EDITS.WS

Tag: User Experience

  • Personalized Marketing: Tailoring the WooCommerce Experience for Each Customer

    Personalized marketing has become essential in today’s tech-driven commerce landscape. WooCommerce, a leading eCommerce platform, offers myriad tools for tailored customer experiences. From individualized product suggestions to custom invoices, businesses can deepen customer connections, boosting satisfaction and revenue.

    The post “Personalized Marketing: Tailoring the WooCommerce Experience for Each Customer” first appeared on WP Mayor.

  • What Is Google’s INP Score and How to Improve It in WordPress

    Are you wondering what Google’s INP score is and how to improve it on your WordPress website?

    Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a Core Web Vitals metric from Google. Improving this score will make your website feel more responsive to your users.

    In this article, we will show you how to improve your Google INP score in WordPress and explain what Google’s INP score is.

    What is Google INP score and how to improve it in WordPress

    Here is a quick overview of the topics we will cover in this guide:

    What Are Google Core Web Vitals?

    Google Core Web Vitals are website performance metrics that Google considers important for overall user experience. These web vital scores are part of Google’s overall page experience score, which will impact your SEO rankings.

    These metrics are useful because, even if your WordPress website loads fast, it may not be fully functional for users. Even if a page has loaded, a visitor might not be able to do what they want or access the information they need.

    Core Web Vitals are designed to help with this. They let you measure how quickly your website loads, becomes visible, and is ready for your visitors to use.

    To do that, Google uses three quality tests:

    • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
    • First Input Delay (FID)
    • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

    You can learn more about these tests in our ultimate guide on how to optimize Core Web Vitals for WordPress.

    However, Google is replacing FID with a new test called INP (Interaction to Next Paint).

    This change currently has the status of ‘Pending’ and will be finalized in March 2024. This gives you time to prepare so that your SEO rankings are not impacted, and we will show you how later in this article.

    What Is Google INP?

    INP stands for ‘Interaction to Next Paint’. It is a new Google Core Web Vital metric that measures the user interactions that cause delays on your website.

    The INP test measures how long it takes between a user interacting with your website, like clicking on something, and your content visually updating in response. This visual update is called the ‘next paint’.

    For example, a user might submit a contact form on your site, click on a button, or select an image that opens in a lightbox. The INP test will measure the time taken between the user performing these interactions and actually seeing the updated content on your website.

    The Google test then comes up with a single INP score based on the duration of most user interactions on your website. The score will either be ‘Good’, ‘Needs Improvement’, or ‘Poor’, depending on how long your website takes to update visually.

    Why Is Google Changing the FID Metric to INP?

    The current FID test measures how quickly your website responds to the first user input after the page loads, such as a mouse click or keyboard press. It does this by measuring the time between the first input from the user and when your website starts to act on that input.

    In other words, it measures how responsive your website is when it first loads and the first impression that it gives to real users.

    However, this metric isn’t as helpful as it could be. There are two limitations to the FID test:

    1. It only measures the first user interaction, not all of them.
    2. It only measures until the website starts to process the interaction, not when the user can actually see the visual feedback on the screen.

    So Google is changing the test to give a more complete picture of the overall responsiveness of a web page. INP will measure the entire time the user spends there until they leave the page.

    How to Measure Google INP Score in WordPress

    The easiest way to test your Google Core Web Vitals score is by using the PageSpeed Insights tool. Simply enter the URL you want to test and click the ‘Analyze’ button.

    Analyzing a Web Page for Page Speed Insights

    The tool will analyze the web page for a few seconds and then show you the test results.

    Note: You can also view Core Web Vitals using DebugBear’s Free Website Speed Test or Site Speed Chrome Extension, which are preferred by some developers.

    Now, along with other Google Core Web Vitals, you will also see the page’s Interaction to Next Paint (INP) score.

    There will be different scores for mobile and desktop users.

    Page Insights Results

    In the screenshot above, you can see the INP score for desktop users viewing this web page on WPBeginner is 47 ms. The green dot means that this is a good score.

    Once you can see the score for your own site, you will probably be wondering how it compares with other websites and whether it needs to be improved.

