Starting a website with WordPress is easy, but adding features and content can quickly become complicated. To ensure business success, it’s important to keep in mind UX best practices for WordPress. User Experience (UX) is key to attracting and retaining customers, as they are the ones who buy your goods and services, not the search engines. While UX and User Interface (UI) are closely related, they are different enough to warrant an explanation.
Web Usability refers to the ease of use of a website. User Interface (UI) is where humans interact with machines, such as buttons. Developers use tools to develop a user interface that aligns with business requirements. User Experience (UX) concerns users and how they feel about your website. Designers need to ensure that the user experience is always top-notch and user interaction is pleasant.
For example, a WordPress theme with great user experience can have many user interfaces (like the Total theme), but each one of them must provide the best possible user experience for your specific niche.
If you have a corporate website, the homepage should make clear what your business is about, what your core philosophy/values are, and possibly display your products or provide a way to get a quote. Many corporate websites use a big “above the fold” photo or a background video of their offices. If you run a corporate website, it’s important to state your case immediately.
For other niches, different factors may come into play. If you’re a blogger, people want to know more about you personally, your background, and your competence so focus on making yourself transparent and likable to induce trust. If you’re a musician than you had better highlight your music and latest album or EP art.
Good usability is an integral part of a great user interface. A user interface is the front face of your brand’s online presence as it directly influences the user experience. A clean and simple design attracts people the most. It’s a good idea to keep asking yourself “Will the visitors or the website admins be able to use it with no difficulty or confusion?” This will ensure that your final design meets current design standards.
One of the crucial aspects of modern user experience (UX) is to have a responsive web design. Mobile devices have taken over the internet. Having a responsive design improves user experience and traffic. Dwell Time is something Google uses these days to measure how satisfied users are when they click on your website in the SERPs (search result pages).
Almost every other website has a complex information architecture associated with it. A designer must work with a developer to make sure that the visitor can easily navigate through the website through proper navigation. Creating a lot of different ways for users to navigate your website ensures better usability and a more pleasant user experience for them.
Without content, no website is complete. Great design can be attractive, but it is the content that will help you sell your business to the target audience. The content-focused layout is not only pleasing to the eyes, it enables users to digest your content easily. The right font type, size, and color can make your content shine and make users take an interest in what you have to say.
Micro-interactions are a simple way by which the visitor interacts with your website. They include subtle effects when you click on an article header or tooltip, hover and scroll effects or an icon animation while your download is in progress, etc. Microinteractions encourage interactions and give feedback.
Creating an appealing website is not a simple task. WordPress makes it easy for anyone to create a website in minutes, but it requires a lot of thinking to create a usable enough UI with great UX. It’s also important to make your website fault tolerant so make sure you have a custom 404-page template. Non-existing or error pages can be starting points, not just dead-ends.
If you are impatient or don’t have the time and effort to focus on UX best practices for WordPress, you can simply get one of our hand-made WPExplorer themes. They all use UX best practices and are a great starting point for any new website’s design.
User Experience is a complex trade and it is not possible to encompass all the concepts in a single blog post. Hopefully, the article offers an introduction to key UX best practices for WordPress and something to think about when you create or buy your next WordPress theme.
