Turn more strangers into subscribers and browsers into buyers by removing friction, reducing risk, and improving your user experience.
TRUTH: A website that frustrates people is costing you sales.
Great user experience isn’t just about making your site look good. Good UX means your website feels effortless to use, builds trust, and makes it ridiculously easy for visitors to take the next right step. When your site is intuitive, focused, and professional, the right people stick around. When it’s confusing or slow? They leave faster than you can say “lost opportunity.”
The thing is, every unnecessary click, every slow-loading page, and every confusing form is pushing potential clients straight into your competitors’ arms. Luckily, you can fix this.
Here are 13 ways to improve your website’s user experience and turn more strangers into subscribers and browsers into buyers.
1. Design for clarity and ease of use
People are impatient. Almost 25% of website visitors says they will bounce if a site is confusing or hard to use, and that’s a lot of missed opportunities! Don’t make the mistake of prioritizing trendy design over usability. Don’t cram every inch with fancy animations, use unconventional navigation, and over do it with creative layouts — it makes people work to find what they’re looking for.
Great design isn’t about showing off your design skills. Great design is about making tasks easier and faster. When it comes to your website, great design makes finding information, identifying fit, and accomplishing tasks effortless. When visitors can instantly understand how to navigate your site and find what they need, they stick around longer, consume more content, and move closer to the end of their buying journey.
How to make your website design more user-friendly:
- Keep design clean and intuitive. Visitors should immediately understand where to go and what to do next.
- Make navigation effortless. Your menu should be simple and clear — no guesswork required.
- Ensure CTAs stand out. If visitors can’t find that “Book Now” button, they won’t book now.
- Use white space strategically. It’s not wasted space — it guides the eye and makes content easier to digest.
- Design for expectations. Buttons, links, forms, and interactive features should behave the way people expect them to.
2. Prioritize mobile friendliness
More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site looks like crap on a phone, you’re alienating a huge chunk of your audience.
Your website’s mobile view cannot be treated as an afterthought. For many visitors, their mobile experience IS their only experience. If they can’t open and close your menu or tap menu items, if your images are cropped awkwardly, or if your forms are impossible to complete on small screens, they may give up, click away, and never come back.
Mobile optimization isn’t just about shrinking things down or removing elements from a web page. It’s about designing an intentional experience for someone using their thumb on a tiny screen, often while multitasking or on-the-go.
Here are tips for making your site more mobile friendly:
- Use responsive design that adapts to all screen sizes.
- Ensure fast load times by compressing images and streamlining code.
- Make buttons large and tappable. Tiny links on mobile = frustrated users.
- Optimize fonts and spacing so text is readable without zooming.
- Simplify navigation for smaller screens.
- Minimize pop-ups — they’re even more annoying on mobile.
- Test on multiple devices to ensure a seamless experience.
3. Improve readability and content structure
Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to wade through a wall of text to find what they need. Most people scan content first to decide if they’ll read it word-for-word. If they can’t quickly understand what the message is and extract the value from your content, getting them to stay and convert will become an uphill battle.
Now, I’m not telling you to dumb things down. I’m telling you to respect visitors’ time and cognitive load. The myth that “comprehensive” means “lengthy” needs to die. Your 3,000-word page with no subheadings isn’t thorough. It’s exhausting.
Well-structured content demonstrates clarity of thought and consideration for your reader’s experience. It shows you can organize complex ideas into digestible chunks. And a bonus is that search engines love content that’s organized with proper headings, reasonable paragraph lengths, and lists!
Here’s how to make your content more reader-friendly:
- Use short paragraphs — 1-3 sentences max for easy scanning.
- Break up content with clear headings and subheadings.
- Use bullet points and lists to make key information stand out.
- Write in plain language. Ditch the jargon and get to the point quickly.
- Ensure strong contrast with legible fonts (at least 16px).
- Add white space to give your text room to breathe.
