“Your site looks okay, but it has poor UX.”

It’s something we all fear hearing, but also something we will all hear at some point if we are serious about competing with bigger brands in our niche.

In this post I’d like to explain 6 reasons your website or blog needs a UX overhaul and also how a better UX is closer than you might think. If that is, you’re willing to believe in it.

UX aka User eXperience is a leading force in today’s online climate. Google knows where we look, Amazon knows where we click, and Apple hires entires firms to write 10 word sentences. The experience we all take for granted when we surf the web counts for a lot.

So let’s dive in. Once you’re done, let us know in the comments if this post helped shape your view of UX at all!

1. People can’t find your best content

If people cannot find your best content, you’re doing a world of disservice. Yet still, many of us hide our best blog posts deep within our other content. We assume people should find our best work on their adventures on the blog or via Google. It should be found, right!?

Wrong. You need to remind people where your best content is!

The best UX designers and even just your average one will explain how you can position your best pages and blog posts in full screen banners, widgets and popups throughout your blog to maximize the exposure of your best work. Inevitably, this will increase conversions.

Sure, you want eyeballs on all of your work because you could have just the other day created your new best piece of work, but don’t forget your best stuff of the past!

2. You’re losing subscribers

Are readers leaving your blog? Do the bounces add up? Do you even track those bounces?

On nearly all of our blogs it’s a major problem to lose audience. That’s because you do the hard work to create content that draws an audience in to the blog, but don’t put that final effort in to close the deal.

A UX designer can help you close the deal and increase subscribers. The UX designer I’m working with now has reduced bounce rate on my homepage from 50% to 34%! He’s also recommended a popup plugin and has changed where the best content will be placed in positive ways.

Listen, we all lose subs. You can’t catch em all. But you have to reward yourself at the same time. The reward comes in taking that final push to get people to subscribe, and knowing how to do so is key.

3. You can’t change your design easily

Imagine being the leader of a Star Wars battle and not knowing how your ships worked. You’d have a tough time when one of them went down. Heck, you’d even have a tough time positioning a few ships in front of the other.

Along those same lines. you’d be totally screwed as a landscaping architect if you didn’t know how to offer a new layout to clients. What if people liked half your work, but wanted the other half different?

As a successful blogger and webmaster, you have to be able to change your design. Cut the fat. Out with the old!

If you can’t, you end up paying large amounts to a design firm to achieve a new look. While this can be a productive way to change your design, the costs can’t be avoided.

Instead of relying on a new web design agency to change your design for you, you can install OceanWP for free and hook yourself up with a free template. The combination of a free template and the Elementor Page Builder plugin will make sure your site is drag and drop. From there, you can allow any UX manager to recommend you put this box there, and that box over there.

The drag and drop flexibility is a tool our predecessors would have given their kidney for, so you should at least try using it as it’s free.

4. You haven’t had a new “look” in years

If there’s even the slightest amount of dust on your blog, people will notice. Your blog look on day 1 is perfect, but that same look on day 365 is not the same.

Plainly put, the Internet evolves. People get bored, fast. Can you imagine if Google, Amazon or Facebook used the same look for 3 years? That would be madness! We look on the designs of the past and look fondly, but they are relics we’d rather never use again.

Here’s how to use OceanWP and Elementor to give your blog a design rehaul with unlimited possibilities for a great new look:

A good UX designer is your start to a new look, and with OceanWP as the foundation of your site that new look is one that your UX guy, and let your own WordPress design skills, can surely build by now.

5. You have a budget surplus but continue spending it on Facebook ads

As you approach the higher tiers of blogging, web design, coaching, online marketing, paid advertising or whatever it may be, we always find ourselves with that nice budget surplus once monthly expenses have been paid. What better way to spend that extra cash than reinvest into the business to make it all run even smoother?

Simply put, spending more on advertising won’t increase your conversions if your landing pages aren’t convertible. In fact, UX case studies have shown that landing page traffic which converts is most often from Organic Search! That means the money you spend on paid ads could be entirely worthless! (Don’t tell Facebook I just said that!)

Bottom line – spending your surplus earnings on the right factors on your website can result in even more conversions, but you have spend your money on the USERS, not on your own ego.

6. You’re the only set of eyeballs with any judgment say on the block

The final reason you need to hire a UX manager for your site is the simple rule of self-solidarity: you will always win an argument against yourself. What this means it that if you want to add a new feature to your site, or delete something crucial, and you’re the only one at the board meeting, you’ll always get your way!

However, being the only set of eyeballs on your site is a dangerous reality and I’ll tell you why.

When you create a website or blog, and pour your blood, sweat and tears into it, you’re in a very unique position: you built it, understand it, and love it. You are the only person in the world in this position.

That very fact puts you at a significant disadvantage when it comes to judging the website for it’s worth. That’s because you will always overvalue the design which you created.

To solve this problem, simply bring in a friend (they don’t even have to be a UX specialist) and buy them a nice cup of coffee to sit for 30 minutes and look over your site, recording any obvious flaws they notice.

Conclusion – Hear from you!

Of course, any WordPress blog needs a good WordPress UX designer, and you can follow the link to find out the trusted designer who powers my blogs (though he has no idea I wrote this post, so he’ll be happily surprised to hear from you.) The point is, as is shown from the 6 examples above, it can not only be costly but also dangerous to your brand to not address UX concerns that inevitably pop up on most websites over time. You could be working on many of the right things but overlooking the one most important thing: your user experience.

Have you considered hiring a UX designer? Does the OceanWP theme help you site’s UX? I’d be more than happy to discuss your thoughts and ideas, just hit up the Leave a Reply section below!

Greg Narayan creates beginner guides to setup self hosted WordPress, build a blog brand. rank in Google, advertise to earn money on your blogs and generally helps others learn how to start a blog while maintaining a positive, caring outlook.

gregnarayan

Creator of beginner guides to setup self hosted WordPress, avid golfer, cat person, always open to new ways of doing things.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Greg

    Same here, my UX designer has totally changed the way I blog, it’s not easy!

    What kinda UX are ya working on Mark?

    1. Mark

      I’m at the beginning of my UI/UX career, working on a pet adoption website.

Leave a Reply to Greg Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.