2022 SEO Trend 2 –  Improved User Experience

How to Improve User Experience
In order to enhance UX, you have to address each of the five user experience factors.

1. Simplify your site architecture and design

   
   
   When customers can’t find what they’re searching for, they are likely to click back and try another search result.
   
   In order to make their browsing experience as seamless as possible, your site structure should be simple and logical.
   
   • Before you even start writing content for your website, plan out your page structure. This will determine the hierarchy of the information on your site. You can use a sitemap generator to create diagrams for how you want your website to be structured.
   • Organise your pages in well-defined categories. Sub-categories can be grouped and made easily accessible with drop-down or mega menus.

2. Help your visitors along
   
   
   

   Your site’s menu navigation should help users find their way through your website in a simple and intuitive way. Users should always know where they are on the site and where they are going.
   
   • Ensure your main navigation is visible – the best way to do this is by putting your navigation menu at the top so it stands out from the rest of the page.
   • Show your visitors where they are – breadcrumbs is a great way of ensuring your visitors won’t get lost. This secondary navigation system is a visible trail of pages visited that helps users keep track of their location within your website.
   • Introduce a search feature and ensure it produces relevant results. It must compensate for misspellings and show similar items. Never produce a “no products found” search result.
   • Use accurate navigation titles. Even before clicking any link, users should have a good idea of what they will find on a page when clicking through.
   • Use accurate anchor text in internal links that describes the linked page accurately.
   • Consider menu navigation language and labelling. There is a lot of competition on the web, hence many businesses try to get creative with their copywriting and menu labelling. Sometimes, this is at the expense of clarity.
   Make sure you use clear terms for the main categories in your menu. For example, “marketplace” may not be as clear as “shop”. If want to see which wording will perform better for your main navigation, you can put A/B Testing for SEO into place.

3. Optimise your site speed
   
   
   

   When it comes to UX and Search Experience Optimisation (SXO), page speed is one of the most important metrics. A slow-loading page delivers a poor user experience and will drive visitors away.
   
   This is especially important when it comes to Mobile SEO. Since Google has rolled out mobile-first indexing, site speed and page responsiveness have become a vital elements in Search Experience Optimisation (SXO).
   
   And it’s expected to become even more important in 2022. This has become evident with the following updates on Google platforms:
   • User Engagement metrics are being introduced in GA4.
   • User Stickiness is becoming a standard metric in Google Analytics.
   
   Google’s Page Experience update takes a number UX factors into account that relate to site speed and responsiveness. Some of these include Google Core Web Vitals metrics such as:
   • Mobile friendliness
   • Page loading time
   • Whether the content jumps around as the page is loading
   
   The following can be done to enhance site speed and improve your Core Web Vitals scores:
   • Make sure your website has Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) operational
   • Provide dimensions for images and embeds
   • Optimise images and videos by compressing them
   • Optimise CSS code
   • Implement lazy loading
   • Optimise JavaScript execution
   • Speed up your server

4. Stick to a clear, simple design
   
   
   

   A cluttered, complex website with too much noise drives visitors away.
   
   Less is more. Strip down your web design to the bare essentials. You can do this by:
   • Avoiding clutter such as sidebars with ads or conflicting calls-to-action.
   • Limiting your colour scheme.
   • Focusing on the essentials and reducing the number of pages.
   • Only putting the most important information on your home page.

5. Improve UX with great content
   
   
   

   Every website exists to solve a user’s problem, which is why content is one of the most important aspects of creating a great website.
   
   To attract users, you want to ensure your site offers relevant, quality information that’s easy to access. This will allow users to find their answers quickly, so they can move on and take action.
   
   Here are a few tips in creating relevant, user-friendly content:
   • Identify your audience – are you targeting businesses or individuals? How old are they? By creating user personas, you can give your content focus to address their needs.
   • SEO Content Gap Analysis is a great way of coming up with strategic content topics that resonate with your audience. It can also help you uncover less competitive sub-niches.
   • Write content that’s appropriate for each stage in your sales funnel.
   • When creating a blog, label your articles with tags and make them searchable. This will allow users to find articles about topics they’re interested in.

6. Measure and Improve
   
   

   Finally, tracking and measuring UX is an important step in making sure your website not only hits your business goals but also provides a great customer experience.
   Measuring user experience starts with setting up goals. After that, you can define your user behaviour cues and then move on to measuring user behaviour signals.
   
   The most common UX metrics are:
   • Success rate – the percentage of tasks a user completes successfully.
   • Time on task – how long it takes the user to complete a task.
   • Subjective satisfaction – you can gage the level of user satisfaction and their preferences by making use of questionnaires or surveys.
   • Error rate – this shows how many times a user makes an error in attempting to complete a task.