Drupal Web Design: 5 Effective Practices To Improve User Experience

Digital user experience is one of the fundamental factors that directly affects the success of a website or web application. The well-being of a business largely depends on how a site or application feels, whether it is easy to use and does its job as planned. After all, a positive user experience motivates customers to come back again, thereby increasing user loyalty to the brand.

Today, more than 1 million websites around the world use Drupal. This system is quite flexible and can support many modules, allowing you to develop customized and high-performance websites. With the help of a professional Drupal web design firm, organizations can implement a variety of ideas and strengthen their efforts to deliver positive digital experiences.

The value of UX design is difficult to overestimate. A well-planned and executed website design that aims to provide a positive user experience typically includes the following elements:

• intuitive website design;
• user-friendly interaction with the site/application;
• high performance and no critical errors;
• personalized website experience;

There are many methods and approaches for implementing UX design, depending on the needs and goals of a particular company, as well as the profile of its target audience, since a website should be user-friendly first and foremost. It is the implementation of the project in terms of value for the client that is the most essential task in the first place.

Let’s take a closer look at what UX design is and what practices a business can use to achieve its goals.

What Is UX Design

UX design is a broad term as it is a comprehensive approach to developing a website or application. In other words, when creating a product’s UX design, not only does it take into account how the user will interact with the application and what kind of experience they will have, but also the developers must ensure that the product includes aspects such as branding, design, and high performance.

The reason why a complex approach is needed when creating UX design lies in the fact that the company’s website and application are part of marketing. That is, the product must be both user-friendly and stylish in order to emphasize the brand identity and attract the attention of customers.

Knowing the audience’s pain points and needs is an essential factor in design, as a company’s website or app must evoke an experience associated with the product or brand.

Thus, UX design is a multi-layered process that touches on everything from the appearance to the way a product interacts and performs.

UX Design Practices For Drupal Websites

Here are some of the effective practices to ensure a positive user experience:

Research Your Target Audience

The first and most important step in developing UX design is conducting user research. Since a website or application is being developed for your customers, it is necessary to create a user profile to understand the needs and expectations of the customers, perhaps even better than themselves.

It is essential to determine the needs, motivations, and preferences of the audience. To do this, you can conduct surveys, check feedback, as well as collect and analyze data such as geography, history, ways of interacting with the website, etc. The more valuable information you have, the easier it is to tailor design solutions to your target audience to achieve your goals.

User-Friendly Navigation

A website or web application should be intuitive for the average user to ensure a positive digital experience. The navigation system must be clear to allow users to quickly and easily find the information they are interested in and explore the content.

To do this, you can add a navigation menu and place it in a prominent place on the website. Also, the navigation menu should be the same on all pages.

Websites with a minimalist design where there is nothing superfluous work best. The purpose of a website is to be a bridge between the client and the company, so important information, such as your contacts, ways of making purchases, payments, etc., should be clear and visible.

Simplicity Is The Key

This approach is similar to creating intuitive website navigation. A clear and uncluttered interface is best for a positive user experience. Therefore, it is recommended to remove unnecessary elements that do not have much value to achieve a simple but effective website design.

Building an interface with a lot of features and details to enhance the user experience often leads to the opposite effect. Thus, leave in the design only those elements that work and are really needed.

Optimize For Mobile Devices

Today, the majority of website traffic comes from mobile devices. That is why developing and optimizing a website for smartphones and tablets is a critical task.

Developers need to ensure that a website displays and works correctly on mobile devices of different screen sizes to guarantee a positive user experience.

In addition, search engines often rank lower websites that are poorly adapted for mobile devices. Thus, ignoring this problem of responsiveness can significantly reduce the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Performance Is A Top Priority

The speed of page loading and website performance are among the key factors in user experience.

Even if your website has an attractive design and an intuitive interface, slow site performance will negate all these benefits, as the customer is more likely to leave the website due to poor performance.

To avoid this problem, you can reduce file sizes, use caching, and optimize site response time.

Learn more about Drupal web design and the role of UX vs product manager in providing a positive digital experience at Elevated Third.