    Google has provided some guidelines for interpreting your INP score:

    • Faster than 200 milliseconds – good responsiveness
    • 200-500 milliseconds – needs improvement
    • Slower than 500 milliseconds – poor responsiveness
    Interpreting Your INP Score

    Make sure you check your score for both mobile and desktop users and aim for good responsiveness.

    You can then improve your INP score by following the guidelines in the sections below.

    Case Study: Finding Slow Interactions on Awesome Motive’s Websites

    But first, it may be helpful to look at a case study. We have started measuring the INP scores on our brand sites, including All in One SEO, MonsterInsights, and WPForms.

    When our team checked our website’s INP scores, the initial results showed that our most popular pages needed improvement.

    Using the Chrome User Experience (CrUX) dashboard, we could see that:

    • 80% of our sessions were rated ‘good’
    • 12% of our sessions were rated ‘needs improvement’
    • 8% of our sessions were rated ‘poor’

    Now, we don’t yet know which specific interactions on our pages are slow and need to be optimized. This information isn’t provided by Google while testing.

    That means that next, we will need to run our own tests to find slow interactions on pages with lower INP scores. This is a detailed and advanced task that is best performed by a developer.

    It is done by going to each page that needs improvement and then testing each interaction with actual clicks, taps, and key presses. These need to be timed and evaluated using tools.

    The Chrome Developers Blog lists a number of tools that can be used for testing, such as the Chrome Web Vitals extension and the new timespan mode in the Lighthouse Panel in DevTools. You can also see Google’s article on how to debug using the Web Vitals extension.

    It’s important to note that the sessions with lower ratings most likely took place on slower devices or connections. That means that while testing, it is recommended to throttle your browser’s speed, or you may not spot the slow interactions.

    You can do that using Chrome’s Inspect Element feature by going to View » Developer » Inspect Elements. You can switch to the ‘Network’ tab and select a throttling option from the dropdown menu.

    Using Chrome Inspect Elements to Throttle Your Browser

    Once you have found the INP scores for your pages, you can use the tips in the next section of this tutorial to improve them.

    How to Improve Google INP Score in WordPress

    Most of the INP score optimization work will need to be done by developers. That includes the authors of the theme and plugins you use on your website, plus the developers of any custom JavaScript you are running.

    That’s because the INP score is mostly related to the time required to perform JavaScript interactions on your website.

    For example, when a user clicks a button, some JavaScript code is run to perform the function expected by clicking the button. This code is downloaded to the user’s computer and runs in their web browser.

    To optimize your INP score, the delays that happen during JavaScript user interactions must be reduced. There are three components to this delay:

    1. Input delay, which happens when your website is waiting for background tasks on that page that prevent the event handler from running.
    2. Processing time, which is the time required to run event handlers in JavaScript.
    3. Presentation delay, which is the time required to recalculate the page and paint the page content on the screen.

    As a website owner, there are steps you can take to improve the first and third delays. We will show you how in the next section.

    However, to make real improvements to your INP score, you will need to improve the second delay, which is the processing time of the code itself. That’s not something that you can do yourself.

    The developers of your WordPress theme, plugins, and custom JavaScript may need to optimize their code to give feedback to your users immediately. The good news is they are probably already working on this to meet the March 2024 deadline.

    We offer some specific tips for developers with examples later in this article.

    How Website Owners Can Optimize Their Sites for INP

    While the most significant impact on your website’s INP score will come from developers optimizing their code, there are a few things that website owners can do.

    In particular, you can make sure that your users’ mouse clicks and keystrokes are recognized as soon as possible by optimizing background processes on your site. Also, you can make sure the response to their input is displayed on the screen as quickly as possible.

    Here are some steps you can take to achieve that.

    1. Make Sure You Are Running the Latest Version of WordPress

    The first thing you should do is make sure you are running the latest version of WordPress.

    That’s because WordPress versions 6.2 and 6.3 introduced significant performance improvements. These will improve your website’s performance on the server side and client side, which will improve your INP score.

    For detailed instructions, you can see our guide on how to safely update WordPress.

    2. Optimize Background Processes in WordPress

    Background processes are scheduled tasks in WordPress that run in the background. They might include checking for WordPress updates, publishing scheduled posts, and backing up your website.

