This was shared by one of our developers and made us chuckle (we’re a wild bunch).
True though: Most people massively underestimate how much they much they need to simplify things for customers.
Think improving your website’s user experience requires a big budget? Think again. Optimizing usability can be affordable and highly impactful with the right strategies. This guide explores practical, low-cost solutions to enhance your website’s usability and deliver a seamless experience for your audience.
Understanding your users is key to better UX. By conducting surveys, interviews, or usability tests, you can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience’s needs and goals.
This insight allows you to identify areas for improvement and prioritize changes that will have the greatest impact (take a look here for some ideas for low cost User Research)
Website navigation should be clear and intuitive to help users find what they need without frustration. Group related items logically and use concise, descriptive labels for menu sections.
Avoid creating an overwhelming experience by keeping the navigation structure streamlined – aim for a maximum of 7 items in your nav (ideally less).
Over half of web traffic comes from mobile devices – for some sites as much a s 90%.
Use responsive web design to ensure your site looks and performs great on smaller screens. Test mobile usability with tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights and tweak layouts, buttons, and menus for optimal performance.
Slow-loading pages frustrate users and hurt your rankings, and it’s been shown that page speed plays a critical role in user satisfaction. Users have been shown to get bored and click away after just a two second delay!
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix can identify bottlenecks. Compress images, minimise unnecessary scripts, use lazy loading, and enable browser caching to speed up load times.
Content should be easy to read and understand. Avoid using overly complex language or lengthy blocks of text – remember who your audience are and write for them.
Ditch jargon and lengthy paragraphs.
Write in simple, concise sentences and break content into digestible sections with headings and subheadings to make it more digestible for readers. This ensures your visitors stay engaged and find the information they need effortlessly.
High-quality images and graphics enhance the visual appeal of your site, make you look more credible and help convey your message effectively.
Ensure that visuals are relevant to your content and avoid using low-resolution or generic images that may detract from the user experience. If you need to use stock imagery, choose carefully to avoid pictures that look faked.
Accessibility is essential for creating an inclusive website. Follow web accessibility guidelines like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure users with disabilities can navigate and use your site effectively. Features like alt text, proper colour contrast, and keyboard-friendly navigation can make a significant difference. Free tools like WAVE and Axe can help audit your site for compliance.
Affordable platforms like UserTesting and Maze let you observe real users interacting with your website. This data helps identify pain points and refine usability. Many tools even offer free trials, so you can test without spending a penny upfront.
Rely on data not on feeling. Google Analytics and Hotjar are just two tools that can help you provide insights into user behaviour, helping you pinpoint underperforming areas. Monitor bounce rates, session durations, and popular pages to understand what’s working—and what isn’t. AB test changes to see if they make a positive difference.
User experience is never a “set it and forget it” project, but an ongoing process. Regularly review your website using user feedback, analytics, and testing to identify areas for improvement. Update and refine your site to ensure it evolves with the changing needs of your audience.
Want feedback but don’t have the money to commission user research? Here are some cost-effective ways to get insights from your users on a low budget:
Online Surveys
Online survey tools such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey allow you to collect feedback from a large number of users at minimal cost. Offering small incentives, such as discounts or entries into prize draws, can encourage participation.
User Interviews
Conducting one-on-one interviews provides deeper insights into user experiences and needs. Participants can be recruited through your existing user base, social media platforms, or online communities relevant to your audience.
Remote Usability Testing
Tools like UserTesting or Lookback are affordable options for observing users as they interact with your website. These platforms allow you to gather valuable data on usability issues and identify potential improvements. Alternatively, recruit friends or colleagues to test your site for free.
Competitor Research
Studying competitors’ websites can provide insights into best practices and potential gaps in your own site. Evaluate how they address user needs and consider adapting effective strategies for your platform.
DIY Card Sorting
Card sorting exercises can help you understand how users organize and prioritize information. This method is particularly useful for improving the layout and structure of your website’s content.
If resources allow, in-person user testing offers detailed insights into usability issues. Although this method may require more effort, the results are often highly actionable and beneficial for improving UX.
