in the future. Forging long-term relationships with your customers should be one of your main priorities. A loyal customer base can help your business achieve financial and commercial success. The more loyal people are, the more highly they will talk of you too. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners are short-sighted and don’t invest a lot of money into forging long-term relationships with people.

In addition to offering customers a reliable, optimised site you should also give them methods of communicating with you directly like live chat, social media and an email address, the inbox of which you check on a daily basis. Forging long-term relationships with people can be a highly effective way of guaranteeing yourself business well into the future. If you are interested in doing this then you should, again, make a social media page. On social media, you can message your customers directly, with no intermediaries. Messaging customers in such a way can make them feel a lot more connected to you.

Rank Highly On Search Engines

Ranking highly on search engine results pages should be one of the main things that you want for your website. You see, if your website ranks highly then that means it will be a lot more visible. Customers will be able to find it more effectively. The more visible and discoverable your website is, the easier it’ll be for people to find your store and, of course, buy your products or services. Search engines rank websites according to their usefulness and how optimised they are. If you want your website to rank highly then you will need to invest a lot of money into improving the way that it performs.

There are a few things that you need to focus on specifically, mobile optimisation being the most important of these. If your website is not optimised for mobile users then no search engine is going to rank it highly. Search engines take mobile optimisation very seriously. When a website isn’t optimised for mobile use it is essentially alienating its customers. A large chunk of the internet’s users browse on their phones, so if you do not optimise yours for their use, then they won’t be able to browse your site, losing you customers.

Your website needs to perform as well as you can get it to. The better it performs the more likely it is that customers will buy your products or services. Invest a lot of time and money into achieving a website that performs well, as it will benefit you well into the future.