Remember: If reading your content feels like work, feels difficult, or feels like it will take a long time, most visitors won’t stick around long enough to read it. But, on the flip side, those that do will likely be all in.
4. Make your site accessible and inclusive
Accessibility work is often ignored because people think it’s “too technical” or “not relevant to my customers.” If that’s you, that attitude is costing you money! If your website isn’t accessible, you’re excluding potential clients. Period.
And I don’t just mean people with permanent disabilities, even though they control over $13 trillion in disposable income globally, and that’s not a market segment you want to ignore. I’m also talking about…
- The executive with carpal tunnel who can’t use a mouse.
- The new parent browsing one-handed while holding a baby.
- The prospective client browsing your site in low-light.
- The employee working on their side hustle with sound turned off.
- The person with a slow internet connection in a rural area.
There’s also this persistent myth that accessible sites are boring or ugly.
Can I claim that’s false? Not always. But you can build a site that is accessible and beautiful if you take the time to build accessibility planning into your website strategy and foundational user experience and design decisions. The right design partner can find the right balance for your business, and really, most accessibility improvements enhance the user experience for ALL users.
- Good contrast makes text easier for everyone to read.
- Keyboard navigation helps power users move through your site faster.
- Captions help people watching your videos in noisy environments.
Beyond the basic ethical responsibility, accessibility improves SEO, reduces legal risk (yes, businesses can get sued for ADA violations on their websites), and increases engagement across the board. The best part? Many accessibility improvements are surprisingly simple to implement.
Some quick accessibility improvements include:
- Ensuring high color contrast.
- Adding descriptive alt text to all images.
- Structuring content with proper heading hierarchy.
- Making navigation keyboard-friendly.
- Adding captions to videos and transcripts to audios.
- Avoiding auto-playing media.
- Choosing easy-to-read, legible typefaces.
- Providing resizable text.
- Using descriptive link text.
5. Speed up your website
47% of visitors expect your site to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a page that takes more than three seconds. On mobile, the stats are even worse! Every additional second of load time reduces conversions by 7% — Ouch!
After investing countless hours and thousands of dollars in beautiful design, compelling copy, and strategic positioning, the worst thing you could do is sabotage it all with poor performance. People hate slow-loading websites. So do search engines. Website speed impacts user experience, conversion rates, and your site’s SEO.
Here are a few ideas to make your website faster:
- Optimize and compress images — oversized images are speed killers.
- Use caching and a content delivery network (CDN).
- Invest in quality hosting.
- Test your site speed regularly with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Minimize HTTP requests by combining files where possible.
6. Reduce decision paralysis
Too many choices lead to no choice at all.
When people face too many options, they often choose the easiest one, and when it comes to your website, the easiest option is doing nothing. This isn’t just my opinion. One famous “jam study” showed that when presented with 24 jam options, only 3% of people made a purchase, as compared to 30% when offered just 6 options.
The common misconception is that offering lots of options, packages, and customizations makes you look more accommodating and flexible. In reality, you’re just creating decision fatigue and pushing the mental workload onto prospective clients. That’s not helpful — it’s overwhelming and exhausting.
Think about this: After a full day of making decisions at work, managing family responsibilities, and handling life’s curve balls, a potential client lands on your website. Do they have the mental bandwidth to compare and contrast your seven slightly different service packages? Absolutely not.
Decision fatigue is real and it kills conversions.
The human brain has a limited amount of decision-making energy each day. When that energy is depleted, people either avoid decisions entirely or make poor ones. By simplifying choices, you’re empowering clients to move forward with confidence instead of freezing in analysis paralysis.
Here’s how you can simplify the decision-making process:
- Streamline your services instead of presenting every possible variation upfront.
- Highlight your recommended or most popular option.
- Skip vague link text and use clear calls to action like “Book A Consultation.”
- Simplify your pricing structure to prevent overwhelm.
- Create dedicated pages for each service that speak directly to ideal clients.
