1. Focus on your users’ goals
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 2. Employ a clear structure to guide users
Step back and first ask yourself, “How can I give my users what they want while getting what I want?” The first step in answering this is to figure out what your users’ goals are, what your goals are and how they work together. You’ll need to think about what your site’s core offerings and strengths are. We recommend keeping this to one or two strengths. Though your site may be good at many things, you should focus on what it’s great at.
Tips:
Some questions to ask yourself when starting out are:
How are your users finding your site?
What are they looking for?
Do you give them what they want?
What do you want from your users?
How do you get a desired response from them?
Example:
You’re a tech news site and after considering each of the questions above, you determine that:
Most of your users come from search engines and land on the article page
Your user is looking for the content of the article they searched for
You show them a full page article on the landing page
Your goal is to keep the user engaged, so that they stay longer and see more content
The answer to here is the real challenge. You need to prove to the user that there’s other valuable content on your site and encourage them to read more. This can be accomplished by including some related or popular articles at the bottom of each article.
2. Employ a clear structure to guide users
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 3. Ensure that users know what action to take on your site
No matter what page a user lands on, you only have a few seconds on that first screen with the space above the fold to get their attention and show them what you’re all about. Employing a simple hierarchy will give your page a clear structure that will guide users and highlight what you want them to see.
Another thing to keep in mind is the information architecture of your site. Users are able to recognize familiar pages from unfamiliar based on the consistent way you organize and display information on your site. If your website’s structure is not logical or what they expect, users will be lost and not sure where to go next. This adds to overall frustration and can lead to users leaving your site.
Tips:
Use these simple design tips to create a structure for your page:
Contrast: Using color, saturation, or opacity to juxtapose elements on the page.
Size: Size is one of the easiest design levers to guide your users. Don’t be afraid to use BIG and BOLD elements to draw users’ attention to the most important information on the page.
Alignment: Elements that share a common axis appear related.
Whitespace: Drawing attention to specific elements by leaving empty space around them. It also makes your design more appealing to the eye.
Grid: Using a simple grid to layout elements on your page will create a sense of order and structure.
Example:
Newspaper sites usually do a great job creating structure through hierarchy. The breaking story or most important piece of news dominates the screen. This ensures it’s the first thing you see. Major headlines from other sections are also big and bold so a user that’s browsing can quickly and easily pick them out. The size and contrast of photos and headlines helps to guide users through the page.
3. Ensure that users know what action to take on your site
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 4. Tailor your experience to your users’ situation
Users should always know what action to take next on your site. When a user lands on your page it should be very clear what they should pay attention to first, second, and so on. There should also be a clear next action for them to take whether it's clicking “buy” to make a purchase or reading a related article.
Tips:
Consider these points when creating meaningful calls to action:
Emphasis: Give emphasis to the call to action by its size, color, contrast and/or use of white space.
Simple: Don’t clutter your page with too many different actions. Really think about what you want your users to do and prioritize those actions in your design.
Incentive: Give an incentive to take action. This can be seen in discounts, gifts, raffle entry or access to more content
Proximity: Make sure your call to action is in a logical placement on the page. For example, if the page features an article, you may want to put the call to action below the article.
Consistency: Have your call to action show throughout the site and keep its appearance consistent.
4. Tailor your experience to your users’ situation
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 5. Turn casual visitors into loyal users
Your site needs to provide a great experience to users whenever and wherever they need it. It’s important to put some thought into how your users use your site differently in different situations. Be sure to consider their time constraints and whether they are on a mobile device or a computer.
Tips:
Use these tips to help you think about the use cases your users might experience:
Situation: What situation is the user in that caused them to seek out information on your site?
Limit features: The mobile version of your site should only include the core features of your site that will help your users find the information they’re looking for. Save the other advanced features for your desktop site where your users have a little bit more time.
Speed: Users only have a couple of seconds so make sure your site loads lightning fast. Google’s Page Speed tool can help you optimize your load time.
