Improving a website - where to start?

Process & Techniques
#1

Hi everyone

I hope you’re all safe and well :slight_smile:

I’m interested in UX Design and UX Research, I have been to a few talks, workshops etc. Unfortunately, I can’t afford a Bootcamp or university course so I will need to learn in my spare time.

However, I have recently volunteered to be the Communications Secretary for my local running club, part of my responsibilities involves looking after the website. Therefore, I thought this would be a good opportunity to do some UX projects for my portfolio.

Here’s a link to the website:
https://www.dulwichparkrunners.co.uk/

I’d like to improve the UX design of the website but I’m a bit unsure on where to start.

Should I follow this process:
Define the main goals of the website
Look at competitor’s websites
Run user testing asking users to complete tasks based on these goals
Make improvements
More user testing to check my changes improved the UX

Is there anything I am missing? Let me know if you have any articles, tips or guidance

Thanks for your help

Esme

1 Like
#2

A great way to start improving a website is to understand where it’s falling down currently. I run a Heuristics evaluation with each site I work on to get an idea of what’s working well and what’s not.

There are a few different ways of doing this, but I have a checklist of items that I check. Each item gets a grade - Very Poor, Poor, Moderate, Good, or Very Good (or N/A if they don’t apply for the site I’m reviewing). This gives me a checklist of things to address as well as talking points to address with clients to tell them how - exactly - I would help improve their site.

The other pieces you mentioned - competitive reviews and user testing - can certainly be used, but they’re best implemented once you’ve identified basic issues you’ve encountered and agreed to fix.

2 Likes
#3

This book is great if you’re looking for an overview of how to approach the UX process:

Your checklist looks good. One thing to watch out for is the difference between goals and tasks. A website’s goals are usually things that the organisation wants to achieve (e.g. Recruit more new members) and they’re important to know, but from a UX point-of-view, the most important thing to identify are the main tasks that your users want to complete to fulfil their needs (e.g. Find out how to join the running club). Good UX often involves finding that ‘sweet spot’ intersection between organisation goals and user tasks and needs, as shown in one of my favourite diagrams.1*1YAX4E5zfUSD-cqC7vKekQ

2 Likes
#5

Before starting work on improving the website, you need to prioritize the sections of improvement. You need to follow the below tips to improve your website :

  1. Optimise page speed: To check page speed.
  2. Use attractive calls to action :
  3. Use hyperlink differentiation.
  4. Segment key information with bullet points.
  5. Use images (wisely)
  6. Include well-designed and written headings.
  7. Keep your website pages consistent.

I hope these points will help you to improve your website

Thanks

Summary

This text will be hidden

#6

Hi Esme
I’m Cristina, I’m learning on my own like you :), also as you, for me bootcamps are unaffordable, this course may be interesting for you (sorry I can’t add a link because I’m new here) It’s in the Coursera platform: Google UX design.
It is a professional Google course 49 euros/month, in 6 months you can finish the course and you will have a UX GOOGLE certificate, also you can request for a scholarship, I asked for it and now I am waiting for an answer.
Bye :slight_smile:

#7

I think you checklist looks great and in addition the replies are super helpful.

What works for assessing the performance and reporting back on a website over a period of time and over a large sample of users will be a data driven approach that possibly can be setup while you conduct your list.

Have the devs setup Google Analytics on the site to get data performance of the site at the moment. Bounce rate, pages per session, loading times etc. Poor performing pages can be identified very easily then use usability testing to zero in on the actual problems in those areas. This works very well for sites with a lot of pages and potentially when a lot of possible tasks that can be performed.