Webpage Design Tips to Improve User Experience and SEO Ranking

 By Jim Hingst

Photo by bongkarn thanyakij from Pexels

In this article, Jim Hingst provides webpage design tips to aid readability so your site visitors can more easily find the answers to their search requests. By presenting text in a format that aids usability, you will increase dwell time and enhance User Experience. What’s more, satisfied visitors are more likely to bookmark and return to your site.

 

Very few of your website visitors will thoroughly read your content. They will, however, quickly scan your copy looking for the answers to their search. To aid users find what they are looking for, layout of your content must be user-friendly. It must be easy to understand and the presentation of your content must be legible. To enhance your website’s usability, User Experience and search engineranking, you can take the following steps in designing webpages:

 

● Paragraph Length. Break up long copy blocks into shorter paragraphs. Each paragraph should focus on just one idea. Shorter paragraphs are easier to read.

 

● Visual Consistency. By maintaining visual consistency in your content formatting will improve legibility and readability. Use the same style, size, and color for all headers, sub-heads and lists.

 

● Headlines. Use a big and bold typeface for the headlines of your webpages. My article,  How to Write WebpageHeadlines That Increase Site Traffic, describes copywriting techniques, which will attract the attention of your website visitors and entice them to read further.

 

 

● Subheads. Bold subheads aid visitors in scanning your content as they search for answers to their questions.  Bulleted lists, bold subheads, graphs and pictures attract attention as the viewer scans your content.

 

 

● Body Copy. Select another sans-serif font for the body copy. To aid legibility keep font size for your body copy between 12px. and 14px. Column width should be about 65 characters wide.

 

 

● Font Options. While visual consistency, focus attention on your key points by varying the style, color and visual effects in your copy in the following ways:

 

▪ Italicizing, underlining or making your text bold;

▪ Presenting your focus points as bulleted or numbered lists; and

▪ Highlighting or changing the color of your text.

 

 

● Website Imagery. Aesthetically pleasing photography improves user experience and lengthens the time visitors are on your site. Displaying samples of your work in the graphics arts market. It might be worth it to invest in professional photography.

 

That being said, your imagery should load quickly. Larger files sizes take longer than 3 seconds to load can frustrate the viewer, resulting on the user leaving your site. By resizing your images, you can improve your SEO ranking.

 

Another technique to increase ranking is to rename your images to incorporate a keyword phrase. The image at the beginning of this article, for example, was renamed “webpage-design”.

 

 

● Image Captions. Whenever you use photos in your content, always provide a caption that provides your visitor with a benefit. In scanning your content, visitors are more likely to read and remember captions compared to the body copy.

 

 

 ● ALT Tags. Anytime you add an image to your webpage, you should ALWAYS include an ALT tag in the HTML code for the page. These tags are alternative descriptions to image’s caption. ALT tags are important because they can improve your search engine ranking.

 

The purpose of the ALT tag is to describe the content depicted in the image. Remember, search engines can see.

 

In writing an ALT tag, be concise. Your description should be no longer than a few words – fewer than 125 characters. For example, <img src=”wall-graphics.jpg” alt=“installer applies printed graphics to textured wall” height=”125” width=”125” class=left” />. If the image used is nothing more than eye candy, leave the description blank. Example: alt=””.

 

 

● Arranging Design Elements. Where design elements are positioned on a page is also critical. Components at the top of a webpage, above the fold, typically command more attention. Internal links to other webpages, contact information and request for more information forms are best placed at the bottom of the page.

 

 

● Whitespace. Many of the design elements, which are effective in print media layout, are also effective in formatting content for webpage design. For example, providing sufficient whitespace, which is what I call “visual breathing room”, is more pleasing to the eye. The rule of thumb is that whitespace should occupy between 30% and 40% of the design area.

 

 

● Color Considerations. According to an old advertising maxim, color sells. As any sign professional knows, make your use of color appropriate to your business and limit the number of colors that you use on any one page.

 

 

● Internal Links. Internal links help visitors quickly and easily navigate your site to find answers to their search questions. Because these links promote movement from one webpage to another, they usually help in reducing your bounce rate, which can improve your search engine ranking.

 

More importantly, internal  links provide a path for the search engine spiders to crawl from one webpage to another. Without a link, the spider can hit a dead end, which means that some of your webpages are not crawled and indexed.

 

 

● Call to Action. When I wrote advertising and direct marketing copy, my sales pitch always included a call to action. A call to action is a request for the reader to do something. The best calls for action are when you make an offer that the website visitor cannot refuse, such as call within the next 30 days to receive a 10% discount or a free gift with their purchase.

 

In designing your webpages, each page should have a call to action. In creating your call to action, you should ask yourself: “what do I want my website visitor to do next?”   Make it easy for your customers and prospects to engage with you.

 

If the primary objective of your website is to generate sales leads, your webpages should provide the user with response mechanisms to easily contact you through an email link, a form or toll-free number. You can also provide your website visitor an opportunity to download additional information, such as a free e-book.

 

Conclusion: How Good Design Enhances User Experience (UX)

 

People form impressions about your company during visits to your website. These first impressions are lasting impressions. Their User Experience (also called UX) colors their decisions on whether to stay or not to stay on your site and ultimately whether to buy or not to buy from your company.

 

User Experience encompasses every design feature that influences a visitor’s emotional and intellectual interaction with your website. These features include layout of your webpages, color selection, photography, typography  internal links to improve navigation and links to video clips on your YouTube channel.

 

Great webpage design can aid usability, which can create a satisfying and memorable User Experience. By improving User Experience, you will boost dwell time, generate more responses and increase revisits, all of which can improve SEO ranking. Dwell time is the length of time that the visitor stays on your website. 

 

 

On the other hand, poor website design negatively impacts User Experience. Cluttered layout, difficult to read copy, and files that load too slowly can be downright annoying. What’s more, difficulty in navigating a site to find answers to questions, result in a higher bounce rate, reduce dwell time and affect decisions on whether or not to return to your website. These are critical factors that search engines consider in ranking your pages. 

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About Jim Hingst: Sign business authority on vehicle wraps, vinyl graphics, screen printing, marketing, sales, gold leaf, woodcarving and painting. 

After fourteen years as Business Development Manager at RTape, Jim Hingst retired. He was involved in many facets of the company’s business, including marketing, sales, product development and technical service.

Hingst began his career 42 years ago in the graphic arts field creating and producing advertising and promotional materials for a large test equipment manufacturer.  Working for offset printers, large format screen printers, vinyl film manufacturers, and application tape companies, his experience included estimating, production planning, purchasing and production art, as well as sales and marketing. In his capacity as a salesman, Hingst was recognized with numerous sales achievement awards.

Drawing on his experience in production and as graphics installation subcontractor, Hingst provided the industry with practical advice, publishing more than 190 articles for  publications, such as  Signs Canada, SignCraft,  Signs of the Times, Screen Printing, Sign and Digital Graphics and  Sign Builder Illustrated. He also posted more than 500 stories on his blog (hingstssignpost.blogspot.com). In 2007 Hingst’s book, Vinyl Sign Techniques, was published.  Vinyl Sign Techniques is available at sign supply distributors and at Amazon. 

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