Did you know that 88% of online shoppers say they wouldn’t return to a website after having a bad user experience?
User Experience Design (UX/UI or UXD) in web design is the method of improving user satisfaction by enhancing the usability, accessibility, and performance of user interaction with websites.
When a website’s design is so communicative and spontaneous that visitors can effortlessly find the data they need without difficulty, it’s a success and every professional UI design agency knows this very well.
However, more often than not, businesses either don’t know or follow UI/UX best practices that can help provide a flawless journey for customers.
In fact, according to a study, only 55% of companies currently conduct any UX testing.
The tone of your content, the appeal of your graphic design, and the prominence of a company matter little if a website is clunky and troublesome to navigate.
UI/UX is one of those things you might not pay heed to when it’s done well. It’s when a UX is badly developed that you begin to notice.
Which is why, in this blog, we have provided the top 10 best UI/UX practices that every company should follow.
#1. Your Website Shouldn’t Feel Like A Treasure Hunt
If it’s a collection of programming tools for web design applications, the inventory for a player in a video game, a spreadsheet, or something else, they jump off the program if the user can’t find what they like!
Tabs make things accessible. Shortcut keys and hover tooltips, too.
If you are using WordPress, the admin toolbar gives you the ability to get to the post editor quickly, the theme customizer, the plugin settings, and so on. The choices are marked, so you need not search.
The Help / Support / Contact options are just another example. If it is for a smartphone app, desktop applications, WordPress websites or something else, the users will still need to find the Assistance button (or the Customer Service icon) when creating a UI.
At some point, they’ll ultimately need to contact you. That’s why you have to be careful to position the front-and-centre support buttons.
#2. Change Is Good, Not For Websites Though
It’s crucial to be consistent with the positioning of features within the UI. However, you must also ensure that your user interface is consistent throughout the entire website.
Do not have the menu at the top of a page and the bottom of another page. Each time it loads, don’t rearrange menu items.
Try to ensure your viewers know where the things are on your site. When you keep a contact form below your blogs, do not opt to take it off on particular blog posts. Users are going to find that and be confused.
Consistency involves your fonts as well, and the layout must stay the same from page to page. Do not change header/body fonts from one tab to another.
You must also ensure that the Interface is suitable for the platform — in certain situations, iOS devices function differently than Android. Web sites have different requirements of menus, galleries and product checkout than mobile sites.
Consistency ensures you’re not confusing your customers by forcing them to keep adapting to the change and searching for what they are looking for on each page.
#3. Follow The Three Cs – Clear, Concise, Crisp
Clarity means you want the customers always to realize what they need to do. It often bleeds into UI design in several aspects, as it decreases the customers’ irritation and enhances retention and lowers bounce rate.
Clarity is the main cause why web design has been so widely known with minimalists (and to a certain extent brutalist). Users are not puzzled regarding any site or page’s intent, since there is no (or limited) clutter.
One method of having clarification is to switch on various sites from one step to another.
Instead of moving down the website for a purchase phase — or being enclosed inside a particular segment or box — make the visitors move from a merchandise website to a shopping cart page to a checkout page to pick a payment page to a confirmation page.
#4. Assist The Customer For A Pleasant Journey
The very last thing users need is not to comprehend what is happening. If they push a click, show the click has been pushed. You could do it in several different ways.
You could even animate the button, which would make it appear to sink further into the page. Loading icons (such as the macOS Rainbow Wheel) give input, “We’re working on your order,” without stating anything.
Give an indication of how long files remain if you allow users to upload them (e.g. with Dropbox or Google Drive).
Providing a pop-up or modal that shows them that their move was a success eliminates disappointment and uncertainty.
#5. Use Recognition, Not Recall
When they visit your website, you want the customers to remember it. They shouldn’t have to think too hard to remember the details.
Above everything, the code should be simplified to render any aspect accessible and transfer from one stage to the next.
This can be accomplished by using identifiable icons. For certain things, people acknowledge certain icons.
This can even be achieved by using virtual guides, even though it’s not their first time, to direct a consumer through a method.
