8.2 Optimize website user experience

Nowadays we can find countless numbers of web pages but there are still minority of good web pages. Fortunately the situation is changing and year by year. Good web page is associated with good experience and of course bad web page is associated with bad experience. Everybody want to create a good web page and everybody would like good experience on the web page. Especially the owners of the web page. Many people want to encourage customers to spend time on their web pages and they can do it by many tools and many methods. The most important thing here is: keep contact with your client in a good and clear way.

2.1 Describe how web pages can be made more interactive.

Websites that provide a good interactive experience to users, generally, have more traffic, better user retention, and higher conversion rates than websites with a poor interactive experience. In other words, a well designed interactive website provides a more meaningful and engaging user experience. Below we share four ways to make websites more interactive. Like we read on the avatarnewyork.

1. Update content often. To keep websites relevant and encourage audience engagement, it is vital to update content regularly. Businesses and professionals, who keep their websites up to date, are viewed as a more reliable source of information about the goods or services consumers want. Consumers are more willing to visit an up to date website and interact with more of the website’s content.
2. Encourage user interactions. Encouraging user interaction should be part of every interactive web design. Ways to promote interaction include calls to action, discussion forums, quizzes / polls, and social sharing features.
3. Leverage the power of social media. Social media is designed for interaction. It is also where many Internet users go to research and share information. Provide users easy access to like and share content that links back to your website. Content users are more likely to share videos, images, and tips.
4. Solicit feedback. Consumers respond positively to having their voice heard. Soliciting feedback will instill trust and confidence in the consumer because they will understand that there is a desire to provide an excellent experience. Feedback can be used to optimize the experience and make any necessary improvements based on what the customer is saying.

Other ways which can help you to make your webpage more interactive.

Most of us only are on the web for what we can get – free information, free entertainment, free goodies, free, etc, etc! People want ease of use and little hassle and this can really be achieved by learning how to make your website more interactive. More interactive sites offer a better user experience, are more pleasurable to use and so receive more subscribers, hits, sales or traffic and gain all the benefits that come with these. So, how is it best achieved? On the mysocialagency we can find practical information about how web pages can be more interactive.

BLOGS AND FORUMS DRASTICALLY INCREASE INTERACTIVITY

Blogs offer a fantastic platform for interaction and their less formal status makes for a sense of ease through levity. In doing this they create a sense of ease and familiarity with the brand and product. Blogs also allow users and readers to respond through comment boxes, this sort of communication offers you the perfect chance to interact with customers and create the right impression. Forums offer a similar chance for users and the offering of free advice is an especial lure for some. A simple but essential element on the path of learning how to make your website more interactive.

INTERACTIVE WEBSITES – HOW TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE  MORE INTERACTIVE

Of course, the language a website is programmed with increases interactivity behind the scenes. Using some of the amazing languages such as jQuery, CSS3 or HTML5 can really allow you to leverage interactivity on your site. These languages allow you to create elements users can interact with. Instead of traditional infographics or graphs, the use of jQuery, CSS3 or HTML 5 allows for exciting, interactive graphs that function with the user. These can really be awe inspiring pieces that make a site come alive. As well as adding to the functionality of the website, they also often add to the visual experience.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Interactivity has also taken a new turn in recent times with the popularity of mobile browsing. To make the most of this revolution, sites should be responsive and should adapt to the viewing ratios and constraints of the screen they are being viewed on. Responsive design allows for sites to be easily read, shared and utilised to their full no matter what the screen size. This sort of optimization provides a far better experience and so is beneficial for the site.

NEED RESPONSIVE WEBSITE DESIGN OR INTERACTIVE EFFECTS? GET IN TOUCH WITH US TODAY FOR WEB DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

NEWSLETTERS – HOW TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE MORE INTERACTIVE

Trust is one of the most important things a business can achieve and newsletters area fantastic way of doing this. Offer the people what they want – interesting industry relevant pieces of news, tips and information. Statistics show that contacting a user 7 times and more will greatly increase affinity and levels of engagement. Of course, here again ease of use if king. Ensure newsletters are easy to sign up for and visible in all your do and send.

THE CHAT BOX

These social media inspired boxes are increasingly common and allow you instant interaction with consumers. Real time responses allow you to grow your relationship, increase subscriptions and also cause a rise in sales.

MINI COURSES – HOW TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE MORE INTERACTIVE

The wide range of media and low cost entry into creation of video and podcasts means they are perfect pieces of your strategy to increase interactivity. Creating mini courses in an area of your specialism gives people something for free – they love that – and also show cases your product. It’s a lot easier to sell when people appreciate your product. Selling in this way is substantially more successful than cold sales. Remember the mini course is a taster not an in depth warts and all description and it really works.

INTERACTIVITY THROUGH SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

If you aren’t social bookmarking and don’t have the options on your page – shame on you. Social book marking allows you to achieve extra social media exposure and once more offers a fast and easy way for people to interact.

2.2 Explain how the use of xml can enhance the website user experience.

On the crazyegg we read that a sitemap is (usually) an XML document, containing a list of pages on your website that you have chosen to tell Google and other search engines to index.