    If your website gets too busy running these background tasks, then it may not realize right away that the user has clicked the mouse or pressed a key, resulting in a poor INP score.

    You may be able to configure your background scripts and plugins to reduce the amount of work they are doing, placing less strain on your website. Otherwise, you might be able to run them only when they are needed instead of leaving them running in the background.

    For detailed instructions, you can see the Optimize Background Processes section of our ultimate guide on how to boost WordPress speed and performance.

    3. Check the PageSpeed Insights Performance Recommendations

    After you run the PageSpeed Insights test on your website, you can scroll down to the Performance section of the test results.

    Here, you will find some opportunities to improve your site’s performance along with the estimated time savings if you follow the advice.

    PageSpeed Insights Performance Opportunities and Diagnostics

    For example, you may see recommendations to eliminate render-blocking resources. You can do this by following our guide on how to fix render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in WordPress.

    You may also see a recommendation to reduce unused JavaScript. You will find a setting to do this in many of the best WordPress caching plugins, such as WP Rocket.

    4. Minify JavaScript in WordPress

    JavaScript needs to be downloaded to the user’s computer before it can be run. By making your JavaScript files as small as possible, you can make some small gains in performance.

    Minifying your JavaScript makes the files smaller by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters from the source code.

    This won’t have a dramatic effect on your performance, but if you are looking to shave a few extra milliseconds off your INP score, then you may find it worthwhile.

    WP Rocket minify JavaScript files

    To learn how, you can see our guide on how to minify CSS and JavaScript files in WordPress.

    How Developers Can Optimize Their Code for INP

    If you are a developer, then the biggest INP score gains will come from optimizing your code. Here are a few things you can do.

    1. Visually Acknowledge User Input Immediately

    Here’s the one thing that will make the most difference when optimizing your code’s INP score: You need to give visual feedback to all user input immediately.

    The user should see right away that their input has been recognized and that you are acting on it. This will make your code feel more responsive to the user and result in a great INP score.

    Here are a few examples:

    • If a user clicks on an element, then you should display something that shows that the element was clicked.
    • If a user submits a form, then you need to immediately display something to acknowledge that, such as a message or spinner.
    • If a user clicks on an image to open it in a lightbox, then don’t just wait for the image to load. Instead, you should show a demo image or spinner immediately. Then, when the image is loaded, you can display it in the lightbox.

    More than anything else, this will improve your INP score, especially if you need to do heavy JavaScript processing in response to user input.

    Just make sure you update the UI before starting the task. After that, you can do the CPU-heavy work in a setTimeout callback or on a separate thread using a web worker, and then finally present the results to the user.

    Once you get that right, there are a few more things you can do to optimize your code.

    2. Optimize Where the Browser Spends Most of Its Time

    The next thing you should do is investigate where the browser is spending most of its time and then optimize those parts.

    In Google Chrome, when you navigate to View » Developer » Developer Tools » Performance, it is possible to inspect the JavaScript functions and event handlers that are blocking the next paint.

    With that knowledge, you can see what can be optimized in order to reduce the time until the next paint after user interaction.

    3. Reduce Your Layouts

    Sometimes, a lot of CPU activity consists of layout work.

    When that happens, you should check to see if you can reduce the number of relayout functions in your code.

    4. Show Above-the-Fold Content First

    If rendering the page contents is slow, then your INP score may be affected.

    You can consider showing only important ‘above-the-fold’ content first to deliver the next frame more quickly.

    Examples of Good JavaScript Coding Practices for Developers

    It may be helpful to show you some examples of how bad code can result in a poor INP score.

    We put together an example project on CodePen that you can experiment with. You can examine our sample code, read our short explanations, and see the difference it makes by clicking the buttons.

    Here’s an animation from that CodePen project. You can see that the unoptimized sample code results in a poor INP score of 965 milliseconds. The button press will feel laggy to users.

    By contrast, the optimized code updates the button text immediately, resulting in the best possible INP score.

    Animation of CodePen Example Project for Optimizing INP Score

    Read on to see four examples of how you can improve your code to optimize the INP score.

