A user interface or UI is a platform that lets users interact with a website. It includes the navigation bar, buttons, and other controls and elements that allow users to make requests and get responses.
Together with UX (user experience), it is one of the primary drivers of website conversions. In this article, we list seven enhancements you can make you to your user interface to see better conversion rates and an influx of sales.
1. Simplify Your Layout
When designing your website, it’s easy to get carried away with the desire to stand out. You may be excited to try unique layouts and themes in the hopes that they will pique your customers’ interests.
While creativity is a huge plus in web design, straying too far from common patterns do more harm than good.
A study by Google revealed that websites with low visual complexity and high prototypicality are perceived as highly appealing. This means that users favor designs that look and feel familiar. The less conventional your pages look, the less likely people like them.
These findings support the fact that 76% of consumers want websites to give them the information they need quickly and easily. Visitors should be able to navigate through your website with minimal effort so as not to disrupt the buyer’s journey.
Think about your consumer’s goals when planning your user interface design. Make sure it is intuitive to use and streamlined. Avoid clutter and see to it that the most pertinent pieces of information and prompts are exactly where you’d expect them to appear.
2. Speed Up Your Site
One of the most crucial aspects of your website is its loading time. Nothing turns web users off more than slow-loading pages and graphics.
According to a survey, 40% of visitors bounce from a website when it takes more than three seconds to load. Even just a one-second delay in page responsiveness hurts conversion rates by at least seven percent (7%).
Site speed is often compromised when there are too many elements on your website. Although making your visuals pop and adding trendy functionalities seem like a brilliant idea, they should not taint the user experience.
Minimize the use of images or videos above the fold to cut down on your page size. If you’re using icons, stick to icon fonts instead of icon images. Since the former uses vectors rather than raster graphics, they reduce page load time by up to 14%.
3. Use Visual Cues
The world wide web is saturated with all sorts of domains and content. To get visitors to convert, you need to position yourself top of mind and encourage meaningful interactions with your brand.
Such exchanges occur below the fold, where you go into detail about your products or services. The caveat, of course, is you have to deliver a good first impression to entice visitors to stay and explore your site.
Visual cues are simple yet effective UI elements that guide users on what to do next. They prompt visitors to scroll down or play media content.
The effectiveness of visual cues is thanks to our instinct to respond to visual stimuli. Simply adding arrows and using colors strategically are excellent ways to direct visitors where to go. You can take this further by designing animated pointers or embedding photos that make use of eye line or gaze direction.
4. Label Icons
The goal of any UI designer is to make a user-friendly interface. To achieve this, the elements on a website must perform and respond predictably.
For example, the hamburger icon, which appears as three parallel horizontal lines, is used to indicate a collapsible menu. Users’ expectations are already set upon seeing it so assigning a different function to the icon would only leave visitors feeling confused and frustrated.
It’s best to stick to universally understood icons, but if you must have novel ones, make it a point to label them.
This applies not just to your navigation buttons but to every icon you put on your website. If you have trust badges or are showcasing popular clients, add headers to make clear what they are. Lines like “trusted by” and “guaranteed safe checkout” go a long way in building trust, thus increasing website conversions.
5. Optimize Your CTAs
Improving calls to action (CTAs) is a recurring theme when talking about website enhancements. They are buttons or lines of text that nudge visitors to keep reading, share content, and ultimately, make a purchase.
The reason why CTAs are widely discussed is more than 90% of visitors read them. They are key elements in increasing website conversions and revenue.
Among the most common types of CTAs is the anchor text CTA or text-based prompts linked to relevant pages. According to HubSpot, these outperform CTA buttons in driving conversions by 121%. While data supports this claim, you should consider your own context when deciding which one to use.
Anchor text CTAs work best for articles but when you’re on a landing page, you want a large clickable area, especially for mobile users. Remember to choose the right color and font depending on what response you’re trying to elicit. If you’re afraid they’d slow down your website, have your web developer swap images for sophisticated CSS buttons.
6. Improve Your Site Search
A search bar is a non-negotiable feature to be included in a website. It is the ultimate time-saving tool for customers who more or less have an idea of what they’re looking for.
On average, 30% of visitors will use your site search function. Of these users, 91% are likely to make a transaction.
What you have to keep in mind when designing your site search is that people are used to getting fast and accurate search results on Google. As a result, they expect the same level of efficiency when using on-site search bars.
Improving your site search involves ensuring it gives relevant results quickly and in a logical and organized fashion. Your search bar should also learn from user behavior and be forgiving of misspellings. These enhancements can boost your conversion rates by 30-50%.
7. Leave Room for White Space
Seasoned web designers can attest to the importance of white space. Also known as negative space, this is the part of a website that is intentionally left blank.
When you try to fit too many things on the screen, it overwhelms users with content and visual stimuli. Clean empty spaces declutter your website and give it a welcoming, polished look.
White space is also great for drawing focus on important information. Since human eyes love white spaces, it’s good practice to increase the negative space around text or media you want to be emphasized. This is usually a better design choice than just making other elements bigger.
Used correctly, you’ll notice favorable changes in user behavior and an overall conversion rate increase of up to 20%.
Bonus Tip: Test Your Enhancements
How you tweak your UI design must be based on your customers’ needs and the specific context you occupy.
Designs that work for other companies may not necessarily work for you. Implement these enhancements, track your progress, conduct testing, and always be open to changing your approach.
Ready to grow your business? Work with professional web developers and designers to streamline your user interface. Get in touch with DevWerkz today.