If you are building a website, there is much more to it than just putting pages together. You also need to design for the user experience.

You'll find plenty of developers out there who have a good grasp of the technical requirements for building a site, but you will also need a skilled web designer to help create the best experience for your visitors.

Here are some of the ins and outs of UI/UX that are important to be aware of.

How UI and UX Work Together

The UX of a site refers to the overall user experience, and the user interface (UI) plays an important role in delivering the intended experience.

To deliver a good UX, you basically want to consider the reasons users will be coming to the site, the way they are most likely to use the site, and the different functions they are going to expect from the site.

The UI is essentially an element of the UX. The user interface plays an important role in how the user will interact with the experience that has been designed. You might use different navigational links, buttons, fields, color schemes and typography to make the UX as convenient and accessible to the user as possible.

Know Your Users

When it comes to UI/UX for a website, the first consideration has to be the user. When you start to plan a website, chances are you probably already have at least some idea regarding your target audience. However, you have to go beyond this and consider the factors that will draw people in and the design elements that will encourage them to move through the intended flow of the site.

Keep it Simple and Consistent

For starters, keep it simple. A good user interface is going to be clear and easy for people to use. A visitor to the site should not need to spend time learning how to interact with the different features, or be blasted with information. Instead, they should be able to experience the site in a way that is uncluttered, consistent, intuitive, and which easily moves them through the process of what they are trying to achieve.

Speed and Responsiveness Matters

When a user goes to a site, they expect the experience to be fast and they want a system that responds to their input. A failure to deliver on these fronts will make for a less than satisfying user experience. If the site is clunky and it does not provide the feedback that users expect, then they likely will not come back to use it again.

Make Navigation Easy

Visitors are going to come to a site for a reason, and when they do, you want them to be able to fulfill their goal with as little effort as possible.

With a good navigation system, the user should be able to look at the site and automatically understand how to get where they want to go. Search buttons are good here, and drop down menus. Try to make the navigation obvious and give the user the ability to get where they are going with the least amount of clicks.

Hierarchy Helps

When users visit a site, they tend to not look at everything. They scan the page in search of what they need. By giving the page a visual hierarchy, you make it easier for the user to identify what they need, and by doing so, you deliver a more user-friendly experience. With this concept, you take the most important elements of the page and make them stand out. Examples of this include making the item larger and using a color scheme that makes the element more noticeable.

Use Visual Cues

Visual cues can be great for directing the attention of a user and for giving certain page elements a subtle distinction. Things like pictures and video can be illustrative and they can direct the user's attention. Headings can be a great way to make the text more scannable. You can also use colors to provide indicators to the user.

As an example, consider a page with a long piece of written content. With subheadings, the reader can more easily scan the page to find the section they find most relevant.
Further, colors can be used to indicate functions. Green is often associated with the affirmative and red is commonly associated with the negative. When you have to buttons next to each other with these different colors, it automatically sends a functional message to the user.

Utilize Typography

The use of typography can also be employed to build the structure of a page and to give certain elements a different feel. This includes basic considerations like the font you use for the bulk of the page text and it also covers elements like the headers mentioned in the section above.
However, there is more to it than that. Even on a page that is light on text, you can use different fonts and different sizes to help an element stand out, or you can change the color of the text to make it more attention-grabbing.

Simplify Forms

Forms tend to be one of the more common ways that users interact with websites. However, they are also one of the least popular among users. For that reason, you want any form to be as simple as possible. If you need to put a form on the page, look at all of the fields and consider whether they are really necessary. One page forms are the most preferred by website shoppers.

Test and Improve

Once the UI and UX for the page have been designed, it is helpful to make a mockup of the site and perform some testing on the user experience. In the initial testing, you are likely to find elements that do not perform as well as anticipated or things that could be done better. Test the site, make improvements, and try to release a version that delivers the best UX possible.

Get Feedback

When a site is released for real world use, there is a good chance that there will eventually be some parts of the user experience that could be improved. Even with all of the testing, users tend to find ways to make the system misbehave or they find ways to use the site that may differ from the original idea.

Make it possible for users to leave feedback and give the feedback real consideration. Nobody is going to be able to tell you how to make the site better than the users.

Designing a good website depends heavily on a good UX, and designing a good UX depends heavily on a good UI. If you are building a website or looking to hire someone to do it for you, these are important considerations. A wonderful hack is to usually go for the best AI website builder. Most of these platforms have understood UX and UI very well, and they are integrated into its designs. Plus, it doesn't cost much. You can also learn more at UX 4sight, if you're interested in delving deeper into UX principles.
Building a website costs money, and a site with a poor user experience is not going to deliver good results. Keep these tips in mind to set yourself on the path to a high return on investment.

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Written by Jessica Walrack on Monday, April 11, 2016

Jessica Walrack is a professional freelance writer with a background in sales and marketing. After 7 years in the corporate world, she stepped into the online sphere and has now been freelancing for 4 years. She specializes in helping businesses to create a stellar online experience for their audience in order to build industry authority and increase profitability. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys traveling all over the world with her family.