5 Impactful Ways To Create A More Engaging Website
Your website is the virtual embodiment of your brand. The first handshake with your potential clients. An essential tool for organic business growth.
This is where User Experience (UX) comes into play—a pivotal aspect that can elevate your website from just pretty and functional to genuinely impactful. UX is all about ensuring your visitors have a seamless, enjoyable journey from the moment they land on your homepage to the instant they accomplish their goal, whether that’s making a purchase, booking a service, or simply getting to know you and your brand.
If you want your website to be your 24/7 ultimate marketing tool (without needing to be a social media content-making machine), having a great user experience is more than just a ‘nice to have’, but a MUST-HAVE.
While there’s so much more that goes into creating a beautifully intuitive website, these 5 shifts I recommend are based on things I commonly see on small business websites that can make them feel a little less user-friendly and much more clunky.
Now, not to get majorly technical, here are a few things to keep in mind about your website:
1. 88% of website visitors won’t return to a page if they have a terrible experience
2. 94% of your website’s first impressions are related to the design
3. People create an opinion of your website in only 0.05 seconds
Sooo no pressure, amiright?
Let’s make those first impressions count with these 5 actionable ways to upgrade your website UX!
1. Aim for function over friction
In UX, friction is anything that keeps a potential client from accomplishing a desired action, e.g. book a discovery call.
Your ideal customer journey might look like this:
→ Your right-fit people find out about you → they learn more about your offerings → they book a discovery call directly from your website.
But if the link to ‘book a call’ isn’t working, how can they get in touch and start the process of working with you?
You may think someone will take the initiative to reach out to you in an alternative way, but more often than not, people will give up and leave your website. It can be a frustrating and confusing experience for potential clients who might stumble around, not sure how to buy from you when they really want to.
The last thing you want to do is make buying from you feel like the most giant puzzle on earth, so an essential thing to do regularly is browse through your whole website and ensure all your links and buttons are working.
Remove any old pages from past workshops and events, products, or services you’re not selling or running anymore. Also, check your website loading speed using a free tool like Pingdom or GT Metrix to get a score and specific actions to take if it’s not looking good.
No one wants to wait 5 minutes (let alone 5 seconds) for your website to load.
2. Give the mobile view some love
Mobile views generate over 60% of website traffic but tend to be an afterthought on many websites.
The mobile view of your website matters more than you think. If you’re an e-commerce brand, it’s a given how important the mobile experience is for your customers, but the rule also applies if you’re a B2B service provider.
Take a few moments to scroll your own website on your phone. Check that:
your text isn’t too small to read (aim for 14-16px upwards for your paragraphs as standard practice)
your buttons are big enough to tap and any text links are visible
there’s a decent amount of white space around your content, so it's readable and scannable.
An example of how to turn a text-heavy page into a more digestable one.
3. Make your copy accessible, legible and readable
Your copy took you (or your copywriter) ages to write. The last thing we want is for the words to be challenging to read!
Reduce the width of your paragraphs so they don’t stretch across the full screen. Studies show that paragraphs that are too wide can affect readability because your eyes have to travel further from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.
Long lines equals tired eyes - aim for 45-70 characters per line! It’s an easy win to make your copy as accessible and legible as possible.
That also means no overly designed display fonts as body text (keep these for headings only), and avoid using tiny font sizes if you want people to read your text. I suggest 14-16px minimum for paragraphs and small headers. Anything less than 12px is too small.
While this design choice might look cool, what’s the point if people can’t read the information?
If you can’t read your text easily, odds are no one else can.
4. Refresh your website imagery
Showcasing YOU, the person behind the business, is such an important feature on your website. Your personality will be one of the biggest factors in people deciding whether to inquire or not, and on-brand photography will be one way to set yourself apart.
Take another look at your website. Are you seeing images from that brand photoshoot you did 3 years ago? Or stock photos that have proliferated on other websites and feel less-than-unique now?
Let’s take some time right now to swap out images that feel not just outdated but overused. (Have you ever been to a website where you can tell they used the same photo on every page? Yeah, we don’t want that.)
If you’re updating the images and still not vibing with them, now may be a good time to book that brand photoshoot you’ve been thinking about for months. Brand photos are such a great way to bring your personality to your website, to help your clients put a face to the name, and to see you as someone they can trust.
The best of us have tried, but building a reputation with selfies is not the name of the game. Professional photos are so worth it because they build a connection beyond the services you offer. When I work with clients 1-1, I always recommend a brand photoshoot alongside my design services. That’s how important it is!
If a brand photoshoot is out of your budget, though, and you don’t have the time, money, or patience to take your own brand photos or videos, this is where a stock photo & video membership like Haute Stock* can be useful. Find inspiration as you browse through Haute Stock’s curated library, which is updated with new content weekly. Or use their Couture Curation service, where their team of designers will hand-pick images and videos based on your brand vibe, colours and ideal audience.
And guess what?! I have a 15% off code you can use: dmarzdesigns*.
At the end of the day, we want to set your website up to make it easy to buy from you, but a sense of flair and personality can also make or break the sale.
Once you get those foundational UX pieces worked out, brand photos can change the entire experience of a website.
5. Focus on your ideal clients in your website copy
You may have noticed that I mentioned content here or there, but we haven’t spoken about your website copywriting specifically.
Sometimes, they’ll hire a copywriter to write their website for them, but my clients often write their own website copy. My best advice is to focus on your ideal clients in your copy. You have to know who you’re talking to for your words to land. If you’re not sure, take time to reflect on who the person is that you want to work with.
Do you know what they do for work?
How old they are?
What they care about?
What they’re struggling with, and how you can help them?
Help your website visitors feel seen and understood. It’s key that we show them that you’re the person who can help them reach their goals, and your offerings are the answer to that!
A good exercise is to ask a friend or a fellow business pal to help you with this, as they may be able to pick up on anything you might miss, like using too much jargon, not explaining your services clearer etc (we're always too close to our stuff to see the opportunities!)
If your copy is too complex to understand, it can put people off, so review and revise as needed.
Remember– it takes time to write good copy, so don’t be too hard on yourself if it takes some time to get it right!
Now that you’ve absorbed and implemented all these UX tips on your website, here’s a bonus recommendation…
This one will be especially helpful if you’ve reflected and decided to make a more in-depth update to your website. But spoiler alert... you don't need to spend days or weeks trying to do it all from scratch!
Do these sound familiar?
You've envisioned spending an hour or so updating your website, only for weeks (or months!) to pass and you're still piecing pages together blindly without a plan, lost in frustration that it's not finished yet.
You want to connect more with your dream clients and make more sales, but feel unclear about the best way to optimise your site pages to get the best results.
You're feeling the blank page fatigue and wish the process was a lot simpler!
That’s where my Squarespace templates come in! Designed for coaches, creative entrepreneurs and service providers, my easy-to-use website templates, made for Squarespace 7.1, will help you launch your website within days, not months or years!
*This post contains affiliate links, which means I’ll earn a commission if you purchase through my link at no extra cost to you!
