Did you know that the average American internet user visits up to 138 different websites each day? For small business owners, a website can act as the around the clock representative of your sales, marketing and customer service efforts. In an increasingly digital world, websites have become more important than ever. But trends in web design and development are often hard to keep up with. Here are four easy self-check tips to improve your websites’ user experience.

Navigate the site as if you were seeing it for the first time

When addressing issues with user experience, it is important to remove yourself from the equation and navigate the site with an open mind and fresh set of eyes. Imagine that you are someone visiting the website for the first time, knowing nothing at all about you or your business. Ask yourself:

Is the user able to find my site, easily navigate the pages, and get the information they are looking for?

Too many distractions on the homepage usually leads to users exiting the site before they even get started in the conversion funnel. The goal of the homepage is to reduce as many obstacles as possible and present your business’ values and services in a way where the user can intuitively navigate their way to find what they need. Avoid pop-up email lists and sign ups, reduce unnecessary words or text, and consider using images/icons to consolidate the amount of words on the page.

Self-Check Your Contact Form

The contact form is the best way to answer questions that potential clients have about your business. Fill out your website’s contact form as if you were someone else, or even better, get a friend to fill out the contact form for your site. Consider including a dropdown menu that allows you to list specific services on your contact form.

Does the form make it easy for the user to ask a question? Can the user ask for information on specific products/services?

Make sure all inquiries from your contact form are received and acknowledged in a timely manner. Many small business owners are unsure of how to locate and manage contact from potential clients.

Provide Relevant Content

Create content that answers questions that people might have about your business, industry or services. Use geographic-specific language wherever possible as most searches now include local qualifiers, like “small business consulting in Philadelphia.” Add keywords to the content that are related to your industry and are aligned to the needs that your prospective clients have. Think about the questions your customers often ask. Creating an article or blog post answering these problems can drive like-minded prospects to your site, and possibly lead to new business.

Does my content answer questions the audience might have?

Another important piece of content that gets forgotten is images. Make sure you are adding images to your site that are high quality and relevant to the services you offer, rather than just using basic stock photos. Consider hiring a photographer. If you do have stock photos on your site, do they help convey your brand story?

Use Appropriate Calls-to-Action

By incorporating verbs, action phrases, and time sensitive vocabulary into your content, you can psychologically influence the user to further navigate the site and find what they are looking for. Buttons on each page should be colorful and easily noticeable, with language that invites the user to do something.

Add time sensitive language like “Sign up Now”, “Call Now”, and “Get Started!”

Every page should have text that invites the user to interact with the site, whether it be to fill out a contact form or read more about a specific service. Adding emotionally sensitive words and phrases can also invoke action in a user; if your call-to-action is exciting, then your user will be excited too. Even adding an exclamation mark is a small adjustment that can make your content more noticeable and provoke enthusiasm with your audience.

Hopefully, these tips have given you some ideas on how you can make small changes to improve the user experience without having to hire a web designer to revamp your whole site. For more assistance with your website or marketing, signup to meet with a Temple SBDC consultant.