A website is non-negotiable for any business competing in the online marketplace.
Consider this hypothetical scenario: You own a beloved mom-and-pop shop and want to go digital. Your website becomes an extension of your physical store, like a digital front door that should feel just as welcoming and familiar.
Naturally, you’d want your website to reflect the same branding, values, and personality so customers feel the same satisfaction online as in person.
That self-same “feeling” is what we call user experience (UX).
Of course, not every online business comes from a brick-and-mortar shop, but the principle still holds. Your website must always be designed with your users’ experience in mind.
A key component of this experience is consistent and recognizable branding. For example, a logo maker can help you create a professional logo that aligns with your brand identity, ensuring a cohesive look and feel across your website and other digital platforms.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into website user experience, exploring 10 ways to optimize your site’s UX.
What Is Website User Experience?
While we’ve glossed over the concept above, here is a more comprehensive definition of user experience in the context of websites:
Website user experience is how a person feels when interacting with a website. It goes beyond just looks and considers factors such as ease of use, clarity, and satisfaction.
To measure sitewide UX, you simply have to put yourself in the shoes of site visitors and answer essential questions like:
- Is navigating your website intuitive?
- Are the loading times quick?
- Can you easily find the necessary information?
- Are the buttons where you’d expect them to be?
- Is there a learning curve to using your website?
If the answers to these questions are “no” or “not quite,” you might need to spruce up your UX game. Consider using an AI website generator if you need something quick and easy.
Website user experience focuses on how smoothly and pleasantly a user’s journey flows on a website.
If a website’s UX is good, users might feel confident, comfortable, and connected. This might encourage them to explore further and stay longer.
Take a look at Airbnb’s website:
While they don’t follow traditional navigation systems like other sites, they add all the essentials of a rental marketplace in the header: location, check-in and check-out dates, and guests.
Meanwhile, the body features images of the rental places, which are suitable for attention-grabbing and keeping visitors interested.
Conversely, visitors may feel frustrated when a website neglects UX, forcing some users to bounce off a page. In extreme scenarios, some users might ignore the website entirely for future searches.
For example, a well-known design agency might choose to be creative and unique with their website. However, without clear navigation, a cluttered design language, and unclear CTA, they might scare users from doing business with them.
A cluttered website can be jarring for site visitors.
User experience is especially crucial for conversion-focused websites, such as e-commerce, lead generation, and affiliate review. Otherwise, you might scare potential customers away even before they explore your services.
The Importance of Maintaining an Effective Sitewide User Experience
You can hire a sales representative to walk customers through the sales funnel, but they’re only available 40 hours a week.
How about those days when a warm lead is looking for exactly what you’re selling, and your sales rep is busy playing golf on a Sunday?
Missed business opportunity? Not quite. That’s where websites come in.
Think of websites as your round-the-clock sales rep, ready to greet visitors who stumble upon your landing page.
But just like any great salesperson, your website needs to know how to sell. In addition to your unique value proposition and clear-cut CTA, the user experience will also play a crucial role.
An effective sitewide UX ensures that every click, scroll, and interaction guides users toward your desired goal, whether completing a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or booking a service.
With that in mind, here are some of the key benefits of having an effective website user experience:
Positive sitewide user behavior
When a website has intuitive navigation and an engaging design, users are more likely to stick around and explore pages. This boosts your site’s essential analytics data, such as dwell time and clickthrough rates — helpful metrics that tell Google your site is high-quality.
However, users will leave your website quickly if it feels clunky and looks cluttered. When this happens, you can expect a lower time-on-site reading and increased bounce rate.
Better SEO performance
Search engines, like Google, reward websites that provide a positive user experience to people. For instance, a mobile-responsive website will perform exceptionally better on SERPs than websites optimized only for desktops.
User experience encompasses many things, including site-wide navigation and content. If your website has these covered, you can expect Google to reward it with good search engine positioning.
Higher conversion rate across all pages
Calls to action are only one piece of the puzzle regarding website conversion. Persuading site visitors to complete a desired action is a function of many factors, including frictionless navigation and consistent design
When visitors glide through your website smoothly, they feel more confident to take the desired action. In short, UX can turn casual browsers into loyal, action-taking customers.
Now that we’ve covered the definition and benefits of a good sitewide UX, what are some ways to improve your website? Keep reading.
How To Improve Website User Experience: 10 Tips
1. Keep navigation simple and sensible
Your website navigation system is like a map. If it’s confusing or convoluted, users will likely get lost on your website and possibly leave. Conversely, an intuitive menu helps visitors easily navigate your site and find desired information.
Here are some good sitewide navigation best practices to consider:
Keep your navigation header simple, about 5-7 links. Put your most important pages on the first and last links to maximize the “serial position effect.” This principle suggests users are likelier to remember the first and last items in a sequence.
Use clear labels that are distinguishable from the background and free from fancy jargon. Also, ensure the main menu is accessible from any page.
For example, users might get frustrated when the options become invisible depending on the hero image used on the homepage.
Avoid cascading dropdowns if you own a large e-commerce site with many categories, sub-categories, and products. Instead, use a mega menu so users can see every option at a glance without having to hover the mouse multiple times.
The key is to uncomplicate things for visitors to minimize user drop-off points.
2. Maintain a consistent design
Imagine if every McDonald’s franchise used a different color instead of its iconic red and yellow. The company would most likely not be as recognizable and famous as it is today.
Consistency in design is a key component of brand recognition. And the same applies to website user experience.
When a website uses the same logo, fonts, colors, buttons, and layouts across all pages, it feels cohesive and professional. This makes brand recognition much easier for users when presented with visual cues.
