UX Design is “user experience. Its essence is not what the site looks like but how easy it is to perceive. UX Design is responsible for layout menus, buttons, banners, and other page elements. In addition, UX — a kind of “user path” from point A to point B. Thanks to the UX design, the site leads the person by hand to the target action — ordering a product or service. Consider these tips and tricks to get better performance in 2022. 

Accordingly, UX-designer — a real engineer-designer, who studies the behavior of users on the site, goes into analytics, prototyping the site, and only after that prepares a technical specification for the UI-designer. That is, he creates the logic and structure of pages. Check out Adsy USA, where you can order a guest posting service. 

What is the UI Design Online Store?

UI Design — “user interface.” It is directly graphic details: the appearance of buttons and icons, animations, fonts, etc. All that the user sees in front of him on the screen. The critical goal of UI design is the site’s aesthetic appearance and compliance with corporate identity. 

UI-designer actually “draws” various buttons and controls, create animations, etc. In this case, a good UI designer should have basic programming skills, understand the principles of interface SEO-friendly website design, and be familiar with brand design.

How do Search Engines See a Website Design?

Search engines don’t see the design of your site and don’t evaluate how usable and beautiful it is. But they do consider the following factors when ranking:

  • behavioral;
  • links;
  • domains;
  • textual;
  • technical;
  • commercial.

And these factors are essentially directly related to design. For example, the site has no adaptive SEO web design, and it is inconvenient to use it from a smartphone — the number of bounces grows, and with them, the site’s position falls. Or another example: because of an ill-conceived interface and generally poor UX design, people get confused in menus and product categories and can’t understand how to buy a product on credit or pay for it directly on the site. 

The same applies to the weak appearance of the site: if the user enters an online store with an old design, he has doubts about whether this is a good site, the level of trust drops sharply, and the user leaves without taking any action. Search engines consider the behavioral, technical, and commercial factors, and positions fall again, basically, because of ill-conceived design and structure. Let’s move on to the factors that increase the credibility of websites.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is a set of factors that Google takes into account when evaluating user interaction with a site:

  1. Page load speed.
  2. The capability and ease of interaction with the resource.
  3. Stability of content. Important writing useful content.

That is, for Google to rank your online store highly and elevate it in search engine results, you need to achieve: 

  1. High speed of rendering content.
  2. Minimum waiting time before the first interaction with the content.
  3. Ensure visual consistency of all web page elements (without any layout shifts).

Page layout

A page layout is a minimum amount or complete absence of advertising on the first screen. That is, in the part that is on the screen without scrolling. The rule is simple: the less, the better. 

Mobile-first

It means the primary SEO in web development of a site version for mobile devices, subsequently expanding it to desktop and laptop computers. In this case, the mobile version should present all the vital elements of content: text, images with descriptions of alt, video, etc. In recent years Mobile-first is becoming an accepted standard.

Speed of Page Loading

The faster your site loads, the better your users feel. An excellent speed is 1-2 seconds. Allowable — 3 seconds. Unacceptable — from 3 seconds or more. This figure is affected by many factors: the purity of HTML code, size and format of images, JavaScript, and other things.

Bounce rate

A well-thought-out design reduces the bounce rate, and increases the time spent on the site by the user. As a result, it improves user experience and site position in Google. Therefore, for product pages, use high-quality photos that show your product from the best side, if necessary, retouch them. For blog pages, keep your text well-formatted and paragraph-sized. 

What Can the Search Engine Assess?

A search engine, in general, does not care how your site looks like. It is much more critical relevance and behavioral factors. The online store will go up in search results if:

  1. Pages load quickly and without layout shifts.
  2. The web resource is adaptive and functional on all devices;
  3. Users do not leave the site in the first couple of seconds without completing the target action.
  4. Potential customers stay on the page, study the content, and most importantly — make orders.

And vice versa, long downloads, lack of targeted actions, a lot of bounces, and others — all this contributes to the deterioration of the position of your site. To put it simply, if people like an online store, search engines like it too.

How UX Design Affects SEO-Promotion

Website design with SEO optimization is a comprehensive list of tasks that not only a designer should work on. Let’s look at a few examples of how UX design affects SEO promotion and why you should pay attention to more than just content. Also, use strong SEO backlinks

Site Architecture

The architecture of a website is the structure of the pages and software part of the site. That is a kind of “backbone” on which to build the rest — pages, blocks, buttons, forms, and so on. Search engine spiders follow links to the site. And the more appropriately structured, the faster they will index your resource and put it in the search results list.

Convenient Directory Structure

A catalog is for many visitors to online stores as a starting point in their search for products they need. It should be convenient, clear, and functional. Plus, it should contain additional elements (not necessarily all of them):

  • smart filters for quick product selection;
  • sorting by different parameters: price, popularity, newness;
  • pagination and loading;
  • nesting of categories and subcategories;
  • preview of products;
  • stickers, etc.

For SEO, website design provides three main points:

  • Increase the user’s credibility.
  • Accelerate and simplify the process of selection and ordering on the site.
  • Correct and complete information about the product further stimulates people to action.

Let’s fasten: the design of an online store should be attractive, understandable, and intuitive for the visitor to the site. Otherwise, the user will leave.

Trust Factors

An essential part of the UI design of an online store is trust factors, which are achieved through the presence of the following elements on the site:

  1. Company contact information.
  2. A form for feedback.
  3. Clearly described warranty, return and service conditions.
  4. Licenses, certificates, and diplomas.
  5. Legal details, etc.

Your company must have a face. How attractive it will be to users depends on the UI design.

Identify design issues that negatively affect SEO and conversion rates:

  1. Non-adaptive design and incorrect display of the web resource on mobile devices.
  2. Unworked elements in terms of design: small fonts, poor color combinations, merging elements of the page with the background, etc.
  3. Absence of CTA buttons with motivation or their unworked web design: sizes, fonts, colors, etc.
  4. Stock photos and renders instead of authentic images.
  5. Lack of Social Proofs: reviews, questions, and answers.
  6. Overloaded page with heavy animations and effects that slow down page loading.
  7. Overly bright and flashy design that only discourages and impairs the perception of the content.

Conclusions

Design without SEO improvement promotion is useless, and SEO without strategy — meaningless. Both components are essential. And to achieve the best results, you have to work comprehensively.

About the Author

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Mirko Humbert

Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.