7. Showcase social proof
If you’re choosing between two restaurants and one is packed while the other is empty, which feels like the safer bet? I know which one I’m choosing (and it’s not the empty one).
Social proof works the same way for your website.
As humans, we like to think we’re rational decision-makers, but the reality is, most people are heavily influenced by what others do. A study by Zendesk revealed that 88% of consumers admit reviews influence their buying decisions. That’s huge!
Social proof isn’t just about looking popular — it’s about becoming remembered, respected, and referred. When potential clients see that others trust you, they’re more likely to take that leap too. It reduces perceived risk and creates FOMO (fear of missing out) that can tip hesitant prospects into action. The best part? It lets others sell for you, which is always better than you tooting your own horn.
Here’s how to make social proof work for you:
- Feature genuine client testimonials that highlight results.
- Display subscriber counts, awards, or media mentions.
- Share before-and-after success stories that make your impact tangible.
- Showcase logos of recognizable clients or brands you’ve worked with.
- Highlight professional certifications and awards.
8. Simplify forms and reduce barriers
If filling out a form on your website feels like filling out a tax return, you’re likely losing leads and subscribers. Research shows that every field you add to a form decreases your conversion rate by approximately 4%. That means a 10-field contact form could be getting nearly 30% fewer submissions than a streamlined 3-field version!
What does this mean for you?
Your forms, whether you’re using an email opt-in form, a contact form, a project inquiry, or even an application, need to be backed by a conversion strategy.
- Some forms need to use as few fields as possible.
- Some forms need to be longer and more comprehensive on purpose to weed out tire-kickers and ensure people are serious.
- Some forms will fall somewhere in the middle.
Your job as the site owner is to define the purpose of each form and design it intentionally so it does its job without creating a barrier to entry.
Here are some tips to improve your website forms:
- Eliminate unnecessary steps — if account creation isn’t essential, don’t require it.
- Keep forms minimal — ask only for information you absolutely need right now.
- Avoid hidden requirements that create frustration.
- Save detailed questions for after the initial form submission.
- Provide clear instructions and labels for each field.
9. Address common objections
Objections are the silent conversion killers lurking in your prospects’ minds, and you can’t just avoid them, hoping they won’t come up.
Every potential client has hesitations. It’s normal.
- If you don’t address objections in your copy, people will fill in the blanks themselves, and usually not in your favor.
- They might decide you’re not the right fit and bounce without ever giving you the chance to address their concerns or change their minds.
Tackling objections head-on shows confidence in your services and demonstrates that you understand your clients’ concerns, where they’re coming from, and what they’re dealing with. Think about it like this: Every objection that goes unaddressed is a leak in your conversion funnel. Patch these leaks, and you’ll see more prospects flowing through to become clients.
To proactively overcome objections:
- Identify common concerns that hold clients back.
- Address hesitations directly in your copy with phrases like “You might be thinking…” or “If you’re like most of my clients…”
- Create an FAQ section that anticipates and answers common questions.
- Use client testimonials that specifically highlight a hesitation they had.
10. Offer multiple payment options
Not everyone wants to pay the same way and limiting options can kill conversions. The moment you tell a ready-to-buy client “Sorry, I don’t accept that payment method,” you create friction. And I know what you’re thinking, “But payment processors charge fees!” Yes, they do — but those fees are minuscule compared to the cost of losing a sale. Would you rather make 97% of something or 100% of nothing?
Also, for high-ticket services, payment plans are particularly crucial. Breaking a $6,000 project into three payments of $2,000 can make it accessible to clients who couldn’t manage the full amount upfront.
Make paying easy by:
- Accepting as many different types of payment methods as you can.
- Offering payment plans to make larger investments more accessible.
- Making the checkout process simple and secure.
- Clearly display all available payment options before checkout.
- Provide receipts and payment confirmations automatically.