Meanwhile, inconsistency may mean visitors must reorient themselves with every click. This will only cause confusion, hurting your brand in the long run.
3. Boost page speed
With attention spans getting shorter by the second, speed should be a fundamental quality all websites share. A second slower, and a person might bounce off the page and choose another.
Users expect websites to load in two seconds or less; if yours lags, they’ll bounce. A fast-loading site creates a smooth, frustration-free experience that keeps visitors engaged and encourages them to explore.
Try analyzing your site using Google’s PageSpeed Insights:
This tool will tell you which areas you could improve to optimize your site speed.
For example, you may compress images, uninstall buggy plugins, minimize code, leverage browser caching, or choose a more reliable hosting provider.
Remember, even the best design won’t matter if your site loads too slowly.
4. Optimize the website for mobile
With the rapid rise of mobile users, mobile optimization is a non-negotiable in 2025. For a seamless user experience, ensure your website is responsive on all devices: desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
Every user is unique, and this is reflected in their preferred devices for accessing content. Plus, users may switch devices as they walk through your customer journey. It will likely throw off leads if your website works excellently on desktops but does horribly on mobile.
Thankfully, mobile responsiveness is a standard feature on most CMS, like WordPress, so mobile optimization isn’t as complicated as it used to be.
5. Integrate relevant keywords into the sitewide copy
Many think keyword research is solely used for SEO. That is not the case. Using the right keywords is also essential for providing a good user experience.
Naturally, integrating relevant keywords into your website copy helps visitors quickly find what they seek. Moreover, keywords allow you to identify and resonate with your target audience, which helps build rapport and encourages them to trust your brand.
While keywords matter, avoid overstuffing. Ensure that keywords are integrated organically without disrupting the prose of your content.
Take a look at this example from Google:
6. Offer E-E-A-T and engaging content
User experience encompasses a wide range of aspects, including content. With more websites competing for online traction and organic traffic, publishing generic AI content will not cut it.
Google recently revised its search rater guidelines, adding another letter E (experience) to its original E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This suggests that content must be keyword-rich, well-researched, insightful, and reflect real-life experiences — something AI cannot do.
Content that demonstrates E-E-A-T is naturally tailored to your audience’s interests and pain points. This makes them more likely to meet searchers’ needs, avoid indexing issues, and perform better in SERPs.
In addition to engaging content, it’s advisable to make content visually appealing by adding elements such as images, videos, and infographics.
7. Build highly contextual internal links
If the navigation menu takes users to the website’s key pages, contextual links allow users to explore relevant information in their search journey.
Contextual links, also known as in-text links, are hyperlinks in your content’s body. They provide related reading for users, encouraging them to explore the website further.
While building internal links can be done manually, this process is not scalable for larger websites. This is where internal linking tools come into play.
Plugins like Link Whisper or standalone tools like LinkStorm use AI systems to provide sitewide internal linking suggestions.
This removes the need to manually jump from page to page, looking for linking opportunities, allowing you to focus on more high-level business activities.
8. Minimize friction as much as possible
Friction refers to anything that disrupts the user’s journey on your site.
More friction means more drop-off points that can prevent people from completing your desired action on a website. Conversely, less friction means fewer obstacles separating visitors from your CTA.
For example, this could mean simplifying forms, reducing the number of clicks needed to complete a task, or making it easy for users to find the desired page.
Consider two websites offering an ebook lead magnet to build an email list:
If Site A asks for name and email address, and Site B asks for more details like occupation, company, industry, and others, which of the two do you think users will be more keen to complete? If you answered Site A, you’d be correct!
Every moment of confusion or difficulty increases the likelihood of users abandoning your site.
9. Ensure your website is free from errors
Website errors can happen inadvertently. A simple site restructuring can lead to broken links, or a human error can lead to incorrect forms.
These issues can create a frustrating user experience and damage your credibility. Moreover, errors like broken links, redirect chains or loops, or unintentional nofollow tags can also impact your site’s SEO performance.
The key is regularly testing and monitoring your website to identify and fix issues promptly. For this purpose, you can use SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Screaming Frog.
10. Use attention-grabbing and persuasive CTA
A CTA button tells visitors what you want them to do. Calls-to-action can vary from one website to another, depending on their business goals.
Since these are the most critical elements on your website, it’s only natural that they should stand out visually and be persuasive in language.
Conversely, action-oriented phrases like “Get Started,” “Buy Now,” “Claim Your Offer,” or “Shop” encourage immediate engagement. Plus, they should be placed strategically where users are most likely to act, like on the homepage hero image or by the end of the navigation menu.
For example, FeedMyRank’s landing page uses a good CTA: a bright orange button that creates separation from the navy blue background, “Open the App” as the phrase, and a “Start using FeedMyRank for free!” subtext to incentivize visitors even more to try out their tool.
The key is to make CTAs eye-catching and compelling. This will ensure higher conversions and improve overall site engagement.
Design Is at the Core of Website UX
User experience and design are tightly intertwined concepts. Don’t expect users to engage on your website if it looks like a blast from the past.
A good design ensures a positive user experience when visitors land on your site.
Need any help with your marketing visuals? Want a revamped logo? How about adding original graphics to your website? DesignCrowd has the people to serve your every design need.
Alternatively, Design.com offers tools that make design easy to DIY, even if you have no design experience whatsoever. Apart from websites, they offer templates backed by the power of AI that make it easy to create posters, flyers, business cards, and social media collaterals.
Get in touch with us now, and we’ll assist you!
Written by DesignCrowd on Thursday, April 24, 2025
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.