Best UI/UX Practices when Building a WordPress Website
Last updated on January 20th, 2024 at 09:47 am
One of the most crucial factors influencing your success in today’s hyper-digital environment is your website. A website is a necessity if you want to grow and improve your company’s online presence. In the following pages, we’ll show you why a website is a must-have and why it’s one of the most potent and critical marketing instruments you can employ. However, don’t forget that designing a website without taking current trends into account and without paying attention to the user experience will not get you far. The only thing that is constant in today’s world is change.
It’s important to keep up with current digital trends if you don’t want your website to look antiquated and unattractive. In this post, we’ll explain what UI/UX is and how to use 10 best practices to improve the user experience.
What is UI?
User interface (UI) design is focused on creating interfaces that are both visually appealing and interactive. The goal of the UI designer is to create an intuitive and visually appealing user interface.
Figma, Sketch, and other tools, web browsers, and hardware devices all fall under the umbrella word “interface”. A UI designer examines every interaction and behavior the user has with a product in order to create an interface that best serves the needs of its users.
Decisions made by designers when creating a product, like an image, button, menu bar, or footer, are referred to as user interface design (UI design). There will be an effect on how the user interacts as a result of all of these considerations.
What is UX?
Designing for user experience (UX) is the process by which designers create things that deliver meaningful and valuable experiences for end-users. “User experience” comprises “all aspects of an end user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its commodities,” according to Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group co-founder and coiner of the phrase.
In order to create valuable user experiences, UX designers combine the disciplines of branding, marketing, engineering, and design with those of usability. It is necessary for them to conduct extensive user research in order to gain a thorough understanding of the mindset, feelings, and goals of the average customer.
The Difference Between UI and UX Design
A basic way to tell the difference between UX and UI is as follows:
The user interface is concerned with the technical aspects of mobile applications and websites that allow consumers to interact with them. It’s the user’s perspective that is the focus of UX design.
For the time being, let’s focus on mobile app UX and UI design only. The design of an app’s user interface (UI) includes all of the interactions that the app’s users have with the UI. It may entail the intended audience’s ability to navigate the screen, click buttons, read text, and perform other comparable actions. The location of a button or the color of a menu is all examples of interface difficulties.
However, UX design, on the other hand, is all about what your target customers will experience. The UX designer must make changes if design flaws negatively impact the user’s experience.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend you’re working on a mobile app that includes a search engine similar to Google’s. Using the search engine on the homepage is relatively simple because of the style of the page.
An amazing example of user interface design can be seen here. Let’s pretend for a moment that the search engine takes 10–20 seconds to load the results. Since the user experience would be greatly affected, this falls under the UX (user experience) area. A UI/UX designer will help you in every aspect when it comes to designing a website.
UI/UX Best Practices for WordPress
1. A Clean and Simple Design
If your website has a simple and clean design, visitors will stay longer. Adding more functionality often takes precedence over making a website easier to use for users. However, if a website is difficult to navigate, users will quickly lose interest.
The best designs are simple and easy to understand. Asking yourself whether your design meets contemporary standards and answering “no” means you may want to reconsider your strategy.
When it comes to WordPress themes, there’s nothing better than the fact that most of them offer a simple, clutter-free design. If you want a different color scheme, you are free to do so. There are fewer moving parts and less complexity in a simple design.
2. Pick the Right Colors
When selecting a color palette, you should always begin by creating a portrait of the target audience. You need to have a solid understanding of who will use your website and how they will use it.
In addition to this, you need to be aware of their particular tastes, desires, and problems. Different subsets of people have preferences for a variety of colors. You are able to have a more fruitful interaction with them if you display the colors of the “target.”
The concept of the website has to also be taken into consideration. Think about the specific segment of the market that your company serves. If the color scheme is chosen well, customers will experience a sense of calmness and an increase in the possibility that they will carry out the desired activity.
3. Responsive Web Design
The modern user experience requires a web design that can accommodate a variety of screen sizes in order to be considered successful. Because mobile devices have taken over the internet, it is absolutely essential that websites built with WordPress are flexible and can adjust to any screen resolution or retina display.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of having a responsive design; not only does it enhance the user experience, but mobile users have a tendency to remain on the page for longer, and Google uses dwell time to determine a user’s level of satisfaction when they click on your website in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
If visitors spend less time on your site in comparison to the sites that are nearby, Google will rank your site lower. This suggests that there is a problem with the website you are using.
