How To Create a User Flow for a Better User Experience

Stop losing visitors! Revamp your user flow today or see your sales crash. 

Remember, you have a website so customers and potential customers can learn about your company and your offerings, get in touch with you, and otherwise engage with your business. When they visit your site, your goal is to convert them to customers or get them to spend money on what you have to offer.

If your site is confusing or difficult to use, you’re not accomplishing that. In fact, you’re actively scaring people away.

Think of a time you’ve gone to a website and didn’t know what to do. How much time were you willing to spend looking around for contact information or a menu or a list of products? There’s a good chance you didn’t stick around very long.

That’s what a poor user flow does to a website. It causes people to leave. Worse yet, once they leave, they rarely ever come back.

On the other hand, a smooth user flow turns visitors into customers. It directs them from the page they’re on to a destination. It causes them to take action. It increases engagement and sales. This is what you want. 

That’s why your website user flow is so important.

What Is User Flow, and Why Should You Care?

Struggling to convert visitors? Understanding user flow could be the key to boosting your success by 50% or more. Here’s why it matters!
User flow is the potential paths that a user could take as they move through a website. It starts with the page they arrived on, such as your homepage or a particular landing page. If done correctly, the user flow ends with the person completing a goal, such as placing an order or choosing to contact your company.

Optimizing your user flow means making it easier to navigate through your site, removing roadblocks that might sit between them and the goal, and making it easy and obvious for them to take action.

A positive user experience (UX) and user flow can be the difference between a visitor becoming a customer and closing your site and never returning.

Benefits of a well-designed UX flows include:

• Better retention
• Improves usability
• Higher conversions

For example, look at the website for Duolingo.

When you first arrive at the site, it’s obvious what you’re meant to do. You can get started (and sign up for an account) or log in to your existing account. If you want to know more about the languages you can learn, the most popular ones are clearly listed in a place where you can easily see them. Selecting one of those languages tells you how Duolingo can help you learn and then you’re asked to sign up or download the app. 

The entire site is easy to use and the visitor is directed to take action. It’s clearly what the company wants you to do: Sign up for an account or download their app, and they make it easy for you to achieve it.

How can you do the same for your site? If you’ve been wondering how to improve user experience on a website, here are some tips to follow.

Step 1: Think Like Your Users

Thinking like your users is the key to creating experiences that engage, convert, and keep them coming back for more!

You know everything about your business and you probably know your website inside out. Users don’t. When they visit your website, there’s a good chance that this is their first experience with your company. Even if they’ve been to your site before, they may not remember it very well. Your website design needs to guide them.

You also need to appeal to what they’re looking for. You likely have your own business goals for your site, but it’s important to understand what users are looking for when they visit. If you can match their expectations and provide them with what they want, you’ll have more satisfied customers.

So how do you get inside your users’ heads and find out what they’re feeling and what they need? There are many ways, but some simple methods include running quick surveys for customers, asking them about their experience when you speak with them, or doing market research on your target audience. 

Step 2: Visually Map Current User Flow

When you’re trying to optimize user flow, a great place to start is with the current flow. Analyzing what’s happening on your site right now will help you see what’s working, what isn’t, and where visitors are getting stuck or dropping off. 

Look at your current site’s analytics to see where visitors go at each decision point. For instance, if they end up on a signup landing page, where do they go next? Look at how many visitors choose to fill out a form versus how many click on a different page versus how many leave the site entirely. Map out the most common current user flows for each page. This will let you see how visitors travel through your site. 

Step 3: Map Out User Flow Diagram: Less Can Be More

Once you know what your users are doing, think about what you’d like them to do. What specific steps do you want the user to take when they enter your site? How does this match with what you know about your users? 

Using a visual diagram is a perfect way to lay out your user flow. When you create this diagram, there are certain key components that you’ll want to make sure to include, such as:

• Entry Points
• User Actions
• Content Pages
• Decision Points
• Conversion Points
• Exit Points

One of the best practices for designing a user flow diagram is to keep it simple.

Your user flow shouldn’t feel forced. When designing your flow, think about where your users would naturally go and the paths they would naturally take, then think of ways to gently nudge them where you want them to be.

A user’s journey through your site shouldn’t be lengthy or complicated. Most people don’t spend a great deal of time on a site. Craft a simple flow that makes it easy that makes it easy for them to get where you want them to go without visiting too many pages. The fewer steps and clicks, the better the user experience.





Step 4: User Experience Cannot Be Designed: Let Real People Try It!

You can’t control how someone feels, what someone is interested in, or where they click when they visit your site. However, you can make it easier for them to accomplish what they’re looking for. You can make the experience of visiting and navigating through your site more pleasurable. You can guide them to certain areas and make it simple for them to get things done.

You don’t just need to build a website, you need to test it. Something that seems intuitive and straightforward to you might be confusing or awkward for your visitors. This means people who haven’t seen your site and who are completely unfamiliar with it. 

For instance, consider having a fellow business owner who works in another field try out your site. Or show some of your most trusted clients the development version of the site so they can try it out. Have your employees go through it and see if they can spot any issues. If anyone who is testing your site runs into difficulties, take note of them and adjust the site to improve user flow before going live. 

Step 5: It’s Never Really Done

One thing to remember when you’re learning how to improve user experience on your website is that it isn’t a one-and-done scenario. Once you’ve tweaked the flow and adjusted your website, you’ll need to monitor your site and see how it’s going. Just because you think visitors are going to easily flow through your site, it doesn’t mean they will. 

Look at your website analytics and see what users are doing. Use this information to learn more about them and tweak and improve your site to better meet their needs while still focusing on your business goals.

It’s important to stay open to feedback as well. Keep asking for visitor and customer feedback and use this information to continuously improve your site. 

Step 6: Avoid These Common UX Mistakes

There are certain mistakes that tend to appear on different websites over and over again. When you’re updating your site and working to improve the user experience, try to avoid these common issues:

• Don’t overthink it:
  • You can only direct your users so much and so far. If your desired user flow is complicated or incredibly lengthy, people will give up and abandon your site. Keep it straightforward. 
• Avoid using website pop-ups
  • A lot of people are naturally inclined to close pop-up windows, since they’re often associated with ads. In fact, some browsers block them without intervention. If your site is using pop-ups as a part of its user flow, or if you’re putting important information in pop-up windows, you risk turning off customers or having them miss out. 
• Too much information
  • Most people spend only a few minutes on a website. Many spend just a few seconds. If you throw too much information at them or make it too difficult for them to understand your page and where they should go next, they’re likely to move on. Make your user flow easy, uncomplicated, and don’t try to do too much at once.
• Don’t ignore accessibility needs
  • If you ignore accessibility needs on your site, you’re making it so a portion of visitors cannot use your site. This doesn’t make business sense and it will turn off a segment of your potential audience. Make sure that your site can be navigated with the keyboard, that it can be read with screen reader software, that the colours you choose can be seen by all visitors, and that your site is generally focused on accessibility. 

Bottom Line: A Smooth User Flow Means a Great Experience – and More Sales

A smooth user flow doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If your overall website provides a good user experience (UX) and your site is easy to navigate and use, that will attract visitors. If they’re able to get where they need to go with ease, that makes the entire process more pleasurable for them. It will also help you achieve your business goals.

If your website is designed to seamlessly drive visitors to a certain outcome (such as a contact page, a sales page, etc.), then you’ll increase sales and your business will be more successful. Eggs Media can help. Contact Eggs Media today to learn how we can help improve your site, optimize your user flow, and draw more targeted traffic.