    Example 1: Update the Screen Before Running a Heavy CPU Task

    CPU-heavy tasks take time, and this can lead to poor INP scores unless you write good code. In this case, it’s best to update the screen before running that task.

    Here is a bad example where the user interface is updated after a heavy CPU task. This results in a high INP:

    // Bad example
    button.addEventListener('click', () => {
      // Heavy CPU task
      for (let i = 0; i < 10000000; i++) {
        console.log(i);
      }
      // UI update
      button.textContent = 'Clicked!';});
    

    In this improved example, the user interface is updated immediately when the button is clicked.

    After that, the heavy CPU task is moved to a setTimeout callback:

    // Better example
    button.addEventListener('click', () => {
      // UI update
      button.textContent = 'Processing...';
    
      // Heavy CPU task
      setTimeout(() => {
        for (let i = 0; i < 10000000; i++)
     {
          console.log(i);
        }
        // Final UI update
        button.textContent = 'Done!';
      }, 0);
    });
    

    This allows the browser to update the screen before starting the slow task, resulting in a good INP score.

    Example 2: Schedule Non-Urgent Processing

    You should also make sure that you don’t run non-urgent or non-essential work in a script immediately when it may delay the response the user is expecting.

    You should start by updating the page immediately to acknowledge the user’s input. After that, you can use requestIdleCallback to schedule the rest of the script when there is free time at the end of a frame or when the user is inactive.

    Here is an example:

    button.addEventListener('click', () => {
      // Immediate UI update
      button.textContent = 'Processing...';
    
      // Non-essential processing  window.requestIdleCallback(() => {
        // Perform non-essential processing here...    button.textContent = 'Done!';
      });
    });
    

    This will make the web page feel more responsive to the user and get you a better INP score.

    Example 3: Schedule a Function to Run Before the Next Paint

    You can also userequestAnimationFrame to schedule a function to be run before the next repaint:

    button.addEventListener('click', () => {
      // Immediate UI update
      button.textContent = 'Processing...';
    
      // Visual update
      window.requestAnimationFrame(() => {
        // Perform visual update here...    button.style.backgroundColor = 'green';    button.textContent = 'Done!';
      });
    });
    

    This can be useful for animations or visual updates in response to user interactions.

    Again, you should give the user feedback by acknowledging their input immediately.

    Example 4: Avoid Layout Thrashing

    Layout thrashing occurs when you repeatedly read and write to the DOM (Document Object Model), causing the browser to recalculate the layout multiple times.

    Here is an example of layout thrashing:

    // Bad example
    elements.forEach(element => {
      const height = element.offsetHeight; // read  element.style.height = height + 'px'; // write});
    

    This can be avoided by batching your reads and writes.

    This is a better example:

    // Good example
    const heights = elements.map(element => element.offsetHeight); // batched read
    elements.forEach((element, index) => {
      element.style.height = heights[index] + 'px'; // batched write
    });
    

    We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to improve your Google INP score in WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate guide to WordPress SEO or our expert picks for the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.

    If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

    The post What Is Google’s INP Score and How to Improve It in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • How to Do a UX Audit of Your WordPress Site

    Do you want to perform a User Experience (UX) audit of your WordPress website?

    User experience is an important factor in the success of a website. A good user experience can lead to more conversions and sales, while a poor UX can cost you money.

    In this article, we will show you how to easily do a UX audit of your WordPress website step-by-step.

    Performing a UX audit on a WordPress website

    Here is a quick overview of all the steps we will cover to perform a UX audit on your WordPress website:

    What Is UX, and Why Is It Important?

    User experience or UX describes the feelings and opinions that users have while using your website.

    A pleasant user experience means users find your website easy to use and helpful.

    By contrast, a poor user experience means users find your website difficult to use and can’t do what they want to do.

    Creating a good user experience allows you to help users make the most out of your website. This eventually leads to conversions, sales, and business growth.

    On the other hand, a negative user experience can cause visitors to leave your website without signing up or buying something in your online store. This causes you to lose potential sales and customers.

    How to Perform a UX Audit of Your Website

    As a business owner, you need to regularly check your website to make sure that it offers a good user experience.

    This practice is called a UX audit. You can perform a UX audit by yourself using a combination of tools (you may already be using some of them).

