UX has always been an integral part of website and app building because it determines how much your audience will actually enjoy using your site or mobile app. This, in turn, will lead this audience to decide whether or not they want to continue interacting with your brand.

But with so many aspects of UX writing and UX design that play a key role in the success of your business, it’s difficult to keep up with absolutely everything. Luckily, UX testing can help you identify the issues that your UX might have. Hence, here are some tricks and tips on how to use UX testing to level up your SEO.

What Is UX And UX Testing?

UX or user experience probably needs no explanation – it’s meant to determine how, when and where your target audience (aka customers) interact with your content and product or service. UX combines UX writing and UX design to work with content both visually and in the form of text to create the kind of experience your target audience will enjoy.

No matter how much you work on your UX writing and UX design, there will still be issues that you will encounter – or even the ones you don’t notice but your audience will. That’s why you need to use UX testing which will help you identify these issues and then correct them accordingly.

How Is UX Testing Important For SEO?

But what’s the deal with UX testing and SEO? Surely, UX testing help you with improving the user experience, but SEO is not solely about user experience. In fact, it’s more about promoting your website and/or mobile app to get it discovered easier so that it can attract more potential customers to your brand.

The thing is that when you test your UX and find issues, correcting them can help you improve your SEO as well. Better user experience more site visitors which means better rankings. Fewer on-site issues means happier site visitors which means better search engine optimization and so on.

What Are Some Types Of Usability Testing?

Usability testing is very similar to UX testing with the two terms actually being used interchangeably quite a lot. Though you don’t need to perform all types of usability testing, it’s worth knowing what options you have and experimenting with these different types of testing:

• A/B Testing: This method presents two or more versions of a particular element that is then tested on its impact on the user experience and the way users respond to it. A/B testing is perfect for looking at the way small changes can impact the overall UX of your website or app.
• Hallway Testing: This method presents different versions of your website for participants to test and for you to see where they get stuck and whether they are able to navigate your website properly and use all the necessary features. Surveys and writing prompts can provide more insight afterward.
• Expert Review: This method uses experts instead of users to give website owners an idea about the issues their websites have and how these issues can be solved. Expert reviews can’t entirely substitute user-centered testing, but they can provide you with the necessary additional information to get the most out of your UX testing.

When testing your UX, check these elements of your website and/or mobile app:

#1 Improve Site/Page Speed

First and foremost, you need to improve your site and page speed. Doing this will ensure that your website is running smoothly and loads pages and the content on them fast enough for your site visitors to be satisfied by the speed. In the age when Internet connection is so accessible to anyone and is so fast that most websites load in seconds if not faster, it’s absolutely necessary for your website speed to be high.

To check the site and page speed, you can use one of the tools at the end of this article such as Page Speed Online. Once you have your results, you will need to determine the issues that prohibit your website from loading properly (if your site and page speed is low). The problem will probably be with your web design that you will have to tweak in some way.

#2 Ensure Mobile Friendliness

Like site and page loading speed, mobile friendliness is one of those things that users expect nowadays to be a given. In other words, it shouldn’t be an option for you to ensure mobile friendliness – it should be a priority that you think about at the very beginning of creating your website.

Though you might be able to test your website on several different devices, you won’t be able to do it on your own with all the browsers currently in use. This is when you can use a tool like LambdaTest which will check your website for compatibility with thousands of browsers and operating systems.

#3 Develop Proper Site Navigation

Site navigation is sometimes an afterthought among website owners and site developers even though it actually stands front and center when it comes to user experience. A website with poor site navigation can even become genuinely despised by its users and abandoned over time altogether.

Site navigation includes everything from the menu and tabs to the internal linking of your site. You can use a tool like Writemaps to create a sitemap of your website that will help you keep your pages organized, but you can also run tests to see how easy it is for your audience to navigate your website quickly.

