When you create websites for your clients, it’s useful to consider user interaction as a journey. If there’s one thing that ruins a good journey, it’s roadblocks. That’s why when designing and creating sites, you have to think in terms of user flow.
If your user comes to a roadblock, he’s not going to take the time to find a way around it. He’ll click away and you’ve lost him. Even if he’s just bought from you or signed up for more information, you still need to keep the journey alive until he decides to end it.
Exactly how you’ll keep the flow going depends on the type of page. Here’s a look at the key pages found on most websites and ways to keep the flow going and the visitor happy.
Blog Post
So your reader’s just got to the bottom of your outstanding blog post. What happens next? If you’re hoping he’ll glance at the ads or signup box in the sidebar, you might get lucky. But why leave it to luck? End every post with either a call to action (CTA) or a suggested link to another post.
Your call to action could be to add a comment below, to sign up to your list, or to view a special offer. Another tactic is to list a few related posts. You can find plugins to automatically show up thumbnails of related posts. These also work well to reduce your bounce rate.
Page Not Found
A user clicking through from a link whether in the SERPS or on another page is not going to be happy to encounter a 404. You promised him information and it’s not there. It may not be your fault, but it’s certainly not his. So what do you do?
Instead of a terse message stating the obvious (”Page Doesn’t Exist” or some annoying variant), you should offer a way to jump quickly to other pages on your site. These could be your most popular pages or pages that offer you the most value.
You can find WordPress pages to deal with 404 errors. The simplest just transfer the user to the home page.
Thank You Pages
So you’ve got your user to sign up for your newsletter and naturally, you thank him. But instead of just leaving him on a bland ‘thank you’ page, why not continue to engage him with tempting offers to visit other parts of your site
Likewise, it he’s just placed an order, don’t rest on your laurels. Other than reassuring him he’s made the right decision, you should also take the opportunity to participate further. Sell him on the virtues of your newsletter or let him know about upcoming events or new products.
As specialist web designers, Sydney businesses are relying on you to make their sites as engaging (and profitable) as possible. Making their sites flow is you way to do just that.
