Speed: The user experience booster

Speed is one of the biggest measures of content usability. It's also a major contributing factor to page abandonment. In fact, 40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Back in 2009, Google reported that a 0.5 second stall in page-loading time resulted in a 20 percent drop in traffic. That’s a sizeable drop in traffic for a half of a second. So ask yourself next time whether that new feature is worth the drop in load times and traffic.

In the mean time, there are several things you can do to speed up your site. Leverage browser caching, for example, so that the next time the visitor comes back to the page it will load faster. Use a content delivery network to deliver content more efficiently to users.

Beautiful websites just perform better. That is, they get better conversion rates. Ugly sites, on the other hand, cause visitors to .

Minimalism ensures that every single element on the page has a distinct purpose. When your readers can easily identify the purpose of a particular element, their user experience is improved tremendously.

To design a minimalist blog or site, focus on creating a layout that is clean, balanced, easy to navigate, and vibrant in color. This Crazy Egg blog post outlines four points to minimalist design:

Websites: How To Nail A Positive First Impression

Whitespace, or negative space, is the portion of a web page left blank. (Note: it does not have to be white, per se.) Whitespace is important because it helps reduce page clutter so the reader can focus on the actual content of an article or web page.

Whitespace improves the user experience by organizing content for better comprehension and creates a clear content hierarchy by separating elements from each other. This makes it easier for visitors to consume and engage with the content.

5 Signs Your Site Makes A Bad First Impression

. Try adding it in, around, and between your header, menu, images, video, text, list items, margins, and footer. And test everything. It’s the only way to be sure you’ve struck the right balance.

Subheadings: The skimming facilitators

Moreover, . This has to do with their impact on readability. Content that is more readable simply attract and retain bigger audiences. The bigger the audience, the bigger the selling pool.

To insert subheadings into your posts, identify areas revolving around a single idea, and group them together under a single subhead. Do this throughout your post to divide it into smaller “chapters.” Include as many subheadings as necessary, provided they are useful, unique, and ultra-specific.

Bullet points, like subheadings, break up your written content into easily digestible chunks of info, making the content and user-friendly. Most web readers are skimming anyway, so you should format your content for this behavior.

When your content is more readable, visitors can better digest it. According to , bullet points are one of the most important conversion-boosters.

Introduce them when you sum up more than three items, especially further down on the page where reader fatigue tends to kick in. Bonus: This will increase your content’s whitespace, too (see point #1).

Comments: The engagement drivers

Furthermore, comments will help you attract new readers. In fact, the more comments on your content, the more readers will be drawn to it. People want lively discussion; they want to communicate. Give them the opportunity. You’ll get plenty of great feedback in return.

Sticky social sharing buttons: The sharing reminders

In web design, sticky refers to any page element that says viewable, or fixed, as users scroll down the page. Sticky social sharing icons, then, remain viewable and accessible to readers at all times, making it much easier for them to share the content.

The buttons act as a constant reminder, increasing the number of shares, and therefore reach, your content receives. Neil Patel found that . The more traffic to your online content, the more subscribers you will get.

Smart onsite interaction: The conversion nudgers

User-friendly content doesn’t upset the user experience. They don't interrupt or interfere with the reader’s consumption or navigation of content. That said, attempts to provoke action are still important if you want to grow your online content; you've just got to be smart about it.

A smart onsite interaction is like a gentle nudge. It encourages the visitor to take action without impeding the reader experience. The interaction is triggered by a reader action, such as site entry, scroll depth, or idle time on page.

5 Small-Scale Fixes To Immensely Increase Your Conversion Rate