Google is increasingly making user experience (UX) more important. What this means is that Google and other search engines will prioritize their results for businesses that provide a good user experience for their visitors.
In addition to ease of use, this can mean your online reviews and information affect how often you appear in search results.
In mid-2021, Google rolled out the Core Web Vitals update. Core Web Vitals measures how aspects of your website load and appear for other users. Having a slow website, including photos, content, and features that load in too slowly can hurt you.
You should expect future updates from Google that focus on user experience. This is likely to be an important differentiator that could give you a head start over your competitors if you improve your user experience and they don’t.
Here are five website best practices for small businesses for an optimal user experience:
1) It is easily accessible to the greatest number of people
While you may stick to Google Chrome and an Android phone, your visitors may have anything from an iPhone or a tablet to Opera browser or Microsoft Edge on a desktop. If you are doing digital marketing right, then you’re operating a responsive website that works well on desktop and mobile across numerous devices and platforms. Not only that, but it needs to look great on all devices and all platforms.
You can start by testing your site with Google’s mobile checker to see whether or not you have work to do.
While ensuring a responsive website is great, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that many people using the internet have some amount of visual impairment.
There are additional steps you could take, such as using alt text on your photos, so that people with a visual impairment can have a description of your images read to them. You need to think about color contrasts on your site and fonts for people with dyslexia too.
Think about whatever you can do to make your website as accessible to as many people as possible. Of course, that is advantageous to your business as you’re reaching as many people as you can, but it’s also the right thing to do. Everyone should have equal access to the internet.
The Web Accessibility Initiative has a comprehensive website with accessibility checkers, guidelines, and more to help you make your website accessible and to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
2) Your site is fast on mobile and desktop
While a user’s internet connection will have some impact on how fast your site loads, you should optimize it to be quick loading.
It gives a poor user experience if visitors have to wait for different elements of your site to load. And the longer they have to wait, the more likely they are to go elsewhere.
“The probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.” – Think with Google
In addition, site speed and what it entails are increasingly important to Google and other search engines.
One further side effect of a slow site is that Googlebot can’t index as many of your pages, which is not something you want.
You can check your site speed and get a helpful report from Google’s Page Speed Insights.
When looking to improve site speed, you need to know what can affect page loading time. If you have large, high-definition images on your site, it will take longer to load. Videos and large CSS and JavaScript files also play a part.
There are things you can do to help boost your site speed, such as minifying code, optimizing images, and removing any unused code. Server caching of your pages can help your site load quicker too.
You do need to stay on top of your site speed scores, but if all of the above sounds like it’s written in Klingon, then it’s a good idea to hire a professional.
3) Your site has good content
Good content is not subjective. In Google’s eyes, there are certain rules you must follow. For example, good content cannot have keyword stuffing and is based upon accurate and informative content. Most important of all, without sufficient data, you are unlikely to capture search intent, which is arguably the most important factor for getting content to rank.
Obviously, SEO is a factor when creating great content. You do want it to be seen after all. However, you need to provide excellent, well-written content that’s highly targeted toward what your visitors want. Answer the questions they have, provide clear information on how you can help, and provide strong calls to action that direct them to what to do next.
Your site content should keep people’s attention and it won’t do that if it’s full of jargon and acronyms. By all means, use some jargon and acronyms if you know your target audience well enough to know that they’ll understand your copy. You do want to draw people in and make them feel understood. But too much jargon and multiple acronyms that aren’t widely used among your audience will put people off.
Think about what tone of voice to use that fits in with your company branding. How do you want to come across? Is your business sassy, witty, and sharp? Is it serious and reliable? Write your content to suit how you want to be seen, however at the same time, write to suit your audience. It’s a balancing act, but you need to get it right. Doing so will ensure you attract and keep your target audience and start to move them through your sales funnel.
You also need to look at how you lay out your content too. No one will read a whole wall of text unless they’re extremely dedicated. But what you can do is use clear headings that draw the eye down the page, lots of white space, bullet points, quality images, and more to break up the text and make it easier to read. This also adds greatly to a good user experience.
4) Your site is easy to use
Take a look at your website right now and try to see it from an outside point of view. Is it obvious where you want people to go and what they should do next? How easy is it to find the right information? How easy is it to get in touch with you? Run through your whole inquiry process. Does that work smoothly at every stage?
It’s worth doing this exercise regularly, especially if you often update your website with new features and additions.
You need to be strategic about where you place content and certain page elements on your site. Is everything clear and easy to read? Does your site look attractive on both mobile and desktop?
Look at your navigation. Your website should have an easily accessible navigation bar and not too many sub and sub-sub menu items. If your navigation bar is full of multiple drop-down menus that aren’t clear, people will get lost and they will give up and go to your competitors instead. Visitors must be able to find what they need.
Following that, information about your business should be front and center on both the mobile and desktop versions of the site. Is it obvious what you do and how you can help your target audience? Make sure people can see this information immediately. They shouldn’t have to guess what your business does or why it matters to them.
Make sure any contact forms work properly and that they’re prominent so people can see them and use them. Phone numbers and email addresses should be highly visible and clickable. It’s a good idea to include your phone number at the top of every page so people don’t have to hunt for it.
Anything you can do to improve your site and make it easier for your visitors is going to have multiple benefits. A better user experience will get you higher in the search engine results. You’ll also find visitors stay on your site for longer and are likely to buy more. If you have a clear customer journey path for visitors to take, you will be able to guide them into your sales funnel and keep them moving through it so that they ultimately take action and buy from you.
5) Your site tracks leads
You should always be tracking leads that come in through your site. Additionally, you should track site data, such as landing pages and organic traffic trends. For many business owners, this is simply too much work and too much information to digest. In many cases, it is easier to hire a professional to help you with website analysis and how it factors into your overall marketing strategy.
If your site doesn’t track your leads, you won’t have any idea what is working and what isn’t from your marketing efforts. You need to know where you’re getting traffic from, how leads are finding you, and what they’re doing on your website when they arrive. It’s equally important to be able to analyze any friction points where people are leaving your site and see why they are leaving when they do. Have they done what they set out to do? Have they done what you wanted them to do? Or is something on your site putting people off at a certain point?
You have to have the data to see how your site is working, whether it’s doing what you need it to do, and how your leads are behaving when they land on your site.
Your site data can be a goldmine of information that can help you improve your site and your marketing. You’ll be able to see your most popular content and write more of it. You’ll see what people are searching for and what keywords and phrases they are using, which you can then use in your marketing copy.
While statistics and data aren’t the most entertaining part of having a website, they are one of the most important things to look at each month, so don’t neglect this.
We’ve looked at website best practices for small businesses to get the attention of Google and your ideal customers. You might have some work to do now, but it will be worth it to take the time to keep developing and improving your website.
If managing your website isn’t your thing or you know you’d rather hand over your site to the experts for great results, Surefire Local offers business intelligence marketing software that helps you easily manage and improve your website. Schedule a demo today!