When the first modal arrives, they should know the operation, so they won’t have to waste time learning precisely how to execute certain acts.
You may even achieve this by putting positive notices that inform the customers about what the website offers.
You can also use hover tooltips to guide customers who don’t know what a particular icon means.
They will remember the symbol after that. Or at least the indicator while they are turning down again. And just the method of keeping the details hovering there.
#6. Choose How People Will Interact First
Choose one gesture (maybe two) while creating the UI, and stay with it. For example, if you consider Snapchat, swiping is all a user has to do to accomplish anything on the application, right from changing their settings to reaching their profile.
They decided how to interact with their software for their customers, and built their UI to support it. Not the other way around.
When designing your UI, choose whether to use menus and taps, iconography, swipes and gestures or completely something different.
Alexa and Siri use voice feedback as to their main contact with the UI. The way in which they provide information and perform their tasks is conceptualized around that specific input. And as a user, you know what to do intuitively, because, in the beginning, that information was set for you.
#7. Be Creative, But Don’t Revolutionize
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, the old saying applies here. When the current standard works, there is no reason to seek or revitalize something. It ranges from icon use to essential item positioning.
You don’t want to go against the things that your users expect to do.
For example, people know help is indicated by the question marks, therefore do not use the exclamation point. Or, don’t use the grip option if you want users to find your mobile meu, instead follow the standard and use the hamburger icon (the three stacked lines).
Think of search bars. In certain sites, they appear to be in identical places: the top of the toolbar or the edge of the header row. If it isn’t there, see the top centre section of the page.
People will not know where to look if you decide to include the only search field at the end of your sidelines, article footers, or under the text of your blog posts even if you recognize it as the standard glass magnifier icon.
While thinking outside the box and going for a new and innovative design is not wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that the layout is hard to use. Instead, you should focus on designing your website in a manner that matches your brand, while following standard designs.
#8. Elemental Hierarchy Matters
For both the functionality and the way the user sees the site, the items on the website need to have simple hierarchies.
Essentially, you want to ensure that the main elements are at the top of your respective sites. Furthermore, these hierarchies will organically guide the user down the page and move the user into the service.
Huge elements that reduce in size while going through the process show value and order. The same goes for colour and contrast. It is further essential to make use of white space because clutter will interrupt user advancement and distract the eye from the page’s function.
Clear lines, ample of room and specified elements will show visually how to continue without any instructions or feedback to the customers.
You want things to move from left to right from top to bottom is a good rule of thumb.
#9. Keep It Simple
When a visitor lands on your website, they generally don’t have too much time to browse your site for hours. They are expecting a quick visit to accomplish what they are looking for and move on.
However, if you have too many elements on your website, the visitor will find it too time-consuming and will opt to leave your website and head to a competitor.
For example, if a visitor wants to sign up to your newsletter but has to fill out an intricate form that will take them up to 10-15 minutes, they’d rather not sign up at all.
Your website should be as frictionless as possible for the customer. So leaving out something that is not completely required is one of the easiest ways to do so.
#10. Keep Your Users Free & In Control
The very last thing we want to focus on — and the very last thing you wish to do on the user interface — is to seize charge.
Or making them feel limited or restricted to your style. You want to inspire them, so the UI should let them do what they want. This rule has two parts: context and authorization.
First, any step the consumer wants to take should be placed next to the action they intend to take. Whether they need to edit a post, save, publish/submit, preview buttons should be near the edit button.
Therefore, the best choice is to set context menus on all activities that the user may take on every given object (or page).
Arguably, a website is a businesses’ biggest and most effective tool when it comes to marketing and engaging with customers. Hence, you must adopt these best UI/UX practices to use this tool effectively and double your revenue tenfold.
After all, in the words of Brenda Laurel, design isn’t finished until someone is using it.
About the Author!
Aslam loves solving complex problems by bringing out of the box solution approach. Aslam is the Co-Founder and COO at Multidots Inc. Multidots is an Enterprise WordPress digital agency and one of the WordPress VIP partner agencies with a globally distributed team of WordPress experts helping Content Publishers around the world.