As a business leader, it’s remarkably easy to focus your attention on what’s happening in the back-office of your company, and at the back-end of your web offerings. That’s because it’s this back-end and inside the back-office that key decisions are made, insights are drawn, and expert advice is given. However, it’s important to never take your eye off the front-end either – helping you to see what customers see, and tailor your visual offerings to the outside world while being deeply embedded in the inside processes of your company.
Below are some of the key features that you ought to focus on in order to think front-end, from your customer’s perspective.
UI Insights
UI is the technical name for user interface – and it’s how web users interact with the architecture of your website. It’s also how you are able to subtly signpost your customers towards the pages that you’re most interested in them visiting such as sales pages and other point-of-sale pages that’ll help them comfortably part with their cash.
By thinking about user interface design, you’ll be helping to shift the design principles of your website to help show customers how and where to interact with your website. It’s a subtle and refined art – and one which you’ll likely need some professional help in order to fully understand. But at its core, UI design is about making your customer comfortable on your site – everything else, like showing them offers and deals, is a bonus.
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UX Thinking
The other side of this coin is UX, or user experience. The experience of the user while on your website is as important as the way in which they’re able to click and scroll within it and, taken together, it’s what makes a terrific front-end. So, how are you able to test UX principles to help refine the design of your website, and how are you able to use industry wisdom in this area to boost the experience of your web users when on your site?
It goes without saying that bringing in a UX expert is paramount to help you streamline your site with these principles in mind. Then, you should consider elements of your website’s design, such as the branding, visual cohesion, and other slick factors, in order to make a coherent and visually compelling experience for the front-end user.
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Logical Trends
There are certain trends that tend to emerge in the web design world – and those which pertain to the front-end experience are usually driven by the logic of the web user’s experience. For instance, a web user in the modern business era is familiar with drop-down menus, so including one in your website will assimilate their experiences on other sites and not disorientate your web traffic.
Meanwhile, these elements are in a constant state of change. Instagram’s use means that square photographs are incredibly popular online. Excellent written content on blogs has required companies to improve their own written output. All of these trend-based insights will also inform your front-end, and the information you publish there.