    During this process, you will look for issues that may negatively affect user experience on your website. When you find a problem, you can document it and then start fixing it.

    Ready? Let’s get started.

    Step 1: Define User Goals and Objectives

    First, you need to put yourself into users’ shoes to understand what they are looking for when they reach your website.

    For instance, if your website is an online store selling pet toys, your audience’s goal is likely to look at pet toys, read customer reviews for those products, and make a purchase.

    Similarly, if you run a how-to blog, then your audience’s goal would be to read a tutorial and learn how to do something.

    Understanding what your users want to achieve will allow you to help them better.

    The easiest way to do this is by creating user personas for your target audience.

    Creating user personas for UX audit

    This exercise allows you to better understand users and their expectations of your website. Most importantly, it helps you figure out the goals and objectives of your target audience.

    You can then analyze your website using these personas to see how quickly your content, products, and services can help those users.

    Step 2: Test Your Website for Usability Issues

    Testing your website for usability helps you quickly find problems that could destroy the user experience.

    However, many issues often go unnoticed by website administrators until a user reports them. Users are more likely to switch to your competitor’s website than tell you about issues on your site.

    Luckily, there are plenty of excellent tools that you can use to quickly detect potentially harmful usability issues on your website.

    PageSpeed Insights (Free)

    Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool lets you quickly examine a URL for performance and usability issues.

    It runs tests on your website and then presents the results for both mobile and desktop devices by assigning each one a score.

    This score is given in four categories:

    1. Performance
    2. Accessibility
    3. Best Practices
    4. SEO

    It also tests for Core Web Vitals, which are a set of website performance metrics that Google considers essential to a website’s overall user experience. 

    PageSpeed Insights preview

    When you run the test, the language may initially sound too technical. However, you will also find links to resources explaining these concepts in beginner-friendly terms with tips on resolving each issue.

    You can also read our guide on how to optimize your website for Google’s Core Web Vitals.

    Google Search Console

    PageSpeed Insights is a handy tool to quickly look up URLs.

    However, you will have to manually run the tests, and you can’t find which pages on your website are having issues until you specifically test them.

    What if you could automate this process, quickly find the pages with usability issues, and get alerts when a new problem is detected?

    This is where Google Search Console comes in.

    It is a free tool provided by Google for website administrators who want to see how their websites are performing in search.

    User experience is an essential metric for search rankings. This is why Google wants to alert website owners when a usability issue is detected.

    First, you will need to visit Google Search Console and add your website as a property. For instructions, you can follow our tutorial on how to add your website to Google Search Console.

    Once you have added your website, it may take a while for Google to collect some data and start showing reports.

    After that, you will see your site’s performance and usability reports in the ‘Experience’ section.

    User experience section under Google Search Console

    You can click on each report and drill down to find the pages where usability issues are detected.

    For example, on this demo website, we found four pages in the ‘Mobile Usability’ section that were having issues.

    Pages with usability issues

    You can click on each row to find the exact pages where the issues were detected.

    Google Search Console will also alert you by email when a new crawling or usability issue is detected.

    Besides usability and crawling issues, Google Search Console is a treasure trove of valuable data. To learn more, you can see our expert tips on using Google Search Console to get more traffic.

    Step 3: Find the Pages Performing Poorly

    Automated tools can help you catch many problems. However, they are not perfect and may not be able to identify many common UX problems.

    If you have a small website, you can go to each page to manually review it yourself. However, it is impossible for most medium to large websites to do this manually.

    So, how do you find pages with poor UX?

    One easy way to find these pages is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin on the market that allows you to see where your users are coming from and how they interact with your website.

    The MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin

    First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Note: There is also a free version of MonsterInsights that you can try. However, we recommend upgrading to the paid version and unlocking the full potential of the plugin.

    Upon activation, the plugin will run the setup wizard and help you connect WordPress with your Google Analytics account.

    For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

    Once you are connected, MonsterInsights will start tracking your website visitors.

    Next, you need to set up the plugin to easily track conversions.

    Enable eCommerce Conversion Tracking

    If you use an eCommerce platform on your WordPress website, MonsterInsights can help you easily track conversions.