Improving your website’s usability doesn’t require a hefty budget.
By using practical, low-cost strategies like simplifying navigation, optimising for mobile, and prioritising accessibility, you can make meaningful improvements. Regular testing and ongoing updates ensure your website stays ahead of user needs—without it costing huge amounts of money.
Want to improve your website, but not sure where to start? Get in touch and we can help.
My long-suffering partner finally gave up on her old mobile phone last week (or rather the screen gave up on her, after a couple of years of fairly heavy abuse) and she got a shiny new iPhone.
Since then, she’s spent several days berating the mobile banking app she was trying to set back up, as it resolutely refused to accept her passcode.
Over four days she has at least 20 attempts at putting the right passcode into the app, only to be told each time that the code “needed to be between 5 & 8 characters and a mixture of letters and numbers”.
This infuriated her.
She knows what her passcode is – it’s a 6 digit number, and yet, despite this seeming to fit the error description, it wasn’t being accepted.
She tried old passcodes, other banking PINs and passwords, all to no avail: the app wouldn’t let her proceed.
Last night, we were sitting in front of the telly (for the first time in about two weeks I might add) and, after another rant about how poor her bank is and several interesting suggestions about where they might put their app, I suggested she give setting it up another crack.
She put in all sorts of PINs and passwords and personal information as prompted and then got to a screen where she had to enter her debit card details and the dreaded passcode.
Again, the same error message appeared. At this point I, as a (slightly smug) independent observer, was able to quietly point out that the app was actually asking for her POSTcode.
The point of this post isn’t to make fun of my better half, to make her sound dumb (she’s far from it!), or even to demonstrate my problem solving skills, but to show that people aren’t very good at paying attention.
Despite knowing there was a problem, reading the error message several times, and desperately trying to work out what was wrong, my partner decided that it must be the app that was at fault, blamed the company and abandoned the process.
Look at your analytics and see how many users drop off at key steps and do the maths on that lost value.
What else could you do in the next day that would earn you as much money as spending some time making your process steps easier to follow and your error messages clearer?
These buttons are a topic that many in the world of websites seem to obsess over. What size should they be, what shape should they be and, most importantly, what colour should they be?
The best colour for a call to action button is a topic has been obsessed over by conversion optimisation specialists across the world in what probably amount to thousands of blog posts.
Red is a bold colour, it stands out on the page and is associated with value (think of all those “Sale” signs in shop windows). Green on the other hand is calmer, less scary and encourages us to “go” (think traffic lights). Unbounce (undoubtedly a company with some expertise in conversion rates) came out and declared the future was a Big Orange Button (BOB).
As you might expect, there’s been a whole host of user testing experiments carried out and published as case studies to support a particular view point. For example, CareLogger tested green vs red buttons on their site:
The result? 34% more people clicked on the red button than when it was green. A clear winner, right?
Well, maybe not. The trouble is that (like anything) it isn’t all that simple…Buttons on a website don’t exist in isolation, they are part of the wider page and need to therefore be sensitive to their context.
Sure red is a strong standout colour but, if the predominant colour scheme of the site is red, then it doesn’t stand out at all.
What’s more important is visual hierarchy: what elements stands out the most on the page?
If your button blends in with the rest of the site, then (whatever colour it is) it isn’t going to perform as well as a button that is more impactful.
Just to revisit that case study from earlier, take a look at the CareLogger page where those buttons were placed: The predominant colour scheme is green. In that instance, of course a red button performed more strongly – it differentiated the call to action from the rest of the page. It could be argued that another colour (perhaps orange, but even purple!) could perform even stronger.
So how to make sure your buttons perform best?
An effective button needs to be bold, stand out, catch your eye and encourage you to click. To that end you should:
Have you tested different button colours? Let us know what you found below.
Sometimes the websites we create don’t work in the way we hoped.
Sure they might look great, but that’s only one job of a website. The other is to perform – to drive the people that visit your site to find out more about your company and buy from you.
