There are many things which are important in ensuring your website gets traffic, here we talk about speed and usability.

There are many things which are important in ensuring your business website gets returning and happy visitors but speed and usability are up there as two of the most important.

SPEED

We are a species constantly in a rush.  We don’t want to wait.  Nowhere is this more apparent than when using a website.  How quick your web pages load is your visitor's first impression.

A quick loading web page, starts a visitor off in the right frame of mind.  A very slow loading website may not even get the chance to appear to an impatient visitor.  Research shows that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

As well as affecting people coming to your website, it can affect how they engage with it.  It could be a factor if you have a high bounce rate (i.e. visitors are coming to your website and leaving straight away) or if the number of pages viewed is low.

With techniques for optimising images, lazy loading, caching and more there’s no reason for your website pages to load slowly anymore

USABILITY

In basic terms, UX (User Experience) is about how easy it is for someone to use your website. A great UX should make using your website as pleasant as possible.  This means that once a visitor is on your website, they understand what they see and they can quickly locate what they need or see a clear path to what they need.  If they can’t, they’ll leave - like anything, if users can’t work it out, they won’t use it.

A website with good usability will be intuitive and efficient for your time poor visitor and leave them with a good experience that they would be happy to repeat. It’s highly likely that a website which provides this great experience, will get higher levels of returning visitors who easily recall how to locate what they need.

Establishing this relationship between your visitors and your website is so important in ensuring your website ultimately brings you revenue. Happy visitors are more likely to turn into paying customers or clients - Forbes quotes the Forrester Research stat that “....a well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to a 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.”

With stats like that, ensuring your website is usable, is something every business should invest in.  If you put the time and effort in, then the value will ultimately come back to you.

To find out more about please take a look at our small business website design page.

If you would like help reviewing the speed or usability of your website, please do not hesitate to get in touch at <contact@carbon-pixel.com.