Most people won’t describe a website as having a poor user experience. They’ll say they couldn’t find the information they needed. The menu was confusing. The form wouldn’t work. Or the page took so long to load that they gave up.
Those moments are user experience.
User experience, often shortened to UX, describes what it’s like for someone to use your website. Can they understand what your business offers? Can they find their way around? Does the site work as expected? Can they take the next step without running into unnecessary obstacles?
To improve user experience on your website, you need to look beyond its appearance. Content, navigation, page structure, accessibility, performance and functionality all shape the experience.
When Netgain designs a website, we look beyond how each page will appear. We consider what visitors need to understand, where they need to go and what could prevent them from getting there. The brand should still come through clearly, but the design also has a job to do. If people have to work around it to use the site, it isn’t doing that job.
Key Takeaways
- Website UX is about how easily visitors can accomplish their goals, not just how the site looks.
- Content and navigation should reflect what customers need rather than how the business is organized internally.
- Every important page should explain what it offers and provide a clear next step.
- Mobile usability, website performance and accessibility are all part of the experience.
- Forms should ask for necessary information without making visitors do more work than the task requires.
- Analytics can identify possible problems, but observing how people use the site helps explain why those problems exist.
- Some UX issues can be corrected individually, while deeper structural problems may require a website redesign.
What Is Website User Experience?
Website user experience is the complete experience someone has while interacting with your site. It begins when a page loads and continues as the visitor reads, scrolls, clicks, searches, fills out a form or completes a purchase.
UX is sometimes confused with user interface, or UI. The user interface includes the visual and interactive elements someone uses, such as buttons, menus, forms and icons. UX is broader. It includes the interface, but it also considers the content, structure, speed, accessibility and overall effort required to complete a task.
A website can look polished and still be frustrating to use. It can also look relatively simple and work extremely well. Visual design matters, but appearance alone can’t create a good experience.
How Can You Tell If Your Website Has UX Problems?
Some UX problems are obvious, such as a broken form or a menu that fails on mobile. Others are easier to overlook when you already know the website well.
Possible warning signs include:
- Visitors regularly ask questions the website is supposed to answer
- Important pages attract traffic but produce few inquiries
- People begin forms without completing them
- Important information takes several clicks to reach
- Mobile visitors behave very differently from desktop visitors
- Calls to action are inconsistent or difficult to find
- The site contains broken links or outdated information
- Customers say they had trouble finding a service, product or contact detail
No single metric proves that your website has a UX problem. A high bounce rate, for example, can mean a visitor left out of frustration. It can also mean they found a quick answer and had no reason to keep browsing.
Look for patterns across analytics, customer feedback and the website itself.
Where to Start Improving Your Website’s User Experience
User experience isn’t something we check after the visual design is complete. It shapes how we plan the sitemap, organize content, structure page layouts and place calls to action. The same thinking can improve an existing website: start with what visitors are trying to do, then remove whatever makes those tasks harder than they need to be.
The following areas are a good place to begin.
Start With What Your Visitors Came to Do
Before changing colours, layouts or button styles, identify the main tasks people need to complete.
Depending on the business, visitors may want to:
- Understand a service
- Compare different options
- Check a service area
- Find pricing or cost information
- Request a quote
- Book an appointment
- Buy a product
- Speak with someone
- Access customer support
Choose the three to five tasks that matter most. Then look at how easily someone can complete them.
This is where Netgain’s approach to UX begins. We consider the goals of the business, but we design for the people the business needs to reach. The sitemap, navigation, page hierarchy and calls to action should all support the visitor’s journey.
That also means thinking beyond the homepage. Someone may enter the site through a service page, blog post, location page or paid advertisement. Every important landing page needs enough context to help that person understand where they are and where they can go next.
Make Every Page Easy to Understand
A visitor shouldn’t have to study a page to figure out its purpose.
Each page should quickly answer three questions:
- What is this page about?
- Is this relevant to me?
- What can I do next?
