User Experience or UX trends in design are crucial as we enter 2021 because it can elevate your digital marketing efforts by providing meaningful consumer experiences to your users.
UX is the general experience of your users with your product or service. The core of all marketing is the consumers, so investing in SEO should not just be about paid campaigns, great content, organic outreaches, and the like, but by continuously improving how consumers interact with your brand.
Since your website is a digital product, you need to check and measure consistently if your consumers can use your website to their best advantage, meet their needs, and keep them happy.
It is why UX design matters, because how well your users experience your website or mobile app directly affects your SEO (search engine optimization) ranking. It is one of over 200 algorithm factors that Google and other search engines scan. The better your UX design is, the higher your chances to land on the first page of SERP (search engine results page).
Just recently, Google released its December 2020 Core Algorithm Update. Experts say the key differences are more significant than the May 2020 updates. Fluctuations in rankings and impressions were felt, especially on December 4th, a day after the rollout.
But Google is always releasing core algorithm updates, so this is nothing new. With the ever-changing and continuously improving algorithms of multiple search engines, all the more you need to work on the basics of your website. Poorly designed and functioning websites will not survive, as every update makes the digital space more competitive.
No matter what changes are implemented, each update will always be consumer-centric, focusing on providing the best user experiences
7 Benefits of a Good UX Design and Why it Matters
1. UX Sustains Good First Impressions
While the website’s UI or User Interface establishes the first impression, it is the UX design that influences whether you can sustain the first impression. Almost all first impressions are design-related. If visitors come back for more, your UX affects how long they’re staying or if they convert as customers.
Users and communities build online content in today’s socialnomics that profoundly impact business and the economy. It is why UX matters because you can optimize digital marketing for your website’s success.
2. Refines and Unifies UX and SEO Goals
UX helps you refine your business goals and integrate your UX and SEO goals and strategies to get more leads and conversions.
It also helps you identify the type of journey you envision for your leads or prospects from their first encounter with your brand to the moment they are using your product and service, after-sales care, and repurchase.
With UX, you can determine the technical aspects of your buyers’ journey. You also get a glimpse of tools you will need along the way, like WordPress plugins, the best web design tools, digital marketing strategies, and so on.
It also helps you when issues in the buyer’s journey arise to analyze and address them immediately. You also gain better anticipation of problems that may further arise through multiple testings before launching your product or service.
3. UX Draws the Market Effectively
UX writing, meta descriptions, and meta tags draw people into your website. With UX best practices, you can make your website appear compelling and engaging right from the get-go–at the search engine results page.
An efficient meta-tagging system, for instance, adds value to your website as the clicks and impressions increase. When visitors and existing consumers click your site, it becomes an additional metric for search engines that establishes your website’s authority.
4. 86% of Buyers Pay More for Better UX
Good UX incorporates value, usability, navigation, functionality, adaptability, navigation or ease of use, and design to provide a positive experience. These elements are equally important as they are intertwined and operating together to help make the website functional. It is why 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for better customer service.
5. A Good UX Design can Yield a 9,900% ROI
Social Media Today notes that for every $1 of UX investments, there is a $100 profit gained. That is a 9,900% ROI. We will see this ROI percentage rise in the next decade. Design-centric companies will enjoy a 228% ROI with every $10,000 investment.
6. UX Decreases Bounce Rates Significantly
UX design includes functionality and ease of use. When a site loads fast and has straightforward information easily discoverable on every page, bounce rates decrease.
A bounce is defined as a single-page session on your website. Bounce rate is the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.
Consumers will stop going to your website and immediately jump to the competitor’s page when your UX design is not par.
When you manage to decrease your bounce rates, dwell time increases. It is the amount of time that readers take to browse through your pages. When dwell time increases, the more opportunities you have to engage with your reader and for them to discover the product or service you are providing.
7. Mobile-responsive UX Encourages Repeat Visitors and Customers
Around 52.2% of the market share are mobile phone users, so it is a no brainer why search engines look for mobile-friendliness as a staple in its pages. Mobile-friendly UX improves a website’s chances for first-page SERP rankings.
Responsive web design is the ability of a website to automatically adapt and adjust to different screen sizes to provide a full user experience, regardless of how they access a webpage.
Just this year alone, there are 2.87 billion smartphone or mobile phone users. Since more than half of internet users search through their mobile phones, mobile-responsive web design should be a staple.
Around 74% of visitors will return to your site if it is mobile-responsive. More than half of your readers will stop engaging with your website right away when they experience a bad UX.
But good UX or user experience hooks visitors in and eventually turns them from mere spectators to your brand’s avid consumers.
Conclusion: Always Aim for Good UX for Better SEO
UX is indeed integral to boost your SEO campaign. By combining the advantages and strengths of SEO and UX not only improves your ranking but offers outstanding support to your customers.
The ultimate aim of your website is to help people. So, if you want good SEO rankings and a great website, use better UX strategies. Be committed to remaining fresh and meaningful with smart and reliable targeting tools that leverage your website’s UX functionality.
AUTHOR: MAYLEEN MEÑEZ
Mayleen Meñez used to work in media before finding her true passion in NGO work, travelling the Philippines and Asia doing so. She homeschools 3 kids and loves reinventing Filipino dishes. She is a resident SEO writer for Softvire Australia and Softvire New Zealand.