Ever since the tech boom, programmers have witness a tremendous shift of focus on how our website audiences interact and consume web content. In the early years of the industry, software developers was mastered designing intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) for programs and applications. However, with the adoption of the Internet and mobile devices, the way web designers and developers look at interfaces and user experiences have changed. These design principles are better known as User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX).
What is UI/UX?
UI focuses on visual aspects of your website. UI determines how information is presented and how visitors interact with it. The overall goal of a good UI web design is to ensure the accessibility, easy-to-navigate interfaces and intuitive website design are all in place to ensure visitors are able to access information easily.
UX focuses on the overall experience of your website and determines how visitors get from point A to B while navigating through your website. Developing user experience involves creating a sitemap to compartmentalise content in its respective sections and to simplify various navigation paths in a website or application.
Which is More Important?
There is a significant difference between UI and UX as the two components are essential during the website development and also the on-going performance optimisation phase. UI and UX complements each other and without one or the other, your website may lean towards one of the following scenarios:
- An aesthetically good looking website that is difficult to navigate, locate content and call-to-actions.
- An easy to navigate website with poor visuals that spoils the brand positioning and user experience.
From the above scenarios, it is evident that there is no running away from optimising both UI and UX in a website. At the end of the day, the end goal is to provide a great visitor experience and what users may accomplish from their actions.
Speaking of which, a “call-to-action” or CTA is a user’s action that formulates the overall success of your website conversions. The mechanics of a website usability has changed. It’s not all about providing information anymore, but also providing targeted CTAs for different visitor personas. The success of CTA conversions is highly related to both the UI and UX of a particular online presence.
Quick Fixes for Improved UI/UX
One of the most important aspects in a good UI and UX is to create a responsive web design. Many users are constantly on the go, so you’ll want to optimise your website to cater to all devices to ensure your visitors will find it easy to navigate and find information easily.
Another aspect to optimise is your website page load times and you’ll want to make sure that your website loads within a 5 second period. Otherwise you may lose your visitors attention and they may opt to look elsewhere.
Most importantly, remember to include a visible call-to-action at every step of a user journey so that you are able to engage and convert website visitors effectively. This could be as simple as having an action for someone complete an enquiry form or sign-up to an online newsletter!
There are many aspects to consider when implementing great UI/UX for websites. They start with proper website structure planning, to having a clear direction on visuals, content flow and functionalities of a website.
