UX Design Tips & Techniques

five simple ways to increase the user experience of any website or a product like right now today user experience is really really important

and without it what you have is something that looks really really pretty but it doesn't take into account the way that users actually want to use the product and there's lots of tools and mechanisms that are disposal as UX designers but sometimes you don't have to budget the time or the person on the team to do it what are you do in those cases you fall back on tried-and-true UX

principles and that's what these are so without any further ado let's get started number one clear call to action clear call to action one of the most important things I think about good user experience is leading a user through the funnel and taking them

exactly where you want them to go and also where they need to go making those things really accessible really easy not hiding your primary action or your secondary actions.

before you start your project you need to define what the clear goal is for the project for the design as you're funneling them through what do you want of the user there has to be a primary and there can't be two or three primers there's one primary otherwise none of them are primary if everything is important then nothing is important to figure out what is important and stick to what's important call to action super important game number two is all about reducing the visual clutter people only have so much mental energy to devote to the product

and so the more that you can strip away that doesn't need to be there the more you're gonna help them focus and hone in on what you actually want them to do it's a good experience I love options everybody loves options but you know what it feels like to walk into that Italian restaurant that has a hundred and fifty things on the menu you stare at that menu forever versus walking into like a really awesome niche like bistro that has five things on the menu it's easier for you to decide it's easier for you to make a decision that's what you want you to want to make it easier for people to make a decision to clear out the crap focus reduces the clutter alright number three is really similar to number two but that's reducing the number of text people don't read they can I don't care.

if you think that that paragraph that you wrote is absolutely phenomenal strip it down I don't care if you think that those long headlines are really good and awesome strip them down and you can't get the gist of what's going on there with that product by bouncing your way down bounding and scrolling really fast or swiping really fast then it doesn't belong a few really quick points

avoid really long blocks of text nobody's going to read it avoid all the marketing speak and buzzwords people are gonna see right through it and the last little point is that a picture's worth a thousand words so not to clutter up the interface or the design with more visual stuff and going back against point number two but if an icon can say an entire paragraph just with an icon why not just use the icon okay point

number four comes off of the last two points and that is utilize white space people are terrified of white space clients especially if you're doing freelance work hate white space they feel like you've been lazy they feel like you forgot like move things together like you haven't done your job let things breathe stop boxing things in with boxes inside of boxes and widgets inside of widgets open things up remove the borders and the lines let things have a little room to operate and therefore allowing people some room to kind of address things and see things and use things all right number five on the list last one is to improve the load times of your websites and your products fifty percent of people expect your website to load within those two to three seconds and to start using it right away if it doesn't there's a problem this is the medium that we are designing for and so another good reason to strip things out and really focus on what needs to be

there less is more so much of this I feel like is less as or but really that's the biggest thing user experiences about stripping things down it's about governing the content controlling the flow and leading the user in the right direction

a few simple ways to improve load times are to pick a simpler design style flashy is great but it may not be faster second quick tip is to optimize every single thing that you put into your product I'm talking every image every logo everything needs to be optimized you need to run through image optimum make sure strip saw all the excess stuff that doesn't need to be there you need to be using responsive images and not making your device load the largest possible banner but actually loading the one that's specific to its device size you need to implement smart image techniques and smaller image techniques so that your stuff floats faster last quick tip is to use the right tool for the job don't bring a tank to a knife fight maybe you are designing some sort of massive enterprise website that needs some massive robust CMS but maybe you're just designing some sort of landing page and you can run that static maybe you need to think about your hosting or your tooling or your setup whatever it is you need to make sure you take those things into account because when it comes to digital design load times are serious so make sure you're thinking about it well that's it those are my five tips on how to improve your user experience in your designs right now today.