    Google Analytics comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking, which works for most eCommerce websites, including WooCommerceEasy Digital DownloadsMemberPress, and more.

    However, you will need to enable it for your website manually.

    Start by visiting the Insights » Addons page in your WordPress admin dashboard to install and activate the eCommerce addon.

    Enable eCommerce tracking

    Next, you need to enable enhanced eCommerce tracking in your Google Analytics account. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and select your website.

    From here, click on the ‘Admin’ button in the bottom left corner.

    Switch to admin view in Google Analytics

    On the next screen, you will see different Google Analytics settings.

    Under the ‘View’ column, just click the ‘Ecommerce Settings’ link.

    Ecommerce settings in Google Analytics

    On the next screen, simply turn on the toggles next to the ‘Enable Ecommerce’ and ‘Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting’ options.

    Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you are done.

    Enable eCommerce reporting in Google Analytics

    Check Low Conversion Pages for UX Issues

    Poor user experience is one of the main reasons for low conversions, abandoned carts, and high bounce rates.

    You can view your conversion tracking reports in MonsterInsights to find pages with low conversions and higher bounce rates.

    Simply go to the Insights » Reports page inside the WordPress admin area and then switch to the ‘eCommerce’ tab.

    Viewing eCommerce reports

    From here, you can see an overview of your top-performing products and conversion sources.

    For advanced reports, you need to switch to your Google Analytics account and go to the Engagement » Pages and screens tab.

    From here, you can sort the pages by conversion rate to see the pages with the least conversions.

    Low conversion pages

    Using Google Analytics, you can also track pages with the highest bounce rates, the least amount of time spent on them, and more.

    For more conversion tracking options, you can see our complete guide on WordPress conversion tracking. It will also show you how to track form conversions, affiliate link conversions, and more.

    Step 4: Ask For User Feedback

    As you can see, many UX audit activities involve automated tools, analytics reports, and manual testing.

    The entire point of the UX audit exercise is to improve user experience. So, why not just ask your users what they think?

    Asking for user feedback can get you accurate input from real visitors about your website. It can help you find specific problems and fix them more easily.

    This is where UserFeedback comes in.

    UserFeedback

    Note: There is also a free plugin called UserFeedback Lite that you can try. We recommend upgrading to the Pro version to unlock the full potential of the plugin.

    UserFeedback allows you to quickly run surveys and collect user feedback on your website. It also lets you show the surveys to the right users at the right time.

    For example, you can show surveys to users on the pages with fewer conversions or display a feedback form to users on mobile devices.

    UserFeedback form

    For more information, you can see our UserFeedback announcement post.

    Step 5: Optimize Your Website Speed & Performance

    Website speed is a major contributor to user experience. Slow sites cause poor UX and prevent users from moving forward and accessing your content.

    The tools we mentioned earlier, like PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals, can help you evaluate the performance of your website.

    However, if you are using MonsterInsights, then you can also run a website speed test inside your WordPress admin area.

    Simply switch to the Insights » Reports page and then open the ‘Site Speed’ tab.

    Site Speed in MonsterInsights

    The report will run the same tests as PageSpeed Insights and show you a report. It will also give you practical tips to improve website performance.

    Fixing Performance and Speed Issues

    The easiest way to fix most performance issues is by simply installing a WordPress caching plugin.

    We recommend using WP Rocket, which is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market. It lets you easily optimize your WordPress website without learning the technical stuff.

    WPRocket

    First, you need to install and activate the WP Rocket plugin. For details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Upon activation, WP Rocket will start caching your website’s content.

    Unlike other caching plugins that generate a cache when a user visits your website, WP Rocket automatically starts creating a cache in the background.

    This means each new user on your website will see a cached version that loads much quicker and improves user experience.

    You can learn more by reading our tutorial on setting up WP Rocket with more detailed instructions.

    If caching doesn’t immediately fix your website speed, we recommend following our complete WordPress speed and performance guide. It includes step-by-step instructions on how to optimize your website speed.

    Step 6: Evaluate Website Navigation

    Users expect your site to have a navigation menu with the links they need to find the information they want.

    Sometimes, a website may not have a navigation menu that helps users reach the page they want. This leads to a poor user experience, and visitors may leave and try some other website.

