Our team members at A-Train love the great outdoors. So, it’s no surprise that we visualize marketing as a journey into the wilderness with several areas that are critical to every organization’s success.
One critical stop on the trek is what we refer to as Website Waterfalls. But how can you get the most from this important destination and ensure you’ve positioned your organization to engage successfully with your audience?
What makes an effective website?
Good websites are fluid and adapt to their terrain. Just as water is essential to life, a website is essential to every business and organization.
Your site is your most important marketing tool. According to UXCam (July 2022), 88% of online consumers report that they would be less likely to make a return visit to a website if they encounter a bad user experience. In other words, almost 9 out of 10 visitors won’t be back if you disappoint them! That’s a sobering statistic.
And who could blame them for crossing your site off their list? In most markets, several competitors are seeking to attract the same customers or clients. If one organization doesn’t invest the time and effort to develop a user-friendly website, visitors are happy to look elsewhere.
Unfortunately, if yours is the site they leave in search of a better one, you probably will never know you missed out on an opportunity.
What are UI and UX?
Two vital elements of an effective website are its user interface (UI) and the user experience (UX) it enables.
- UI is anything a user may interact with to use a digital product or service—including websites. The goal of user interface design is to make a visitor’s interaction with the site as simple and efficient as possible.
- UX is the underlying architecture of a website. It must be designed to maximize how easy and pleasing the site is to use.
Simply having a website containing important information about your organization and offerings isn’t enough. Countless other entities will be similarly positioned. You have to go further and create a noticeably positive experience that keeps visitors coming back—and ideally talking about their experience with other potential customers or clients.
Is your website making a splash?
It’s hard to be objective about your organization’s website. At a glance, you might be confident that it’s optimized to meet your goals. But to be sure it is, you’ve got to do a more methodical assessment.
Properly scoring a website requires many professional tools. However, you can evaluate five core elements of your site based on your personal experience. Those characteristics are:
- Content
- Usability
- Aesthetics
- Visibility
- Interaction
Each of these categories has several points you should evaluate. To make the process easier, we’ve created a helpful “scorecard” you can use to grade your website on a few of these categories. It enables you to see your site from a visitor’s perspective, which may be quite different from that of you and your coworkers.
Get the Website Self Assessment List
Be well-informed on your next visit to Website Waterfalls! Download our free Website Self Assessment and take a fresh look at your site today.
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