A clear heading helps establish the subject. The opening content should confirm that the visitor has reached the right place. Supporting sections can then answer questions, explain options and provide the information needed to make a decision.
Avoid making every message compete for attention. When several headings, buttons, images and promotional statements are all given the same visual weight, the visitor has to decide what matters without any guidance.
Strong page hierarchy solves that problem. It uses headings, spacing, colour, placement and scale to show the relationship between different elements. The goal isn’t to remove personality. It’s to make the page easier to follow.
Simplify Navigation and Website Structure
Navigation should help visitors move through the website without needing to understand how the business operates behind the scenes.
Use menu labels that customers recognize. “Website Design” is more useful than a vague phrase that could mean several different things. Group related pages logically and keep the most important destinations easy to reach.
Good website navigation should also:
- Remain consistent from one page to another
- Show visitors where they are
- Work with a mouse, keyboard and touchscreen
- Avoid overwhelming dropdown menus
- Include useful secondary links in the footer
- Use breadcrumbs on larger or more complex websites
- Provide search functionality when the amount of content justifies it
The shortest menu isn’t automatically the best one. The goal is to give people the right amount of choice without making them sort through unnecessary options.
Make Your Content Easier to Use
Website content isn’t separate from UX. The words on the page often determine whether someone understands the business well enough to keep going.
Lead with the information visitors need. Use descriptive headings that tell them what each section covers. Keep paragraphs focused and explain unfamiliar terminology when it first appears.
Scannable content can include:
- Short, focused paragraphs
- Helpful subheadings
- Lists when information needs to be compared
- Specific link text
- Clear answers to common questions
- Images that demonstrate or explain something useful
Scannable doesn’t mean removing every detail. People often need substantial information before they’re ready to contact a company or make a purchase. The content simply needs to be organized so they can find the part that matters to them.
Specificity also builds confidence. A clear explanation of your process, service area, qualifications or expected next steps is more useful than broad promises that could appear on any competitor’s website.
Test the Actual Mobile Experience
A poor mobile experience makes simple tasks harder than they need to be. Visitors may have to zoom in to read, struggle to open the menu or abandon a form because its fields and buttons are difficult to use. Good responsive web design accounts for these situations and makes the website easier to use on a smaller screen.
Test the tasks that matter most on an actual phone. Open the menu. Read a service page. Complete the contact form. Try to tap smaller links. Check what happens when the mobile keyboard opens.
Look for problems such as:
- Text that requires zooming
- Buttons that are difficult to tap
- Content that appears in an illogical order
- Forms that are tedious to complete
- Pop-ups or chat tools that cover the screen
- Horizontal scrolling
- Important actions that disappear on smaller devices
Improve Website Speed and Responsiveness
Website performance affects more than how long someone waits for the first page to appear.
A page may load quickly but respond slowly after someone opens a menu or clicks a button. Content may also shift unexpectedly while images, fonts or advertisements load. That can cause someone to click the wrong link or lose their place.
Google evaluates these experiences through Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint measures how quickly the main content appears.
- Interaction to Next Paint measures how quickly the page responds to an interaction.
- Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much the page unexpectedly moves while loading.
Google recommends a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and a Cumulative Layout Shift score of 0.1 or less.
Large images, excessive plugins, heavy scripts, video, animations and third-party tools can all affect performance. The answer isn’t to remove every visual or useful feature. It’s to make deliberate choices about what the page needs.
A fast website that nobody understands still has poor UX. Performance is one part of the experience, not the entire scorecard.
Include Accessibility in Your UX Decisions
An accessible website allows more people to perceive its content, understand it and interact with it successfully.
That includes people who use screen readers, navigate with a keyboard, zoom into content or need stronger visual contrast. It also includes someone trying to complete a form with one hand on a phone or read a screen in bright sunlight.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide internationally recognized standards for making web content more accessible. WCAG 2.0 Level AA gives design and development teams specific criteria to consider when planning, building and testing a website.