4. Know Your Audience
When designing a product, one of the most important factors to take into consideration is, of course, the target market. This should not come as a surprise. If you want to create a product that your clients would absolutely appreciate, you need to be aware of the genuine requirements and requirements that they have.
As a consequence of this, conducting user research needs to be an essential part of the UX design process. Before beginning development, it is crucial to keep in mind who UX your audience will be. You will be able to provide value to the people who will use your product if you place more emphasis on the benefits it provides rather than its features.
5. Focus on content
A designer’s job doesn’t end with the creation of well-organized layouts. UX writing should not be ignored. Assemble a team and be adamant about using high-quality materials.
Be sure to speak your users’ language, focus on them, and ensure that you have a clear line of communication with them. Also essential is the ability to laugh at yourself.
User perceptions and experiences are greatly influenced by well-written content and effective graphics or images. Again, you should do user research rather than blindly follow existing norms.
A user will not be drawn to an interface that is difficult to understand or has low-quality images.
6. Make the Website Mobile-Friendly
One of the most critical aspects of a website’s design is its ability to be seen on various mobile devices. In the first place, it’s critical to your SEO because search engines like Google look at it while indexing your site. In order to rank effectively on Google, you must ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
However, the development of a mobile-friendly website should not be motivated primarily by SEO. Did you know that mobile devices account for more than half of all website traffic? Furthermore, consumers are five times more likely to abandon a website that isn’t mobile-friendly.
Is your company’s website so compelling that visitors will put down their mobile devices, pick up their laptops, and spend more time there than they would on any other? I have no unfavorable feelings towards it, but I’m not sure. With a few keywords, your customers can land on the same page in today’s hyper-digitalized world. If you want to turn away a large percentage of potential clients, your best bet is to simply avoid making your website mobile-friendly.
One of the best practices for UX design is to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly. You don’t have to worry about making it more difficult for your audience to get to your page. Your clients won’t be impressed by this tactic, but it will keep them from abandoning your site because of a terrible user experience.
7. Easy to Use Navigation
Today, almost every website I visit has a complex information structure. In order for a website’s navigation to be user-friendly, designers and programmers must work together. A plugin like Uber Menu may come in handy if you have a large number of links to include in your menu.
Avoid using slashes and brackets in your permalink. We advocate using a “Post name” structure unless you run a news website or publish multiple articles daily (see this post for more information). It’s easier to use if there are these navigational elements available:
8. Visual Hierarchy
When deciding where to place the most important components on the interface, be sure to highlight them so that users can concentrate on them. There are a lot of different ways to highlight something in design, but the one that works the best is to make it bigger than everything else that’s on the screen.
On a few websites, the ‘click here’ or sale buttons are made far larger than everything else on the page, drawing the user’s attention to them and making it virtually impossible to ignore them.
9. Whitespace Is Your Friend
This is one of the most straightforward and uncomplicated techniques to improve the look of your design. Your designs will benefit from even the smallest amounts of whitespace by having more room to breathe and looking more sophisticated.
The background color of the design does not have to be white in every instance. It only needs to be the space that exists between the various components of the page. Your web pages will be more straightforward and sophisticated if you use white space.
10. Allow Social Sharing
Your website’s visitors expect to be able to share its material via social media. Your website’s visibility is also boosted as a result of this. As a result, your WordPress UX design must incorporate some form of social sharing.
User engagement is boosted by placing social sharing icons in prominent places, such as the header or sidebar. The usage of hovering sharing icons is something I do not always advocate due to the risk of other information being obstructed or mistakenly clicked. In either case, the overall user experience will be harmed.
Wrapping it up
UX design is all about making sure that it works properly for both your users and your platform at the same time. So, a good user experience is one that helps people find the information they need and removes any hurdles in their path. But despite its apparent recognition by nearly everyone, the goal might still be difficult to achieve.
Users can’t find anything because it doesn’t exist in their view. They might be able to find it if it’s discoverable. Creating user-friendly interfaces and interactions should be a top priority for business owners. Users are more likely to use our content and services if our interfaces are more easily discovered.
Using these criteria, you’ll be able to determine the characteristics that will resonate with your target audience and encourage engagement between you and your users.
Author’s Bio:
Archit Prajapati is a Content Writer & Digital Marketing Expert at WPWeb Infotech. He has a deep knowledge and interest in working with new marketing strategies. In his free time, he loves to watch Cricket, read spiritual and marketing books, and play music.