And if they don’t do that, we’ve all got a problem: You’ve invested money in a website and want to see a return on your investment – and equally we want you, as our customer, to be happy.
That’s why we believe that testing your website is so important.
Ever written a document or letter, proof-read it carefully and then sent it, only for someone to immediately point out a spelling mistake?
We’re not all that great at critically evaluating our results – and we often interpret feedback we get to reinforce our perspectives. Our Cognitive Bias leads us to think we know how user feels and acts, and what they want to see – which can hide big problems with the way a website actually performs.
Parts of your website that you see as obvious and straightforward, might actually stump a ‘real’ user.
When we create website for we use lots of techniques to maximise their chances of working effectively:
Despite all of this though, we know websites we produce won’t be perfect.
We’re not clairvoyant. We can’t predict exactly how users will use a website – the only real way of telling is to wait and see.
And that’s why, when your website goes Iive, you need to test.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that go on to complete your website’s intended objective – whether that’s sign up for a newsletter, buy a t-shirt, or fill in a contact form.
If your website’s not converting then, despite anything else, it’s not working.
Measuring your conversion rate – and improving it – is key to increasing your profitability – in particular as small changes in your conversion rate can have a massive effect on your profits.
But improving your conversion rate is often quite simple – you just need time and to follow a clear process.
Most important is to understand what’s going on with your website – and why.
The first step toward this is to install Google Analytics. We’re big fans of GA (though there are plenty of other capable analytics packages out there you can use if you’d rather), mainly because it’s very capable, integrates with a whole range of other software and, most importantly, is free!
Once installed, make sure it’s configured correctly to accurately measure visitors and set up goals to measure the rate at which they covert to conversions.
The downside of analytics though is that it only tells you how many users do what you want them to do – and you need to find out why.
We suggest using click tracking and user tracking tools to show you how users are actually using your site and give you some clues as to why. Hotjar, Crazy Egg and Mouseflow all work well.
You can then supplement these with user surveys and one-on-one testing to find out what’s causing your customers to do what they do.
If you’re going to be able to make your website work, you need to be able to change it.
You could just change the website code to make the site look the way you want but, unless you’re a developer, this can be expensive. The best solution is a content management system that allows you to quickly make changes without needing any coding skills.
We’re big fans of WordPress because it allows you to easily make changes and is massively flexible, but there are plenty of other content management systems out there you can use.
There are also a whole range of website builders out there, like Shopify, Wix or Squarespace, that allow you to create and change a website without having to know code* .
Whatever you choose, make sure your website theme is flexible. Many ‘off the shelf’ themes have a really tight structure that constrain the layouts and styles you can use.
Even better, use a theme that’s custom built for you and has the future flexibility you need built in.
The only way that you can truly test a website’s performance is by seeing how people use it, and for that you need visitors.
Not loads, but enough. Reliable patterns of behaviour can only be seen once sufficient numbers of visitors have used the site – until then, the one or two user who behave abnormally can effect the results. There’s a measure called statistical significance that tells you that your results are reliable. The exact number of visitors you need for statistical significance to be achieved depends on the circumstances, but it typically requires you need several hundred users before a clear pattern emerges.
It normally takes a bit of time before search engines properly spider your site and start sending traffic, but you can easily use social media or even paid advertising to send small amounts of traffic that mean you can start to spot problems
Use analytics to see where people drop out of your website – in particular look out for key points where you want them to act, like checkouts and contact forms.
Use click tracking and survey tools to engage with users and see what’s making them leave. Are they encountering system problems? Do they need more information? Perhaps they just can’t see what to do next.
Use the insights from customers to adjust the site to fix whatever the problems are.
Keep watching your analytics, and see if your changes have made a (hopefully positive) difference. Most importantly, keep experimenting!
Once you know your website’s really working, then you can put all your efforts into pushing traffic toward it, confident that for every visitor you get, you’ll know how many customers you’ll get out of the other end!
*That said, the learning curve can be pretty steep for some of the website builders and is likely to take a few days of time working out how to make it do exactly what you need it to.