    You need to make sure that your website has a straightforward navigation menu that takes users to the critical areas of your website.

    Navigation menu example

    Adding a search bar to your website’s header or navigation menu can also improve user experience. If users can’t find a link quickly, then they can try searching on your website.

    However, the default WordPress search is not very good.

    Instead, we recommend using SearchWP. It is the best WordPress search plugin on the market and quickly improves the search experience on your website.

    SearchWP website

    SearchWP allows you to make everything on your website searchable, including custom fields, eCommerce attributes, custom tables, categories, tags, and more.

    First, you need to install and activate the SearchWP plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Upon activation, you need to visit the SearchWP » Algorithm page and switch to the ‘Engines’ tab.

    From here, you can adjust the search engine settings for the different content types by scrolling to the Posts, Pages, and Media sections.

    SearchWP engines

    Here, you can choose which attributes are searchable on your website. You can also choose their relevance.

    Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

    SearchWP will now replace your default WordPress search feature with its own custom search engine.

    For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to improve WordPress search with SearchWP.

    Step 7: Test Conversion Elements

    A lot of the time, poor user experience is caused at the end of a conversion path.

    For instance, you might have users trying to submit your lead capture form, but something is stopping them from doing so.

    Luckily, you can run split tests and manually test elements on your website to identify and fix problems.

    Run A/B Split Tests to Figure Out UX Issues

    An easy way to test your conversion elements is by running A/B split tests.

    An A/B split test allows you to create two or more versions of a page with slight differences. It then shows users a different version randomly.

    You can then compare the results to find out which variation of the page performed the best among your users.

    The easiest way to run these tests on your WordPress website is by using Thrive Optimize. It lets you quickly create and run A/B tests on your WordPress website.

    First, you will need to install and activate Thrive Optimize plugin. You can purchase the plugin with Thrive Architect or get it with Thrive Suite bundle.

    Next, install and activate the Thrive Product Manager plugin on your website. You can download it from your Account Dashboard on the Thrive Themes website.

    Install Thrive Product Manager

    Upon activating the plugin, you need to go to the Product Manager page in the WordPress admin area.

    Next, you need to check the ‘Install Product’ box under the Thrive Optimize and Thrive Architect products.

    Thrive Optimize installation

    After that, click on the ‘Install Selected Products’ button to continue.

    After installing the plugins, you will need to create or edit a post/ page and then click on the ‘Launch Thrive Architect’ button at the top.

    Editing a page with Thrive Architect

    This will show a popup where you can choose how to edit the page.

    You can edit the page as a regular page using your theme template or as a landing page with a custom template.

    Normal vs Landing page

    If you choose a pre-built landing page, then you will be asked to choose a template.

    Thrive Architect comes with dozens of beautiful templates for various niches to choose from.

    choose a template

    After that, you will be able to edit your page in Thrive Architect’s page builder.

    It is an intuitive design tool where you can point and click on any element to edit it or click on the ‘+’ button to insert new elements.

    Editing page in Thrive Architect

    Once you have finished editing your page, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Work’ button to store your changes.

    After that, click on the ‘A/B’ button in the right column to create a new A/B test.

    Create a new A/B test

    To run your A/B test, you need to have at least two versions of a page.

    On the next screen, click on the Add New Variation button to create a new version of your landing page.

    Add variation

    It will now create a new variation, and you can start editing it using the Thrive Architect.

    Make the changes to the page you think will work better than the previous version.

    After that, simply click on the ‘Save Work’ button to store your changes, and then click on the ‘A/B’ button again.

    Run the test

    You can choose how much traffic you want to send to each page variation and then click on the ‘Set Up & Start A/B Test’ button at the top.

    This will bring up a popup where you can configure the A/B test settings.

    A/B test settings

    You need to give your test a title and description. Afterward, you can turn on Automatic Winner settings and set minimum requirements for a variation to win.

    Click on the ‘Next’ button to continue.

    Finally, you will be asked to choose a goal for the test. For example, if it is a product page, then you may want to choose ‘Revenue’.

    Set test goal

    Finally, click on the ‘Start A/B Test’ button to finish the setup.

    Thrive Optimize will now start showing the two variations of the page to your users and keep track of user interactions on the page.

