From a usability and User Experience (UX) perspective, simplicity is the key for successful website design
Whether designing or redesigning a website for your firm, a well-designed website is essential for any financial advice firm that wants to be successful online. A good website design makes a site more attractive to prospective clients and helps ensure that visitors can easily find the information and content they are looking for. If a site is difficult to navigate, users will likely give up and move on to another site.
While the appearance of your website is undoubtedly important, most people aren’t coming to your site to evaluate how slick the design is. They want to complete some action or to find some specific piece of information.
Therefore, unnecessary design elements (i.e., those that serve no functional purpose) will only overwhelm visitors and make it more challenging to accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish. From a usability and User Experience (UX) perspective, simplicity is the key.
“75% of financial services consumers admit to making judgments on a firm’s credibility based on their website design.”
Source: Moz
Lead visitors to complete a desired action
Closely tied to the principle of simplicity, visual hierarchy means arranging and organising website elements so that visitors naturally gravitate toward the most critical elements first. Remember, when it comes to optimising usability and UX, the goal is to lead visitors to complete the desired action naturally and enjoyably.
Planning intuitive navigation on your site is crucial to help visitors find what they’re looking for. Ideally, a visitor should land on your site and not think extensively about where to click next. Moving from point A to point B should be as frictionless as possible. So keep the structure of your primary navigation simple (and near the top of your page) and include navigation in the footer of your site.
Your website design should follow the principles of mobile-first
Don’t make users dig too deep. Make a basic wireframe map of all your site pages arranged like a pyramid: Your homepage is at the top, and each linked page from the previous forms the next layer. In most cases, it’s best to keep your map no more than three levels deep.
Making sure your design follows mobile-first principles will ensure that you deliver the right UX to the right screen. With such limited space on a mobile phone screen, designing for that makes far more sense for the UX. You need to prioritise the elements of the website that are most important to create a solid base to work from.
Provide a great experience across different devices
To provide a genuinely great UX, your website should be compatible with the many devices your visitors use, known as a ‘responsive’ design. This means investing in a highly flexible website structure.
On a responsive site, the content is automatically resized and reshuffled to fit the dimensions of whichever device a visitor happens to be using. Ultimately, it’s more important to provide a great experience across different devices than look identical across those devices.
“46% of financial consumers reported ‘lack of message’ as the main reason they leave websites.”
Source: Moz
Users need to be able to quickly and easily find the information
Alongside mobile-friendliness, it’s essential to test your website’s browser compatibility. In all likelihood, you’ve only viewed your site on one web browser, be it Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox or something else. Open your pages on each of these browsers and evaluate how your elements appear. Ideally, there won’t be much difference in presentation, but you can’t know for sure until you see for yourself.
The usability and UX hinge on the preferences of the end-users. After all, if you’re not designing for your existing clients or prospective clients, who are you designing for? Users can quickly and easily find the information they need if they are provided with a well-executed design.
More professional and trustworthy than a site with a poor website design
This will ultimately lead to increased traffic levels, as users are more likely to return to your site if it is easy to use. In addition, if well designed, your website will attract new users, as it will appear more professional and trustworthy than a site with a poor design.
As a result, website design can significantly impact the amount of traffic your site receives and its overall success based on your website goals.
Searching for an agency to design your financial advice firms new website?
Your firms website should be unique, with its own unique goals, target audience, and opportunities. To tell us about your website project, contact Goldmine Media and talk to a member of our Business Team on 0845 686 0055, or email: findoutmore@goldminemedia.co.uk.
Lucy Bowen, Head of Digital,
Goldmine Media
