When it comes to the ways in which your users experience your site and content, you can’t afford to make any rookie mistakes. Follow the following guide in order to truly perfect your content user’s experience

A good marketer always remembers to keep in mind that loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase, which is why preserving them is so important. Users are constantly on the lookout for amazing sites, content, services and products, and having an exceptional experience on your site is exactly what they expect from a site they’d like to return to. However, offering that type of user experience isn’t as simple as it sounds. Users are easily bored and given 15 minutes to consume content, two-thirds of them would rather read something beautifully designed than read something with a plain design on your site. This is why perfecting your content user’s experience on your site is essential to your marketing strategy.

From textual to visual content, your main goal should be to improve your user’s experience on your site so that they’re sure to visit it again. Here are a few ways to guarantee you’re doing it properly.

Use White Space

As with any artwork, filling out the entire canvas with color is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, white space is essential to good design. It is what helps make your content more legible while also enabling the user to focus on the elements surrounding the text. The use of white space around text and titles is actually so important that it increases user attention by 20%, and has the ability to make your site feel open and modern.

One downside to using white space is that it does, indeed, take up space. That’s why if you’re trying to input a lot of content above the area that is immediately visible without scrolling, having too much white space could be problematic. The key, as with anything in life, is finding the balance between what is vital you communicate to your users and what can be surrounded by some space.

Design For the User

While in the past users were willing to spend some extra time scouring through a website to properly understand it, nowadays users have completely lost the patience to learn on their own. In fact, they’ll become irritated and annoyed if they feel a service, product, website or app is just not cutting it. It might be tempting to design a site that will cater to your specific aesthetic, but if your users can’t complete tasks on your website or properly understand it, you’re missing the whole point.

As Gummicube CEO Dave Bell puts it, “whether you are working with a website or focused on app store optimization for a mobile app, it is critical that you immediately key into the features that drive users to discover your product and deliver those features with zero hassle –  because users will only give you a few seconds to identify the feature that they had been looking for.”

It is vital you cater to your specific user and represent through your website’s design what your business is all about. Remember to observe the entire experience and make sure your users’ needs are met since 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.

Platforms like Tailor Brands help small businesses, marketers, as well as private users, create and design their own labels, presentations as well as an entire brand design, in an automated fashion, instantly. And while services like this one were reserved for bigger brands and companies in the past, there is no reason why your startup or small business shouldn’t take advantage of them today.

Use Images but Avoid Stock Photos

It’s important you use images on your website as a means to break down a text. However, make sure they’re relevant and non-generic. You’d be surprised but most users are able to recognize a generic stock photo in a website that they’ve seen before. Using stock photography can decrease trust and also stand out as generic and non-unique, attributes that carry over to your business as well.

If you’re looking for a photo to use on your “Contact Us” page, try using a picture of your actual team. Remember, no stock photo will be able to capture the true essence of your brand, its services or products.

Use Inlinks

Websites must not only be optimized for designs and for search engines but also for “visitors’ thought sequences.” The use of inlinks in your content is extremely important from an SEO point of view, particularly for content marketing. Using internal links in your content can help your user navigate to the related info on your site. Other than aiding in website navigation, internal linking help defines the structure and hierarchy of your website as well as distribute page authority and ranking power throughout the site.

Site and Page Speed

Users want to visit your site, get the information they came for, and continue on with their day. However, they will probably be deterred and leave if they find that the pages on your site are loading slowly. Since many people scour the web through their mobile devices, if a certain page doesn’t open in a matter of seconds they usually end up giving up on it. Slow page load is so important for your user’s experience on your site that a mere two-second delay in load time during a visit to a site results in abandonment rates of up to 87%. Use this Google service to improve your load time on mobile and desktop.

Use Bullets

Using bullet points will help your user get all the information they are looking for, from benefits to key features of a product or service. You don’t necessarily have to go with the traditional circle since bullets now come in a variety of cool icons. By using bullets in your text, you’ll be able to isolate the most important points you are trying to make in your text without getting caught up in terminology or specifics.

Bottom Line: Investing in the content on your site will perfect your user’s experience

Marketers should be aware of the fact that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Investing in your user’s experience and your site’s content is extremely important if you wish to create a loyal user base. As HYPR CEO, Gil Eyal puts it, “maintaining a user is much more cost effective than finding a new one. Generating exciting and engaging content is one of the best ways to ensure that customers visit repeatedly, and shift focus towards your brand identity.”

About the Author

Since receiving her second degree in scriptwriting from TAU back in 2012, Nathalie Cohen Sheffer has been busy writing full-time and as a freelancer in both English and Hebrew. When she’s not busy writing you can find her practicing her yoga positions, as well as singing professionally and dubbing. Feel free to get in touch to learn more on Twitter.