    You can view the test results anytime by visiting the Thrive Dashboard » Thrive Optimize page.

    Thrive Optimize dashboard

    Once the test has run its duration, you can see which page has performed better for conversions or the goals you set during the test. You will then be able to make changes to improve the UX on your website.

    For more details, you can see our guide on how to run A/B tests on your WordPress website.

    Manually Test Conversion Elements

    A lot of time, you may not be able to run A/B split tests for all your pages. Luckily, there are other ways to test whether conversion elements on your pages are working.

    Website owners are often just looking at the static representation of their website and not interacting with it like a real user would. That’s why many interactive failures go unnoticed for a long time.

    This is when you will need to do some manual work. You can try to imitate a user journey as best as possible to complete a conversion.

    For instance, if you run an eCommerce store, you can start from the page where your users usually land. Afterward, look at product pages, add items to the cart, and complete the checkout.

    Within your UX audit, you must test all your forms, cart functionality, and checkout experience by interacting with those elements like a customer.

    Plus, don’t forget to test these elements on both mobile and desktop environments.

    Step 8: Test User Flows to Find Bottlenecks

    A user flow is a customer’s journey across your website. A user will usually take a predictable path to different areas of your website until they buy something or submit a form.

    The best way to track user flows is by using MonsterInsights. It comes with a User Journey addon that allows you to see every step of a customer’s journey throughout your site, including the pages and products they looked at and how long they were there.

    Simply install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin.

    Note: You will need at least the Pro plan of the plugin to use the User Journey addon.

    After setting up MonsterInsights, you need to go to the Insights » Addons page. From here, locate the User Journey addon and then install and activate it.

    User Journey addon MonsterInsights

    Next, you need to install and activate the eCommerce addon. This will help you track customer journeys on popular eCommerce platforms for WordPress like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and more.

    Now, MonsterInsights will show the user’s journey on individual orders. For example, in WooCommmerce, you can go to WooCommerce » Orders page and click on an individual order.

    Click on an individual order

    On the order details page, scroll down to the MonsterInsights User Journey section.

    This will show you all the user interactions on your site with their times and durations.

    User journey preview

    For more details, you can see our guide on how to enable customer tracking in WooCommerce.

    If you are not using an eCommerce platform, then you can still track the user journey for your WordPress forms.

    If you are using WPForms to capture leads, then it comes with user journey tracking that helps you track which path a user took to submit the form.

    User Journey tracking

    Like conversion elements, other areas of your website could disrupt user flow and block the path that leads them to become a customer.

    You will need to manually evaluate user paths in Google Analytics to see where their journey abruptly ends. You can also simulate the user paths to see if you can come across a usability issue preventing the user from going forward.

    Step 9: Evaluate Website Content Quality

    Visual elements are not the only things that create a good or bad user experience.

    Your website content plays a significant role in convincing users to stay on your WordPress blog or website and look around. It also helps search engines find your content more easily and send more visitors to your site.

    We recommend performing a complete SEO audit of your website and optimizing your content for SEO.

    To do that, you will need All in One SEO for WordPress. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market that allows you to easily improve your content for search rankings and user experience.

    All in One SEO plugin

    All in One SEO comes with built-in SEO analysis, a headline analyzer, and site-wide SEO audit tools. All these features help you improve the quality and discoverability of your content.

    You will also need to evaluate your content. For example, if a particular page is not ranking or converting well, then consider making it more comprehensive by adding more helpful content.

    For more details, you can see our guide on how to fix content decay in WordPress.

    Don’t forget to check your content for spelling and grammar mistakes. They could make your website seem unprofessional and create a bad user experience.

    We recommend using Grammarly. It is the best AI-powered writing tool that helps you automatically correct spelling and grammar mistakes.

    Grammarly

    Grammarly also has a free forever plan with spelling and grammar checks. However, we recommend buying a paid plan to unlock more powerful features.

    We hope this article helped you learn how to do a UX audit of your WordPress website. You may also want to see our guide on how to do an SEO audit of your site or our expert picks for the best email marketing services to grow your website.

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    The post How to Do a UX Audit of Your WordPress Site first appeared on WPBeginner.