Create your website for optimal user experience

You might spend hours crafting messages on your website, but your website users spend only seconds before they decide to linger a few minutes, or bail and search elsewhere.

Online users are active, says Marjie Goodman, digital content and collaboration strategist for DEG, a fast-growing, full-service digital agency based in Kansas City.

Marjie Goodman

Your website visitors have a task in mind and generally it’s a search engine that brings them there, Marjie says. About 89 percent of users do a search when looking for information and they look at an average of three sites per search. If your website is to remain competitive in a crowded field that includes 3 billion searches daily, indexing 50 billion pages, your content needs to be the following:

• Simple to understand
• Uses keywords
• Is engaging
• Answers users’ questions and more
• Attracts qualified users
• Embodies your brand
• Creates a relationship
• Increases conversions to your business

Marjie presented an overview of best practices in web design in a session, Online Writing for Good User Experience (UX), at the Kansas City IABC Business Communicators Summit on Feb. 9.

Increasingly, more people visit websites on mobile devices than on desktop or laptop computers, making powerful graphics and good formatting of content essential. Your website should follow these best practices:

• Compelling content in the first two sections on the home page
• Use lists, providing step-by-step instructions
• One idea per paragraph
• Bullet points
• A call to action
• Ample white space
• Copy aligned flush left
• Compelling images
• Video – 28 percent of mobile users watch it
• Simple, direct, conversational style of writing • Short sentences written to an 8th grade level