Useful accessibility improvements include:
- Sufficient contrast between text and its background
- Logical heading structure
- Visible keyboard focus indicators
- Descriptive alternative text for meaningful images
- Captions or transcripts for relevant media
- Clear identifiable buttons and links
- Form labels that remain visible
- Error messages that explain how to correct the problem
- Content that remains usable when enlarged
Accessibility shouldn’t be added after the design is finished. It needs to inform decisions about layout, colour, content and functionality from the beginning.
Reduce Friction in Forms and Calls to Action
Forms often sit at the point where interest becomes an inquiry, booking or purchase. They are also a common place for visitors to give up.
Ask only for information that’s necessary at that stage. Use visible labels, clearly identify required fields and explain any formatting requirements before someone submits the form.
If there is an error, tell the visitor what happened and how to fix it. Don’t erase the information they have already entered. Once the form is submitted, confirm that it worked and explain what will happen next.
Calls to action deserve the same level of attention. A button labelled “Request a Quote” sets a clearer expectation than “Submit.” “View Our Website Design Process” tells someone more than “Learn More.”
Not every visitor is ready for the same next step. Some may want to review a case study or explore a service. Others may be ready to book a call. The website should support those different stages while making the primary action easy to recognize.
Build Trust Without Creating More Noise
Visitors need enough information to decide if your business is credible and suitable for what they need.
Depending on the website, that may include:
- Clear, up-to-date contact information
- Team and company details
- Reviews or testimonials
- Relevant case studies
- Certifications or professional affiliations
- Clear service areas
- An explanation of the process
- Pricing or cost expectations when appropriate
- Privacy, shipping, return or cancellation policies
Place that information close to the decision it supports. A relevant testimonial beside a service may be more useful than a large collection of unrelated reviews on another page.
Test the Website Instead of Guessing
When you work with a website regularly, it’s easy to overlook problems. You already know where everything is, what each menu label means and how each feature is supposed to work. A new visitor doesn’t have that context.
Use a combination of website data, customer feedback and direct observation to find out where people are running into difficulty. Useful sources include:
- Website traffic and conversion data
- Form completion and error rates
- Differences between mobile and desktop activity
- Heatmaps and session recordings
- Questions customers frequently ask by phone or email
- Feedback from sales and customer service teams
- Usability tests with people who reflect your intended audience
Data can show where people leave a page or abandon a form, but it can’t always explain why. Watching someone complete a realistic task may reveal a confusing menu label, an overlooked button or missing information that your team assumed was clear.
Fix the Problems That Matter Most
A UX review may uncover dozens of possible improvements. They won’t all have the same value.
Prioritize an issue based on:
- How many visitors encounter it
- Whether it delays or prevents an important task
- The consequences when the task fails
- Which audiences and devices it affects
- The effort required to correct it
- How the result can be measured
A contact form that doesn’t work properly on mobile should come before a minor visual inconsistency. Confusing service navigation should come before adjusting decorative animation.
Start with the issues that affect important tasks and high-traffic pages. Then measure what changed.
Do You Need to Redesign Your Website?
Not every UX problem is a reason to redesign your website.
Menu labels can be updated. Content can be reorganized. Forms can be shortened. Images can be optimized. Calls to action can be clarified.
A redesign may make more sense when the problems are structural. The navigation may no longer reflect the business. Templates may not support accessible or responsive layouts. The website may have widespread performance problems, inconsistent components or technology that makes individual improvements unnecessarily expensive.
The deciding question is whether the problems are isolated or built into the website itself. If a few pages, forms or menu labels need attention, focused improvements may be enough. If the same limitations affect most of the site and make future updates difficult, a redesign is likely the more practical use of your time and budget.
Build a Website That Works for the People Using It
Improving website UX comes down to reducing unnecessary effort. Visitors should be able to understand what you offer, find the information they need and take the next step without fighting the page.
That doesn’t happen through one button, plugin or performance score. It comes from making thoughtful decisions about the audience throughout planning, design, content and development.
Netgain builds websites around those decisions. If your current site is creating friction or no longer reflects how customers choose your business, talk to our team about what needs to change.
