10 Key Factors Financial CEO’s Need to Consider to Improve Website User Experience

Is it time-consuming to improve the user experience of your financial website?

To me, your online presence is like a plant. You have to buy a pot, you have to buy the soil, you have to buy the seeds, you have to water it, you have to put it in the sun, and you have to take action to help it grow. You are not going to generate business simply by building a website. That’s not how it works.

The world highly values user experience. According to studies, “for every dollar a company invests to increase usability, it receives $10-$100 in benefits, and wins customer satisfaction and loyalty.”

In the current marketing landscape, having a company website is an extremely powerful tool. As a matter of fact, your website can be seen as a salesman who works round the clock. Therefore, it is a powerful asset forming the core of your marketing effort.

Notwithstanding, the rapid change in digital trends can cause your website look old and outdated. For the right price, you can redesign your website in order to improve its value to users.

Your website serves as the driving force of your digital marketing endeavor. In order to create an amazing website user experience, you have to understand the problems that the visitors to your site need to solve. First, let me walk you through the meaning of user experience.

What is User Experience?

User experience, according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is defined as “a person’s perceptions and response resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service. In which, user experience is a consequence of brand image, presentation, functionality, system performance, interactive behavior and assistive capabilities of the interactive system, the user’s internal and physical state resulting from prior experiences, attitudes, skills, personality, and the context of use.”

Ultimately, it is user experience that determines whether your bounce rate or your conversion rate will see an increase. In order to get ahead of your competitors, you have to invest in the quality of the experience you provide to your users.

To do this effectively, you must nurture your users, guide them and assist them with the help of your website, prototype, application, or product. Ensure that the user experience (UX) on your website is valuable, useful, findable, credible, desirable, accessible, and usable.

10 Key Factors Affecting Website User Experience

Websites are rated by their usability, accessibility, and efficiency. The better they work, the more likely users will be to engage with your site’s content. Creating a website with rich content and a fabulous design will retain and convert visitors, engage affiliates with your business, and ensure that users keep returning to your website.

Your website has to impress visitors and there are various ways in which you can improve all aspects of your website user experience. I have put together 10 of the fastest, most effective, and easiest ways to increase the efficiency of your financial website:

1. Catch the 404’s

Every user typically expects to follow a link that will take them exactly to where they intend to go. When users try to access your website and encounter a 404 error (page not found), they will become annoyed and may not want to continue their visit to your site.

Running into 404 error pages is as frustrating to a user as encountering a page with a slow load time. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to check for any 404s or crawl errors. Also, if your user encounters a 404 error page, you should provide an option to ensure that they return to your website.

2. Consistency

Consistency has to do with making sure everything matches – the sizes of each heading, coloring, design elements, spacing, photo choices, button styles, and various other elements. The theme you choose should be consistent in all the pages in order to avoid confusing the user. Everything has to be well blended to give your website a more comprehensible design.

To guarantee that your users have a remarkable experience on your website, the design has to be coherent. Inconsistent designs could cause your users to lose trust and get confused while navigating through your site. This will reduce the quality of the services and products you provide.

3. Design and Use of White Space

When people access your website, does it look engaging? Does it perform all its functions without errors? Your website design has to be unique, functional, provide value, and be credible. It should excel in branding, style, and functionality. Make important elements stand out and utilize white space effectively.

Source: Statistics Culled from Stanford Web Credibility Research

White space can increase the readability of your site’s content as it allows users to focus more on key features like text and graphics around the white space. When used effectively, it makes your website feel more open, fresh, and modern when used effectively. Additionally, white space can take up lots of space.

Inasmuch as white space is crucial to good website design, you should use it effectively. Having too much white space on your website is like making use of only a quarter of your farmland, leaving the remainder to lie fallow. Too much white space could take up space you would have used to provide valuable information.

Therefore, you have to find a balance that will enable your users to focus on important content, while easily digesting information. Design your website to include an amazing site structure.

4. Navigation

Navigation complements the design element perfectly. Can people use their intuition to quickly find whatever they need on your website? You also have to place buttons strategically for call-to-action and make your menus simple and effective.

In addition, ensure that your options for navigation are built around the way visitors use your website and interact with it. For most people, navigation creation depends on what some individuals think makes more sense instead of analyzing customer behavior based on scroll maps and heatmaps and then adjusting to it in order to improve their experience.