Forgiveness: Users make mistakes, especially on mobile. Let them easily undo and return to where they were, without having to use the back button.
Example:
Suppose you’re a restaurant review site. How does a mobile user’s behavior differ from that of a desktop user? First off, mobile users are probably on the move; they could even be walking down the street as they browse your site. They won’t have time to navigate through several pages of restaurants like they do on the desktop site. They expect your site to use the phone’s GPS to locate them and show them popular restaurants nearby based on their search. Your site can even optimize the review experience for mobile by showing the most popular short reviews since users don’t have time to read long reviews.
Remember, it’s all about thinking about the situation that the user is in when they reach your site and tailoring the user experience to match.
5. Turn casual visitors into loyal users
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
So far we’ve discussed ways to make sure you understand what your users are looking for and how to present it to them. But you may be wondering how do you keep users coming back again and again? After all, repeat business is the lifeblood of businesses both online and offline. To get users to return, you need to do more than just answer their questions; you need to give them reasons to return to your site.
Tips:
Below are a few ways you can turn one-time visitors into repeat visitors:
New content: First and foremost, make sure to constantly provide new, high-quality content. Next, make sure you are showcasing new content on your top landing pages.
Related content: Show users similar content elsewhere on your site. Create a section that links users to popular content on the same subject. This will drive more engagement.
Social: Make it easy for users to connect with you via their favorite social networks. All major social networks have widgets that you can put on your site to allow users to follow you. Once you have them make sure you push out your most popular content to drive return visits.
Email: Make sure you have a way for users to subscribe to your email list for updates and/or a newsletter.
User engagement: Make it easy for users to interact with your content, through forums, a rating system or recommendations.
Example:
If you have a deal site where users can search for deals, you can first prompt them to sign up to be notified via email when new offers that match their interests are added to the site. You can also showcase how many people recommend a deal so users see which deals are popular.
taken from : https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/2893023?hl=en&ref_topic=2892970
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 2. Employ a clear structure to guide users
Step back and first ask yourself, “How can I give my users what they want while getting what I want?” The first step in answering this is to figure out what your users’ goals are, what your goals are and how they work together. You’ll need to think about what your site’s core offerings and strengths are. We recommend keeping this to one or two strengths. Though your site may be good at many things, you should focus on what it’s great at.
Tips:
Some questions to ask yourself when starting out are:
How are your users finding your site?
What are they looking for?
Do you give them what they want?
What do you want from your users?
How do you get a desired response from them?
Example:
You’re a tech news site and after considering each of the questions above, you determine that:
Most of your users come from search engines and land on the article page
Your user is looking for the content of the article they searched for
You show them a full page article on the landing page
Your goal is to keep the user engaged, so that they stay longer and see more content
The answer to here is the real challenge. You need to prove to the user that there’s other valuable content on your site and encourage them to read more. This can be accomplished by including some related or popular articles at the bottom of each article.
2. Employ a clear structure to guide users
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 3. Ensure that users know what action to take on your site
No matter what page a user lands on, you only have a few seconds on that first screen with the space above the fold to get their attention and show them what you’re all about. Employing a simple hierarchy will give your page a clear structure that will guide users and highlight what you want them to see.
Another thing to keep in mind is the information architecture of your site. Users are able to recognize familiar pages from unfamiliar based on the consistent way you organize and display information on your site. If your website’s structure is not logical or what they expect, users will be lost and not sure where to go next. This adds to overall frustration and can lead to users leaving your site.
Tips:
Use these simple design tips to create a structure for your page:
Contrast: Using color, saturation, or opacity to juxtapose elements on the page.
Size: Size is one of the easiest design levers to guide your users. Don’t be afraid to use BIG and BOLD elements to draw users’ attention to the most important information on the page.
Alignment: Elements that share a common axis appear related.
Whitespace: Drawing attention to specific elements by leaving empty space around them. It also makes your design more appealing to the eye.