11. Display trust badges and security signals
People need to feel safe before they’ll share their information. Trust signals reassure them that your site is legitimate and secure — an important detail in our current climate of data breaches, online scams, and privacy violations.
No site is too small or too insignificant to ignore security.
Even small websites collect personal data — names, emails, contact form messages, analytics data, sometimes payment information — and people want to know you’re taking data security seriously. They also want to confirm you’re legit, and trust badges and logos from industry affiliations, professional certifications, and even watchdog groups contribute to the perception that your business is established and credible.
Build trust with website visitors through:
- Security logos and SSL certificates
- Industry and business memberships and certifications
- Media mentions, awards, and partner logos
- Money-back guarantee indicators
- GDPR or data protection compliance symbols
The key is strategic placement. Trust signals should appear at decision points — near forms, checkout processes, or calls to action. They should complement your design, not overwhelm it.
12. Make it easy to contact you
Clients shouldn’t need a treasure map to find your contact information. Make reaching you ridiculously simple. Studies show that 44% of website visitors will leave a site if there’s no contact information or it’s hard to find.
I’ve audited hundreds of freelancer websites, and it’s shocking how many bury their contact information or hide it altogether! I get that not providing contact information is a way to cut down on the spam that results from people scraping your email address. But it also blocks legitimate prospects who might have become fantastic clients.
The truth? Most people have a preferred communication method and will use that one regardless of how many options you provide. Offering multiple channels just ensures you’re not excluding anyone based on their preferences.
Contact page considerations include:
- Clear instructions and directions for next steps.
- Multiple contact options — email, phone, form, chat, etc.
- A friendly introduction to your team.
- Location details or context that makes you more approachable.
- Clear response time expectations.
13. Maintain a current privacy policy
Beyond legal requirements, a well-written privacy policy builds credibility and trustworthiness for your business and brand. With data breaches and identity theft making headlines, people want to know their information is safe. Being up front about how you handle privacy shows your clients that even though you’re a small business, you take privacy as seriously as big businesses do.
Many freelancers skip privacy policies entirely or copy/paste generic templates that don’t actually reflect their practices. Both approaches are risky. While it’s true that most visitors never read privacy policies, their mere presence signals professionalism and transparency. It’s like insurance — you don’t need it until you really need it.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires website owners to clearly inform visitors about how their personally identifiable information is collected and used. Google requires a privacy policy for specific services. And if you serve clients in the EU, GDPR compliance isn’t optional.
Here are some privacy policy essentials:
- Explain how you collect and use personal information.
- Detail who has access to visitor data.
- Outline visitor rights regarding their information.
- Include information about cookies and tracking.
- Update regularly to reflect current practices and laws.
If you don’t have an existing relationship with an attorney, or don’t have the budget to hire one, and you don’t feel comfortable banking on a copy-and-pasted privacy policy to protect you and your business, I highly recommend checking out Termageddon (using this link will save you 10% at checkout). You’ll be sooooo glad you did!
Good UX Creates Clients
Whether you like it or not, people form an opinion about your site within milliseconds of arriving. A clean, fast, intuitive site with a great user experience builds instant credibility. A cluttered, slow, confusing site that is hard to use sends people packing.
By eliminating friction points, reducing risk, streamlining the visitor journey, and meeting future clients where they’re at, you can create a digital experience that keeps the right people on your site longer and converts them into subscribers and paying clients who hire you, buy from you, and learn from you.
And now I have to ask…
When was the last time you evaluated your website with a critical eye?
If your website isn’t turning curious visitors into clients, open your calendar and block out time to audit your website — to identify points of friction and frustration and make a plan for refining your visitor experience.
Not sure where to start? I’ve got your back!
Book a one-time consulting session and use it for a live website review. We’ll walk through your site together, page by page. I’ll share specific recommendations for improvement, you can ask questions as we go, and I’ll not only recap the entire conversation and your action steps in writing, but also give you the recording when we’re done.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
