Businesses face pressure from the digital rat race that’s fuelling the rapid evolution of companies and the world we live in. We’re rocketing towards a new era of the digital era – one far more advanced and demanding than the years prior. From the new Metaverse to old website analytics tools, businesses must quickly adapt to meet consumer needs as well as keep up to date with evolving trends. 

Still, old trends die hard, and the simplicity of a well-put-together website has a drastic impact on business success. The humble website is a hub for browsing, transactions, referrals – the lifeline of any online business. Below, we’ll look at what customers want from a website in 2022 and how you can meet their demands.

Understand Your Demographic

Using website analytics tools to collect, analyse, and make reports about your website traffic can help a business optimise the user experience and traffic flow. Website analytics are more advanced than ever – allowing companies a chance to not only track website traffic with ease but to track the traffic of other brand competitors. 

By having the opportunity to track trends and adapt to changes, businesses can focus on targeted areas for improvement that will enhance that all-important user experience. Let’s say that website analytic tools revealed the majority of traffic comes from mobile devices – brands can look at optimising their website for mobile browsers. 

Another great way of using analytics tools is to focus on new and existing users. By noticing new and old user trends, a business can focus on new business campaigns or may decide they need to focus on retaining old business. How a company uses and interprets the data set holds power over success. 

Design and Usability

It’s a natural part of the shopping experience to demand design and usability from a website or be forced to find another to browse. Anyone that shops online will understand that poor design and usability is a big no-no – an instant turnoff. 

One tip recommended by HubSpot is to make use of white space, a bit of advice that many web developers would turn their noses at years ago. White space makes content more legible and draws user eyes to the text around it. One study by Crazy Egg also found that white spaces by text and titles increase user focus by up to 20%. 

Plus, it prevents a brand from creating a cluttered website full of click-bate ads and unnecessary information. The human brain can only process so much at once – white space gives a crisp, simple, and effective website design that puts users focus on the information that matters.

Another tip? Make call-to-actions a priority. As silly as it may sound, people respond to being told what to do, even if it is as simple as a call-to-action on a website. One study found an effective call-to-actions saw an 11% in clicks to the checkout area.

Loading Speeds

47% of website users expect a site to load within 2 seconds. 

How do you improve them? First, understand the page loading speed. Google provides a free tool for website owners to test their page loading speed. If it’s over the holy grail of 2 seconds, a brand knows they need to do something to fix it. 

How do you fix it? Compressing images and videos before uploading to a website works. Businesses typically have up to and over a hundred images on a website if they’re selling products – that many large images can wreak havoc on loading speeds. There are plenty of media compressor tools online to explore.

HTTP requests are a nightmare for loading times. Statistics show that 80% of a website’s loading speed is downloading different pages – better known as processing HTTP requests. By understanding how many HTTP requests a page has, a business can gauge how to optimize and reduce them to improve loading speeds.

Responsiveness

As well as 88% of consumers refusing to revisit a website if it’s poorly designed, 57% won’t recommend your business with a poorly designed website for mobiles. That’s where a focus on responsiveness can greatly benefit the traffic for your website. 

A responsive web design should mean your website renders perfectly on all devices – be it a laptop, mobile, or tablet. Statistics show 50% of U.S. eCommerce sales happen through mCommerce (mobile eCommerce) – thus, there’s a demand for businesses to adapt their website to the growing mobile shopping market. 

How do you focus on website responsiveness? Test it. A brand can load a website on a range of devices and see for themselves what the browsing experience is like. The main issues you’ll see that a website faces if it’s loading on a device other than a computer are – slower loading times, images or videos failing to load, and a web page that doesn’t fit the device. Free website builders like WIX make it easy to create responsive web pages, but it’s often the job of a qualified developer to solve. 

Consumers don’t want a lot – they want a good website that loads fast and is easy to use. A business must focus on the quality of their website and what the browsing experience is like if they want to facilitate the growing eCommerce shopping trend – the tips above help achieve that.