These UX fundamentals increase your conversion rate.
How do we know? Since 2014, our team has run over 10,000+ tests on e-commerce and lead generation sites from start-ups to major brands.
They’re like the laws of physics. Gravity always wins. Violate these fundamentals, and convert less.
When we find and fix violations of these UX fundamentals, bounce rates decrease, add-to-carts go up, checkout abandonment drops, leads sign up, and our customers make more money.
And we’re not the only ones that have proven them. If you haven’t heard of the Baymard Institute, you need to look them up – add them to your list of things to research.
Like us, they find violations of UX fundamentals that cause drop-offs, come up with fixes, test them and then produce gold standard guidelines showing how to avoid the mistake and nail implementations that work.
They are global leaders of UX Research with 78,000+ hours of research covering 3,000+ brands across 80+ countries. Fortune 500 e-commerce brands use their techniques and so should you.
Andy digital conversion strategist worth his salt has studied these guidelines and knows them really well. Our team are trained to audit your site against 1,080+ issues known to cause customers to drop out, and our strategists, designers, and devs show you exactly how to fix them.
While you may not have access to all the guidelines or the time to study them, or work in a CRO agency full of passionate analysts, researchers, developers, and designers. You can start to understand and internalise how to spot violations and start fixing them.
#1 – Findability
Though it may sound intuitive, findability is a factor worth keeping at the forefront of your design decisions. After all, the conversion funnel (i.e. the path leading customers to a desired conversion) depends on users being able to locate and identify information. Otherwise, they can’t act on that information – whether that be buying certain product or signing up for a mailing list.
To ensure findability, a website should facilitate all browsing behavior and its end-goals. A site can achieve this function through effective search mechanisms (e.g. a search bar), easy navigation (e.g. tabs delineating different information), and simple presentation of on-page information (e.g. bite-sized text versus long paragraphs).
Though we provided a few examples above, the specific design options to improve findability on your site are virtually endless. They will also likely vary according to type of website and its purpose. However, at the core of every feature promoting “findability” is the aim to help users discover information with clarity and convenience.
#2 – Credibility and Trust
Online customers must decide where to allocate their time, money, and personal information, often between you and competitors who provide the similar products or services. Perceived credibility and trust of your platform, then, serves as one crucial factor that can differentiate it from others.
An intuitive and reliable interface is imperative to building this trust and credibility. The more customers can trust your website to provide a simple, convenient experience without error or confusion, the more credible they will view it.
Aesthetics also play into the credibility of site design. Outdated websites, especially for vendors selling “new-age” or “cutting-edge” products, can undermine the perceived professionalism and quality of a business.
#3 – Consistency
The principle of consistency reinforces the previous two heuristics while providing additional design benefits.
When a site is consistent, users will likely find it more navigable. This improves findability and thus helps with conversion funnel optimization. Users will also find it more professional, boosting credibility.
As such, a website’s content, UI elements, fonts, page layouts, and colors should be in harmony and feel consistent at every touch point.
You should also consider consistency across other interfaces. Users should feel comfortable and familiar when they approach your site, which means including elements that they might expect on any platform – i.e., a “Contact Us” page or an “Add to Cart” button.
#4 – User Feedback
User frustration can lead to quick death for any prospective conversion. So, designing to reduce and avoid potential opportunities for frustrations is essential, and an ongoing process.
Minimize the opportunity for error and maximize error support. For example, when requiring input of a number, don’t allow for alphabetical text. And if the user continues to perform the task incorrectly, precisely indicate the problem and politely suggest a solution, as through an error message.
You may also want to consider an open feedback channel to allow customers to suggest improvements to their experience. Understanding the experience from the user side is the best way to hone the design of a website to best fit their needs.
#5 – Accessibility
Your site needs to be accessible to everyone regardless of their impairment, or disability. And not just because Australian web accessibility laws and policies require websites to be compliant. But because it’s the right thing to do.
And because the more people that can access and navigate, the most leads and sales you’ll make.
Here are some ways to improve accessibility:
- Add alterative text to images for visually impaired users
- Enable users to enlarge font size
- Keep colour in mind when choosing images, as some visual disabilities perceive colours differently
- Add keyboard navigation for users who cannot use a mouse
- Minimize use of tables, which are difficult for screen-reading software to interpret
- Use descriptive URLs
If making sure you’re nailing accessibilty in every part of your site seems like too much work, do what we do. Use Accessibe. It’s a simple line of code you can add to your site that does all the work for you without slowing your site down.
All our Conversion Audit clients get a 10% discount on their subscription and save thousands of dollars in additional dev time maintaining a compliant website.
Stopping the drop offs.
At Crobar we live and breathe conversion rate optimisation. Our team can’t look at any site without automatically evaluating its adherance to Baymards UX guidelines or our own growing list of research validated UX best practices.
Spend much time at Crobar and before long it’s like seeing the Matrix.
To have our team Audit your site and stop unnecessary drop off in your conversion funnel Talk to Us today to start converting more with less add spend.