#4 Work On H1 And H2 Headings

Though it may seem a bit unrelated to UX, headings actually play a huge role for your SEO which means they will also influence user experience. In fact, having well-positioned and correctly worded H1 and H2 headings will allow you to improve the structure in which your content is presented which will, in turn, improve site navigation in the visual sense.

ProWritingAid and other similar tools like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor can help you check your text’s grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other errors while also helping you create better H1 and H2 headings.

#5 Track Average Session Duration

Tracking average session duration can be a useful practice when it is done regularly. Otherwise, you might not be able to understand whether the numbers you are seeing indicate good or bad average session duration.

By far the most widely used analytics tool is Google Analytics – and it also happens to be the one that shows website owners their site’s average session duration. If you see that your average session duration seems to be consistently low, it means there is an issue with the website (e.g. site navigation is too complex) that leads to site visitors leaving the website faster than you would like them to.

#6 Decrease Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is directly related to the average session duration of your website and the different pages of your website. But while the average session duration is measured by taking the time between the last engagement of your user with your website to the time they first clicked and arrived on your website, bounce rate measures indicates sessions that were spent only one page of your website without engaging with any other pages.

In other words, you need both metrics to see if there is an issue with your website that could indicate poor user experience and, in turn, less engagement. But you need to remember about the difference between them which will help you to understand what the actual issues are that you are dealing with (e.g. high bounce rate can indicate that your website or a certain page on it doesn’t engage your site visitors).

#7 Check Dwell Time

Another metric you might want to keep an eye (but that is in no way one of the key metrics you should always track) is dwell time. This is the time between the moment when the user clicks on a link to your website from the search results and the moment when they come back to the search results.

Like the average session duration and the bounce rate, dwell time can indicate some issues in the way your website is set up and the way users experience it. You can check the dwell time in Google Analytics by checking the session duration (not to be confused with average session duration).

#8 Place Share Buttons Strategically

Of course, UX isn’t just about checking metrics or improving your content – it’s also about design and the way your website’s design makes your site visitors perform particular tasks or actions that you want them to make.

One of these are the social media sharing buttons that help your website get more exposure and receive even more engagement by reaching more people. Placing share buttons strategically (i.e. in the spaces where users will actually see them) will allow you to get more shares which will, in turn, lead to better user experience and SEO.

Tools And Resources To Use For UX Testing

Before you start implementing the techniques from this article, it’s worth first looking at the different tools and resources you can use for UX testing:

• UsabilityHub: Conduct tests on your site’s visual design including navigation and visual appeal.
• Page Speed Online: Check the loading speed of your website pages.
• SEOptimer: Check how well your website works in SEO, usability, performance, social activity and security.
• UserReport: See which groups of users visit your website and what they do on it.
• Usabilia: Have users complete tasks on your website in real time and see how well they perform.
• ProWritingAid: Check your text and correct any issues it has.
• TryMyUI: Use a variety of features to see how users navigate your website.
• Writemaps: Create a sitemap of your website and keep your pages organized.
• Hotjar: See how people behave on your website with the help of visual trackers, surveys, polls and form and conversion funnel analytics.
• Website Grader: Review your website and get a score in SEO, performance, mobile friendliness and security.
• Check My Colours: Analyze the visual look of your website by measuring contrast, brightness and luminosity.
• UserZoom: Measure customer experience with the help of advanced tools and human participants.
• Juicy Studio’s Readability Test: Check how easy it is for your audience to read and understand your text.
• LambdaTest: Run compatibility tests with different browsers to see whether your website appears properly in different programs.
• Treejack: Improve navigation by transforming your website into a plain interface and testing it on users.
• Loop11: Track user activity on your website in real time.
• Attensee: Determine where the attention of your site visitors goes to when they browse your website.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, UX testing can be an incredibly powerful tool for finding out hidden issues in your UX writing and design which can, in turn, help you create a better website and/or mobile app that your audience will enjoy using. Apply the tips and tricks from this article to your own strategy and become more proficient in user experience testing.