User experience is one of the most misunderstood and underutilized aspects of digital marketing. In fact, its impact on conversion optimization is particularly glanced over.

What digital marketers fail to recognize is that user experience is the most essential component when it comes to optimizing for conversions. For an effective increase in conversion rates, it is very important that digital marketers focus on delivering the best possible user experience.

User Experience Design

User experience design is all about creating a smooth and seamless browsing experience that is intuitive, easy to navigate, and most importantly engaging. The ultimate goal of any user experience design is to provide ease of interaction while focusing on attaining maximum user retention and engagement.

UX design always strives to make things as simple as possible while minimizing the steps involved in any user-software interaction. The ultimate goal is always minimizing complexity and increasing simplicity.

Members of a UX team working on a project. Image Credit - Unsplash [@uxindo]

Bounce Rates and UX

Bounce rate is the percentage of users exiting a landing page without navigating to any other page. In other words, a bounced user leaves a page without meaningfully interacting with the software/website. Extensive research directly co-relates higher bounce rates to bad UX. Complex user interfaces coupled with low-quality content can always result in increased bounce rates. Bad or vague navigation can also result in high bounce rates.

Bounce rates directly affect website conversions. Higher bounce rates always amount to extremely low conversion rates. A higher bounce rate also indicates low engagement of a website or a landing page.

To increase engagements and minimize bounce rates it is essential to successfully identify the bad UX points. A comprehensive analysis of website analytics data can help in identifying all the problems with the UX. Once the UX issues are properly identified, it is absolutely necessary to carry out the relevant fixes as soon as possible.

All the UX fixes should be consistent with the overall UI (User Interface) design. The new UX modifications, additions or subtractions should clearly further the overarching goals of the website.

Optimizing for Conversions

If a UX team is completely focused on creating the perfect user experience for its audience then it is optimizing for conversions from the start. But the processes of UX are cyclic in nature with several cycles of testing, evaluation, and iterations. Hence, UX enhancement is a core aspect of the conversion optimization cycle.

Following are the key steps involved in optimizing UX for conversions:

Identification of UX issues with the help of analytics data
Formulating strategy for relevant fixes
Clearly identifying things to be modified
Integrating UX with UI design
Review and quality assurance
Deployment of new UX improvements
Testing and evaluation

The testing and evaluation phase is the first step in the next cycle of optimizations where the success or failure of the recent UX improvements is evaluated. Once the results are clearly established, the next cycle of UX optimizations is carried out.

Good UX Means Effective Optimization

Bad UX results in higher bounce rates that ultimately hurt conversions badly. Good UX on the other hand decrease bounce rates while improving engagements and user retention, ultimately increasing conversions.

Good UX is great for effective conversion optimizations. A good overall user experience complemented by quality and relevant content attracts valuable users who are more likely to convert.

Hence, it is only logical to term good UX as an effective strategy for conversion optimization.