A Short Guide on How to Improve the User Experience on Your WordPress Website

The User Experience that a visitor has when they access a website is a factor that determines how successful the site will be in the future, among other elements. When people enter a website, they expect to have a great time looking for the information they are interested in.

This won’t happen unless the website is built appropriately and has all elements in line with the current trends and requirements of the Internet.

Because many people choose WordPress as their main Content Management System instead of building the website from scratch, it is paramount to figure out what are the essential aspects that create a pleasurable User Experience on their sites.

WordPress is also known for the freedom users have when it comes to themes and plugins. As an open-source CMS, it grants people the opportunity to upload their own products and share them with the world.

Even so, it is important to know how to select the themes and plugins that you use for your site to avoid obtaining the exact opposite effect – a bad User Experience and a slow-loading website.

This article will present a few of the particularities that entirely transform the User Experience on WordPress websites. Apply the tips that you find in this article, and your website will be infinitely improved in the long run.

Choose themes with sleek designs

You have so many theme options with WordPress that it might be a challenge to select one and stick with it. The trend that won’t go away any sooner is represented by sleek design.

A site that is overcrowded with all sorts of elements that have no purposefor the visitors will make them exit the site immediately after they accessed it, thus sending your website’s bounce rate in space. The main purpose of a site is to have people spend time on it and interact with it, regardless of its purpose.

Without proper interaction, the website will never be efficacious. Content is important, indeed, but the interest of people is stirred only if the visuals are attractive.

Choose a theme that is not cluttered, which has responsive functions and make navigation easy. The whole point is to choose a highly-optimized theme with a clean design that transforms the website into a functional one instead of a lazy one.

Pay attention to content

Using quality content is another exception for a perfect User Experience. WordPress is a strong Content Management System that offers all sorts of tools to keep your content in good shape.

Even so, you have to pay loads of attention to the quality of the content that you publish. From images to copy content, everything needs to be flawless to give the website a professional feel.

When visitors notice that there are mistakes in the written content or that the images are not high-quality ones, they will be tempted to leave the site in seconds, as they won’t trust it.

Spend more time to selecting what photos you will publish on your site, as well as to review your copy content. For the best User Experience, web design specialists like Parxavenue, recommend focusing more on visual content instead of text. Using videos is another appreciated practice in today’s web design trends. If you absolutely need to publish large amounts of copy content, follow these basic rules:

• Stick with short sentences that are easy to read and separate them into smaller paragraphs instead of one large block of text
• Use simple terms instead of complicated ones, unless your website is a technical one
• Always differentiate the headlines from the rest of your content
• Use bulleted lists
• Use bold or italic fonts to emphasize the important bits in the text
• Interline the written content with catchy visual elements

Choose your plugins carefully

WordPress is updated regularly, which means that you also have to update the theme and plugins that your website uses. If the themes and plugins are not updated as often as WordPress, you will encounter problems in the long run.

Even though themes might be easier to adapt to new WordPress updates, plugins that enable extra functionalities on your website should be downloaded only from reliable providers that mention how often they plan to update it.

Choosing plugins carefully can reduce the number of errors that your website generates in time. Errors are one of the biggest enemies of a smooth User Experience, so don’t overlook this detail.

Install plugins from reliable sources where you have the option to communicate with the developer in case you encounter any bugs or problems after installing it.

Faulty plugins lead to big problems with WordPress sites, especially if the respective plugin represents an essential part of your website (e.g. a website classified directory or a contact form).

Make sure that everything is scalable

Did you know that the number of mobile users increased with almost one billion in the past five years? People prefer mobile devices instead of desktops and laptops because they are more convenient to use.

In a society where everything happens on the go, this was an expected change and website owners need to adapt to the requirements that this change generated. Make your WordPress site scalable by optimizing all aspects of it for all screen sizes.

When you select a WordPress theme or plugin, see if it offers a mobile version, so that you don’t have to worry about the website not running smoothly across multiple platforms.

See if the content appears as it should if the buttons can be tapped and the website loads properly. The User Experience will be ruined if your website doesn’t work on mobile platforms.

A new trend among web developers and designers is mobile-first design. This means that the website will be developed for mobile devices first and then it will be adapted for desktops.

Considering today’s target audiences and the specifics of your own WordPress site, this is a trend you should follow.