Everyday UX / UXD / UED..

..or whatever you want to call it, whether it's about the experience users have interacting with your company or the visual elements on the page they do it, it all has something in common.

User experience design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.

- Wikipedia

Let’s be clear about this: Web design always takes the user into account. It’s about making web usable, beautiful too yes, but above all functional and hopefully engaging for the people using it. This should always include seeing how the user will use and feel using the service. ( If you ask me, any design that only focuses in aesthetics is called mediocre art, experimentation or decoration. )

And while you can always slice a piece of cake into smaller and smaller bits, I'd rather not: There’s a whole world behind UX, and we aren’t going there. I’m not even going to remotely mention *ahem* how I think all web designers should have a UX designers’ mentality, even if not using all the tricks of the book..

But I am going to talk about the basic user experience every website should include: Usable, accessible and credible content.

What people want from your website?

Do you know the answer? Whatever it is, make it clear and easy to find.

Try also answering these important questions to show off your value: What do you do? Why to choose you?

HOT TIPS:

• Try writing a tagline / slogan and engaging titles. These are the biggest strings of text on your site. Be eye-catching.
• Social presence! Show where to find you and possibly what people say about you. It’s easy to spread your content everywhere nowadays, and you really should too.
• Engage people emotionally if possible. Be a human and write to humans.

Do people find what they need?

Think about accessibility, ease of use and clarity: Is this intuitive to someone who hasn’t ever seen it before?

HOT TIPS:

• Try asking for feedback from your clients. Set up a simple form with set questions and free text field. You might get surprised!
• Test different things: Wording or call-to-action colours or placement. Let users show you the way.

Can people trust this?

Does it look trustworthy and create the sense of security? Especially important when dealing with online payments, but should be a top priority for any site to seem credible and familiar.

Nobody wants to browse around a dodgy website.

HOT TIPS:

• Encrypt sensitive data. Have a secure connection. Google will actually give a better ranking to sites with HTTPS / SSL, so don’t overlook this!
• Give out a physical location, this is always winner.
• Ditch external advertising, if possible. I understand this is a big deal for some sites, but it lessens your value to have non related, ugly banners around your site. At least make sure to monitor where possible the type of advertising linking from your website so your users can feel safe.

Just remember, you can predict people's rections to a certain limit, some things are just up to everyone's personal taste, location, experience, culture and outlook on life. If you are really interested in your users ( and why shouldn't you be ), that's when the in depth UX comes in, to help you perform to your audience better.

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