Grid: Using a simple grid to layout elements on your page will create a sense of order and structure.
Example:
Newspaper sites usually do a great job creating structure through hierarchy. The breaking story or most important piece of news dominates the screen. This ensures it’s the first thing you see. Major headlines from other sections are also big and bold so a user that’s browsing can quickly and easily pick them out. The size and contrast of photos and headlines helps to guide users through the page.
3. Ensure that users know what action to take on your site
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 4. Tailor your experience to your users’ situation
Users should always know what action to take next on your site. When a user lands on your page it should be very clear what they should pay attention to first, second, and so on. There should also be a clear next action for them to take whether it's clicking “buy” to make a purchase or reading a related article.
Tips:
Consider these points when creating meaningful calls to action:
Emphasis: Give emphasis to the call to action by its size, color, contrast and/or use of white space.
Simple: Don’t clutter your page with too many different actions. Really think about what you want your users to do and prioritize those actions in your design.
Incentive: Give an incentive to take action. This can be seen in discounts, gifts, raffle entry or access to more content
Proximity: Make sure your call to action is in a logical placement on the page. For example, if the page features an article, you may want to put the call to action below the article.
Consistency: Have your call to action show throughout the site and keep its appearance consistent.
4. Tailor your experience to your users’ situation
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
Next: 5. Turn casual visitors into loyal users
Your site needs to provide a great experience to users whenever and wherever they need it. It’s important to put some thought into how your users use your site differently in different situations. Be sure to consider their time constraints and whether they are on a mobile device or a computer.
Tips:
Use these tips to help you think about the use cases your users might experience:
Situation: What situation is the user in that caused them to seek out information on your site?
Limit features: The mobile version of your site should only include the core features of your site that will help your users find the information they’re looking for. Save the other advanced features for your desktop site where your users have a little bit more time.
Speed: Users only have a couple of seconds so make sure your site loads lightning fast. Google’s Page Speed tool can help you optimize your load time.
Forgiveness: Users make mistakes, especially on mobile. Let them easily undo and return to where they were, without having to use the back button.
Example:
Suppose you’re a restaurant review site. How does a mobile user’s behavior differ from that of a desktop user? First off, mobile users are probably on the move; they could even be walking down the street as they browse your site. They won’t have time to navigate through several pages of restaurants like they do on the desktop site. They expect your site to use the phone’s GPS to locate them and show them popular restaurants nearby based on their search. Your site can even optimize the review experience for mobile by showing the most popular short reviews since users don’t have time to read long reviews.
Remember, it’s all about thinking about the situation that the user is in when they reach your site and tailoring the user experience to match.
5. Turn casual visitors into loyal users
Keep these user experience principles in mind when optimizing your site
So far we’ve discussed ways to make sure you understand what your users are looking for and how to present it to them. But you may be wondering how do you keep users coming back again and again? After all, repeat business is the lifeblood of businesses both online and offline. To get users to return, you need to do more than just answer their questions; you need to give them reasons to return to your site.
Tips:
Below are a few ways you can turn one-time visitors into repeat visitors:
New content: First and foremost, make sure to constantly provide new, high-quality content. Next, make sure you are showcasing new content on your top landing pages.
Related content: Show users similar content elsewhere on your site. Create a section that links users to popular content on the same subject. This will drive more engagement.
Social: Make it easy for users to connect with you via their favorite social networks. All major social networks have widgets that you can put on your site to allow users to follow you. Once you have them make sure you push out your most popular content to drive return visits.
Email: Make sure you have a way for users to subscribe to your email list for updates and/or a newsletter.
User engagement: Make it easy for users to interact with your content, through forums, a rating system or recommendations.
Example:
If you have a deal site where users can search for deals, you can first prompt them to sign up to be notified via email when new offers that match their interests are added to the site. You can also showcase how many people recommend a deal so users see which deals are popular.
taken from : https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/2893023?hl=en&ref_topic=2892970