User Experience Shapes First Impressions

The importance to your business of a good website user experience (especially the first-use experience) is hard to underestimate. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is unless the visitor stays on your website to learn about it.

Frequently, your website is a client’s first introduction to your product or service. In addition, visitors often decide whether to stay on a website in only a few seconds. Customers usually scan the website first; then and only then do they start to read the content. Therefore, making a good impression with the first-use experience is critical.

People look for visual clues on your website and then ask questions. Some examples are:

• Am I where I need to be?
• Where am I on the site?
• Will this site help complete my goals?
• Who is this site for?

Remember people visit website with a goal in mind. Your website site should help them with their goals.

So, how do you know if you are giving your potential clients a good user experience?

User experience can be taken from the abstract into concrete steps in only a few minutes. All you need is a person who is experienced in web development and knows your product.

A good indication of whether your site provides an effective user experience is whether visitors can answer the following basic questions about your product or service after viewing your site for 10 seconds:

• What is the name of the product?
• What are the benefits of the product?
• How is the product different from other similar products?
• How can I find out more details about the product?
• Who would buy the product?
• Where / how can I buy the product?
• What do you do better than your competitors?

In reality, a major part of user experience is answering basic questions about your company through your layout, navigation, visual hierarchy, colors, typography, media and content, and all in fewer than 10 seconds. Many times, you have only a couple of seconds! All elements of your website should come together to tell a story about your company or product and to answer questions that a potential client might have.

User experience goes beyond having a good layout and buttons. User experience is your chance to answer, in only a brief moment, questions that a person might have about your company. Potential clients may never understand what your product or service is about because they already clicked the back button.