How to Approach UX Design as a Small Business

Setting up a small business entails taking care of many requirements and if you wish to popularize your brand, you also need to be mindful of your online presence. Although many business owners associate their business’ online presence solely with social media profiles, their website is just as important in this regard since it represents the face of your brand.

To establish rapport with your users, CRM software comes as a very useful tool, however, without a proper UX design to your website, you will not have customers or a need for CRM in the first place. So, here are a few pieces of advice on how to go about UX design for your small business website. 

Offer concise content

When users come to your website, they are typically in search of concrete information. They will not think twice before they leave your website if they need to battle through a multitude of irrelevant data about each employee’s interests and about who won the monthly office ping-pong contest.

Since your small business is still fighting to build a strong reputation, you need to offer relevant information on your products or services instead of writing everything there is to know about them. Although it might make you feel frightened that you will miss out on some important piece of info, customers value a concise text and a possibility to ask for more data more than a wordy description.   

Avoid auto-play distractions 

Even though people cannot come to an agreement whether they dislike pop-ups more or auto-play videos but they agree that both of these elements are highly disruptive. When it comes to pop-ups, some users learn to ignore them and if they need to be clicked to disappear, you can be sure that many don’t even read what the message says because it disrupts their exploration of your webpage.

As for auto-play videos, many a user jumped from the chair when an unexpected sound blared from their speakers while they were casually scrolling down a webpage. Yes, these elements call out to users and ask for some activity from them but taking a UX approach means to find a way to convey these messages more subtly so that users can take a look at that content if they want further info on something.

Improve website’s taxonomy 

The manner in which you organize your website tells a lot about your brand’s identity. No prospective user wants to go poking around a messy website so connecting with your present customers to learn about their customer journey is vital in gaining knowledge on how to improve the taxonomy. 

Instead of fixing segment by segment, it would be useful to first get a broader perspective on your website’ navigation. If you don’t know how to go about this reorganization, it would be best to leave your website design to professionals. Since they first start with creating website design guidelines, you can be certain that the current situation will be well analyzed and the result satisfactory. Regardless of whether you opt for traditional or data-driven web design, it will be an efficient solution tailored to suit your brand identity and offer.

Consider interactive elements

Instead of providing users with just words on a screen, why not give them a more engaging experience? Add some life to your web design by gingerly offering the users to take a quiz, do a survey or filling in different forms. You need to provide them with interesting content which is also related to your brand and products.

In general, such interactive additions, as opposed to auto-play ones instigate curiosity naturally and turn a passive user into an active one. This means that you will decrease your bounce rate, that is, the number of people who make a one-time visit to your website and do nothing, as well as boost engagement. A well-tailored UX design will also contribute greatly to the conversion rates.

Provide general accessibility

Accessibility means that your website is available to a variety of people, including those with disabilities. The beauty of the internet is that content is easily created and information shared so by following this line of reasoning, your website should be adapted to be accessible to all potential users.

There are a number of ways to adapt your content and one of them is having both an audio recording and a transcript of it so that the hearing-impaired can get the opportunity to check out your offer. Another addition is to include equivalent alternative text (alt text) in images so that users who have screen readers can know what was shown on a picture. 

Conclusion

Taking a user’s stance when analyzing any aspect of your small business, including your website, is one of the best strategies to compile a wholesome image. These pieces of information will help you understand which things need to be changed and in which manner so that you would increase user engagement, decrease bounce rates and boost customer retention. 

No user can resist a well-organized website with concise data on the products and services and with options which actually complement their research by providing them with an opportunity to ask for further detail. All of these reasons show that UX design should be among your priorities when starting a small business.