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On-page elements to optimize for better UX

In our digital age, creating a great-looking webpage is no longer enough to draw in customers. Your website needs to be trustworthy, user-friendly, and fast-loading to encourage customers to stay and purchase your product. 

In short, your web page needs to offer a great user experience (UX).

But how do you create a great user experience? With constant updates to search engine algorithms, it can be tricky to know what to focus on to make a difference.

Last updated

29 May 2023

Reading time

7 min

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Medi Jones from Website Builder Expert discusses several key on-page elements that can significantly impact your site's UX, including navigation, page speed, mobile responsiveness, customer journey, and more. 

After reading this article, you'll have a clear idea of what it takes to create a user-friendly website that your visitors will love to explore. Ready to take your website to the next level? Let's dive in!

What is UX?

UX (user experience) is your website’s user experience, which is dictated by how people interact with your website and how easy it is for them to use. A website that looks great but has lots of broken links and is difficult to navigate would have poor UX. 

Good UX is crucial when designing your website. Regardless of how many hits you’re getting, your customers will simply click away if you have poor UX. Good UX means a technically well-built website, a strong and cohesive design, and an intuitive interface. 

Why is UX important?

UX is what drives the customer journey. A streamlined customer journey builds customer loyalty, develops a brand following, and ultimately drives sales. 

As with a sales pitch, a customer’s journey through a website must be positioned correctly to enhance the possibility of a sale. You need to captivate them with your images, dazzle them with your blog posts, delight them with your copywriting, and end their journey on your sales page. 

However, if you have poor UX, your customer will become disillusioned by broken links and low-quality graphic design. They may not find their needs met or become frustrated. Did you know that 88% of website visitors do not return after a bad experience? Poor UX means customers click away and stay away. Conversely, improving UX helps increase conversion.

The 7 principles of good UX

So, how do you design a great user experience? You must consider the seven principles of good UX when creating your website. This includes whether the content is:

  1. Useful. Does the content match the user’s search intent? For example, if the user searches “how to cook great chocolate brownies,” a web page with a sugar cookie recipe will not match the user’s intent. 

  2. Useable. Is the website intuitive and easy to use? Increasing usability includes ensuring pages are well-labeled, have no broken links, and have straightforward navigation. 

  3. Desirable. The website should be well-designed, and each page should have a similar style. This makes the website look professional and cohesive. 

  4. Findable. It should be easy for users to find what they’re looking for. Each web page should be available through a menu or search system.

  5. Credible. The website should look professional, include up-to-date information, and include contact details for the business owner. These are called ‘trust signals’, which help users see your page as legitimate. 

  6. Accessible. The website should be available across all platforms, including desktop and mobile devices. Bad mobile optimization frustrates and overwhelms customers. In fact, 48% of mobile users are annoyed by poor optimization. Ensure any images are mobile-friendly and that blocks of text are separated into 2–3 sentences to prevent them from taking up the whole screen. 

  7. Valuable. The website should be of value to visitors. Include relevant information on your website that competitors aren’t, in order to capture your target market.

Top 5 on-page elements of UX optimization

In addition to the seven core principles of great website UX, here are five tips for optimizing on-page UX:

1. Keyword research

Conducting keyword research will ensure your web page matches the user’s intent. This increases the usefulness and value of your page and improves the customer journey.

When completing keyword research, you should first consider what information the customer is looking for and how that ties in with your business. For example, if you are a smoothie store in Boston, “Boston smoothie store,” “smoothie places in Boston,” and "Acai bowls near me” are all highly ranked keywords. Try including each of these 2–4 times to enhance on-page SEO.

Also try analyzing competitor web pages for the top-ranking words to find your own keywords. You can check the ‘also asked’ section of Google for other questions your target user might ask. Answer those questions in your blog post to improve SEO.

2. Content

Your website content is vital to your brand’s success. 

Your content needs to answer your customer’s questions in a conversational and informative way. Focus on writing first for humans, and second for the algorithm. While SEO is important, strong on-page UX is about customer experience. 

Blog posts are a great way to build a knowledge bank for your customer to consider. Your content should be original, informative, and easy to read. You can include lots of keywords, diagrams, and other images to closely match user intent. Be sure to include 3–5% keywords (an average of 4 keywords per 1000) in your blog post to hit the SEO sweet spot and avoid keyword stuffing

3. User-friendly site navigation

Your site navigation system should be intuitive and easy to understand. Customers will become frustrated and abandon their cart if a website is unnecessarily complicated or has hidden pages. 

Developing an intuitive and user-friendly navigation system doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll need to carefully design your customer journey over weeks and months for optimal results. 

To begin, create a list of scenarios or a customer journey that visitors will likely experience on your website. This might include:

Landing page > Pricing Page > General Blog Page > Specific Blog Page > Linked Blog Page > Purchase Page

or

Specific Blog Page > General Blog Page > Specific Blog Page > Company Information > Contact Information 

As you work through each scenario, consider whether any parts of the sales process might create challenges or bottlenecks for the user. It’s a good idea to use click maps to find your most popular customer journeys and to identify less obvious bottlenecks. 

Once you have identified your website’s pain points, simplify the customer journey to prevent these challenges. One solution could be introducing a search bar to your web page so customers can easily find information. You could also try removing unnecessary web pages, reducing the number of redirections, and using UX feedback tools to understand what your customers think of your website. 

4. Trust signals

Trust signals are the elements of your website that boost your brand’s credibility and instill confidence in your customers. A trust signal makes a client feel more comfortable with your brand. These might include:

  • A clear brand logo

  • A consistent design across your website

  • Customer testimonials

  • Links to social media accounts

  • Client success stories

  • SSL certificate 

  • Links to external sources

  • Up-to-date contact information

  • Regular blog posts

  • High-resolution images

While these elements may be small individually, together they strengthen brand image and increase customer conversion. 

5. Accessibility

As mentioned above, your web page needs to be accessible and eye-catching on every platform available to your customers. You should playtest your website on desktop, iOS, and Android devices before releasing it to your customers. This will allow you to work through any bugs, coding errors, or broken links before release. 

Accessibility means making your website accessible to everyone. If there is a lot of text on your webpage, consider installing text-to-speech software and ensure the text is large enough to be readable on all mobile devices. You should also include descriptive alt-tags on all images. This ensures everyone can enjoy your web page equally.

Conclusion

Having a great user experience is key to converting clicks to sales. Optimizing your on-page elements makes it easier and more enjoyable for your visitors to navigate your site, and increases the likelihood that they will stick around and engage with your content.

To optimize your website’s UX, focus on creating keyword-rich and original blog content, minimizing webpage load time, streamlining your customer journey, and creating a beautiful website design. Covering these elements will help your website achieve the seven principles of good UX, building credibility and brand loyalty.

There are several analytical tools you can use to help you understand your customer’s website experience. However, improving your site's UX is an ongoing process. Keep testing, tweaking, and analyzing to ensure that your visitors are having the best possible experience on your site.

Improve UX with product experience insights from Hotjar

Use Hotjar to understand how real users are experiencing your website or app—then improve it for them!