5. Onboarding

Your users have to reach their “success moments” in order for your onboarding to be successful. To accomplish these “success moments,” you have to know what your users intend to benefit from using your website or product. Every user has their own definition of success and you have to make them believe they are on the right track by using your website.

Onboarding is a long process. One way to ensure user onboarding is to understand all the roles that your product can fulfill. People will use your website to enhance productivity. You also need to design paths that will guide them through any feature that will encourage them to achieve success.

As much as possible, communicate with your users to ensure they achieve this success. Understand where they are and where they intend to be, then direct them toward this goal. You can create an early warning system that is available for your new users.

6. Remote User Testing

Due to remote user testing, many big companies like Google and Microsoft have been able to enhance the experience of their users, improve products or services, and boost conversions.

One of the advantages of remote user testing is that it is pocket-friendly and does not take up too much time. This is important because your company will need real-time feedback, and remote user testing will eliminate the need for complicated equipment, specific locations, and high numbers of people to conduct tests.

Also, with remote user testing, you do not need a lab since fewer resources are necessary for testing. Consequently, tests can be conducted in the home of the participant or in another natural environment. This will also generate more feedback.

Remote user testing also ensures increased diversity such as demographics. With remote testing, users from all over the world can easily share their opinions and thoughts regarding their experiences. They can even sign-up from any location worldwide, which provides you with a wider demographic range like age groups and languages spoken.

Remote user testing will help you discover why your users act or think in a certain way. These insights will enable you to make the necessary changes to your website and improve conversions.

7. Responsiveness and Mobile-Friendliness

A responsive website is extremely engaging and provides considerable value, which can help to convert mobile visitors. All this can be very difficult to achieve if your website is not responsive. With the advancement in technology, most people now use mobile phones for just about everything.

It is important for your website to be mobile-friendly and easy to navigate, irrespective of the type of device used in accessing it. Responsiveness became even more imperative when Google began to penalize sites that were not mobile-friendly. Since most people use their mobile devices, this is one of the best ways to increase the usability of your website.

8. Speed

Speed, in the digital world, means success. Users get frustrated when a page takes too long to load. Your website needs to be reasonably fast, otherwise people will leave. Naturally, people’s attention spans are getting shorter and they do not like wasting time on one thing anymore.

The standard for loading a website is 3 seconds. If it takes longer than this, you may lose most of your visitors. Make every millisecond count by ensuring that your site loads in the shortest possible time. Taking action on the site and following links should also be fast.

With an increase in the use of mobile devices, people can now access different content on different platforms from all over the world. If your page loads slowly, their experience will be interrupted and lead to frustration. You can reduce bounce time and increase your conversions by speeding up your webpage.

9. Use Fetching Calls-to-Action

Calls-to-action that have an action word can make it easier for your users to navigate your website and find what they are looking for in a place where they hope it will be located. Most of your customers are used to following visual cues to find the content most relevant to them.

When creating buttons for your site, consider the colors you use. Different colors have the ability to elicit all manner of messages. Through your colors, you can elicit the trust of your users, making you seem more experienced.

Another factor to consider is the words that you use for the buttons. These words should contain an action word that will encourage the user to take action. Examples of such words are “Get Started” and “Login”.

Using psychological triggers can prompt emotional identification without which there will be no action. Ensure that your words are bold, time-sensitive, and able to evoke action.

10. Use Well-designed and Catchy Headings

The headings you choose should include keywords in order to properly convey your message and attract the right audience. Your headings should be determined by what your target audience is searching for.

With the right heading, you will stand out, increase your rating in search engines, and guide users to your site. Well-written headings can make it easier for users to scan through your content to find the information they can benefit from.

What’s the Takeaway?

It takes a lot for financial companies to succeed in the marketplace. In the modern digital marketing environment, one of the most effective tools is a website. Clearly, you can see that poor user experience translates to poor conversion rates.

We most often concentrate on ensuring that our website appears in the right searches, but we forget the importance of providing a great user experience to our clients. If you intend to succeed in the online market, you have to ensure that your website users enjoy a first-rate experience.

I hope the key factors discussed in this article will help you to revamp your website and make it user-friendly without investing too much money on a complete redesign. First impressions matter most, and I can partner with you to ensure that you get better user experience results and higher conversion rates.

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