Google often uses the sitemap file as a guide to the pages available on your website — even though it may decide not to index every page you list on your sitemap.

The sitemap also carries information about each page, including when it was created and last modified, and its importance relative to other pages on your site. This speeds up the process of indexing pages.

Should I have an XML sitemap or an HTML sitemap?

The difference is that XML sitemaps are written for search engines and HTML sitemaps are written for humans.

An XML sitemap is specifically written for search engine spiders. A search engine spider can quickly and easily extract all the important pieces of information about your site by looking at the XML file.

Content syndication, duplication and sitemaps

Another reason to have an XML sitemap is to tackle content duplication issues.

It’s not uncommon for websites who publish lots of content to have their content syndicated on other websites.

It’s also not uncommon for website or blog content to be republished without the author’s permission.

Both are examples of content duplication.

Google does not like content duplication. Google’s Panda update penalized websites with duplicate content in a bid to eliminate spammy sites from the search results pages. The update eliminated duplicate content from the search results, only showing the originally published piece of content.

An XML sitemap enables you to show Google that you are the original content creator. The sitemap will show the date the content was published, even down to the hour.

As I mentioned earlier, XML sitemaps are a fast way for you to tell Google when you’ve added new content to your website or when you’ve updated old content. If you’re regularly publishing quality content, you’ll want to let Google know as quickly as possible each time you publish or update, in order to see ranking improvements.

2.3 Explain how the use of scripting languages can enhance the website user experience.

On the ryanbibby we read how the use of scripting languages, such as JavaScript, can be used to improve the functionality of websites. This can be used to improve the usability for the users of the webpage, reduce the load that the web server has to deal with and improve the design of a webpage. There are many different snippets of JavaScript that can improve a website including: alerts, confirming choices, user prompting, user redirecting, browser detection, roll-overs, validation, form handling and cookie retention.

Confirming Choices and User Prompting

JavaScript can be used to get confirmation from a user that they really want to perform an action. A user may have accidentally clicked a button on the webpage, the website can then ask the user if they are sure they want to do this before carrying on with the action. This is useful for any buttons which might delete data from a database where if the user clicked delete by mistake, the data would be permanently deleted. Confirmation boxes in JavaScript stop the natural loading and progression of a webpage, this can be useful in security situations such as digital banking. This is because the user can’t proceed any further on the webpage without dealing with the confirmation dialogue first.

Example of a confirmation:

var x = window.confirm("Are you sure you want to do this?")
if (x) {
    delete();
}

Form Handling

Forms on webpages can be enhanced by the addition of JavaScript. Firstly scripting languages can be used to do real time calculations. This can be a major advantage to users when, for example, completing an online order form. This is because the cost of the order can be calculated as the user chooses options for their order and then shown to the user, this means that the user can see how adding extras to their order will affect the price. JavaScript can also be used to reset a form to its default state, this means that the user can quickly start a form again if they have made a mistake. This saves the user time as they would otherwise need to go through a delete what they had typed. JavaScript is also capable of submitting a form to the action page. This means that once a user’s input has been validated the form data can be passed to another file to do something else. This adds additional functionality to the website as JavaScript can be used to initiate an additional action.

In the other source we read that a scripting language is a tool, which is used to add functionality to other software. It is not as powerful as a full programming language and it is generally designed for simple tasks like creating interactive menus or searching databases. HTML can help by creating static webpages but it can’t do everything and that’s why JavaScript and PHP can make the websites dynamic with user interaction. JavaScript is very important to help make a website functional. Scripting languages that can be embedded within HTML are commonly used to add functionality to a webpage such as different menu styles or graphic displays or to server dynamic advertisements. These types of languages, which can enable functionality to work, are client side scripting languages, which affect the data that the end user sees in a browser.

There are often times when we wish to automate a simple task – a scripting language helps by running several programs in a row, installing programs, even writing a simple script or GUI to run a program that needs many parameters

Scripting languages allow us to write code quickly and run it without any compilations. They also have good support for launching processes and controlling them, etc.

By using a script, you would never be confused and think ‘where is the source’ because the script is the source.

Conclusion

When we want to have permanent contact with our potential customers we should think about our web page and create it more interesting and interactive. If we update the content of our web page often and encourage users by interactions, when we use the power of the social media and asking about feedback our web page will be more interactive. If we want to have a really good web page we should create a responsive web page which will be able to open on mobile phones and tablets. Then when we want to have good results when somebody want to find our web page we should think about using XML. Scripting languages, such as JavaScript, can be used to improve the functionality of websites.

References:

https://avatarnewyork.com/blog/4-ways-make-websites-more-interactive – accessed on 25.01.19

https://www.mysocialagency.com/how-to-make-your-website-more-interactive/ – accessed on 25.01.19

https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/seo-benefits-of-xml-html-sitemaps/ – accessed on 25.01.19

https://ryanbibbyproject5.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/task-2-2-improving-functionality-with-scripting-languages/ – accessed on 25.01.19

http://prabhpreetatrutc2012.blogspot.com/2013/05/m2-discuss-how-scripting-language-can.html – accessed on 25.01.19