4 Essential Tips for User-Centered Website Design

Traditionally, website design has focused primarily on building a site that reflects the brand’s image and encourages visitors to perform a specific action based on the company’s desired goals and outcomes. Although there’s nothing wrong with this approach, it’s become out of date.

Today, user-centered web design has become a best practice in the industry. But are you aware of this, and do your sites reflect it?

Four Powerful User-Centered Design Tips

User-centered web design operates contrary to the customary approach. As designer Jay Eckert explains, "The focus starts with the human interaction and addresses things like behavioural trends, and user attitudes and expectations rather than creating something that may look great, but ultimately asks the user to change their interactions or feelings to suit the design.”

If you haven’t studied user-centered design seriously, now may be a good time to give it a try. In a digital landscape where so much else is tailored to each user’s preferences, this approach could make your brand much more compelling and relatable.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1.Connect the Dots

User-centered design doesn’t mean you ignore your brand in the interests of the customer. Instead, it requires you to connect the dots between your brand and your customers’ needs.

In other words, you must prove value. This page from Herrman & Herrman is a fine example.

The section titled "How Our Car Accident Injury Attorneys Can Help” outlines practical value points that identify a user’s needs and clearly explain how the company meets them.

You need to make sure your web design connects the dots for visitors. It’s the only way to prove value and urge potential customers back to the brand.

1.Climb the Pyramid of Trust

Most people are familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; do you know about the pyramid of trust? Developed by the Neilson Norman Group, the pyramid of trust can be invaluable as a guide to site design concepts.

"Essentially, the basic trust-needs of a visitor must be met before they will be able to move on to more substantial interactions,” web designer Henry Brown explains.

The idea is that visitors must transition from comfort to trust … and that web design can help to facilitate that shift. "It’s impossible to attain a new stage of commitment without first climbing the level below it,” Brown states. "There’s no skipping steps when each one is built on the last.”

1.Simplify Navigation

One of the biggest irritations for Internet users is slow, clunky sites that take a long time to load. If your page loading speeds are slower than average, you’ll see a significant decline in key website analytics categories – including bounce rate, click-through rate, and conversions. Simplify navigation in order to enhance user satisfaction.

1.Anticipate Common Issues

"The development of a user-focused website should include consideration of likely issues so that they can be addressed easily,” Web Design Ledger declares. "Although you will never be able to avoid all of these situations, minimizing the number of unresolved issues will go a long way in improving the user experience.”

In order to anticipate common issues, you have to know the common issues on your site. The best way to gain clarity in this area is to interact regularly with your users and collect feedback from them.

Put Your Visitors First

Whether you like it or not, your website isn’t about you or your brand. It might be your website, but it won’t be effective unless you emphasize and prioritize your customers and their experiences.

By focusing on user-centered design, you can give people the information they need to make smart, purchase-related decisions that will ultimately have a positive impact on your bottom line.

What are you waiting for? Give your site a facelift!