10 Nov Improve the User Experience on Your WordPress Website with These Tips

Did you know that 22 percent of new domains in the United States are powered by WordPress? It’s true. This is one of the most popular content management systems available today. However, even though the CMS is popular and widely used, it doesn’t mean that it’s a “set it and forget it” situation.

If you want to ensure your visitors have a great experience while on your website, you have to make sure they do. User experience matters. You only have a few seconds to convince someone to stick around – make those seconds count.

While you can hire the professionals, such as Minneapolis Web Design – Hook Agency to help with your WordPress site’s user experience, you can also use the tips here. Doing so will help ensure your site provides exactly what your customers want and need.

Choose a Simple, Clean Design

In most cases, a bad web designer is going to be more worried about making something that looks great, rather than a site that’s actually functional. Believe it or not, visitors always prefer function over looks. When you are designing your WordPress website, there’s a question you need to keep in mind – is it going to confuse your visitors?

Intriguing and unique designs may win great awards, but their nature is to be a usability nightmare. Why is this, you may wonder? Because, your visitors like predictability. They are going to want to see certain elements in certain locations. If they don’t, then they may become frustrated and confused – if this happens, chances are they will just leave.

There is no reason you can’t use a standard layout for your site. And, what you may not realize is how much you can do with standard layouts on WordPress. Take some time to explore this option to see how it can benefit your website.

Make Your Navigation Obvious and Easy

Your end user needs to be able to easily navigate through your website. You should present one, or more than one, element that makes it easy for visitors to find what they are searching for. One of more of the following navigational tools is beneficial:

• Breadcrumbs
• Navigation bar
• Archives page
• Categories list on your sidebar
• Search box in your sidebar

You can use the Custom Menus feature in WordPress to help you arrange and to name the essential pages on your site.

Give Your Visitors a Place to Start

While having a viral post that gets people coming to your site like crazy is great, it’s also not something everyone can achieve. As a result, you need to take steps to improve your user experience significantly by providing your new visitors a bit of help when it comes to showing them how your site is beneficial.

One way to do this is with a feature box, which needs to be found at the top of your webpage, and that gives your visitors an idea of what you do or offer. You may also want to include an opt-in form here. In addition to the feature box, you can also create a “Start Here” page. The purpose is simple – to outline your site’s benefits and give people actionable steps to go through what you offer.

As you can see, there are several ways you can optimize, even a simple WordPress website, to provide a superior user experience. Keep the information here in mind to ensure you provide your visitors what the information they want, in an easy to use and fin manner. This will boost your site’s popularity and visibility.