Is Your Website Making Any of These 5 Massive UX Mistakes?	1.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Elena Velikova March 21, 2018

In today’s hyper-competitive business landscape, generating positive customer experiences isn’t just important –– it’s essential. Indeed, Walker Information has projected that by the year 2020, customer experience will be the single most important brand differentiator, surpassing traditional heavyweights price and product.

However, the digital world has its own type of customer experience metric, which is translated as user experience (UX). This refers to the ease and effectiveness at which visitors (i.e. current or prospective customers) can navigate a website and achieve specific goals, such as learning about products, accessing help, making a purchase (if applicable), and so on.

Given the critical importance of UX as part of the overall customer experience commitment, you might think that most businesses — including large enterprises — are doing a pretty good on the UX front. Except you’d be wrong!

In truth, an alarming number of businesses are some massive UX mistakes that include:

1. Slowness. Research by Kissmetrics has found that conversion rates plunge 7% for every 1 second delay in page response.

2. Not optimized for mobile. There are more than 4.7 billion mobile users in the world, and businesses that fail to optimize for various mobile devices and browsers either can’t reach them, or they make a lousy first (and usually last) impression.

3. Too much information. Businesses have a limited amount of digital real estate to get their message across. But trying to jam in all kinds of content leads to confusion rather than clarity. Just as with vehicle graphics and billboards, TMI doesn’t lead to ROI.

4. Light text on dark background. Yes, white or light text on a black or dark background looks sleek and stylish. But it’s also difficult to read, and causes eyestrain.

5.  Non-intuitive navigation. These days, customers expect some basic web design staples such as menus at the top (and perhaps also on the side) and links in the footer. While it’s important not to have a generic, run-of-the-mill design, forcing customers to spend time figuring out where things are and where to go is fatal. Instead of learning a new workflow, they’ll bounce away.

The Bottom Line

If your business is making one, some, or perhaps all of these UX mistakes, then don’t panic: this is the virtual world, not the brick-and-mortar world. Changing your website doesn’t mean hiring an architect and tearing down walls. It means re-inventing your website ASAP so that it does what matters most: delivers engaging and impressive UX, and turns more prospects into profitable, loyal customers.