The Importance of Creating a User-Friendly Interface (+ 3 Essential UI Tips)

The internet is a crowded place these days. There are over 1.7 billion websites online - even if less than 200 million are active.

Not all of those sites will be your competitors. Enough of them are for you to care about providing the best experience to win the most business.

Can your customers navigate your website and find what they need? Do they enjoy the process of doing so?

These are just two of the factors you need if you want a user-friendly interface. Wondering why that's important? Read on to learn more!

What Is a User Interface?

User interfaces are known more commonly as websites or apps. They're also any other system that a customer or client interacts with.

Website design can be divided into UI (user interface) and UX (user experience). They do work in tandem because a website can have a beautiful UI and offer an awful UX.

Having the right interface can also dictate how good - or bad - the user's experience will be.

Why Is a User-Friendly Interface Important?

People talk about your website as being your online shop window. If that's true, you can think about your interface as being the journey they take into your store.

Making it clear where they need to click, tap, or swipe is like plotting a smooth journey from the door to the cashier.

Search engines agree that the interface is important. If a visitor lands on your website and can't do what they need to they quickly click away.

This is known as your "bounce rate" and it's one of the top four ranking factors for your website. Search engines will penalise websites with high bounce rates.

Creating a user-friendly interface keeps users interacting with your website. This teaches the search engines your website is valuable so they send you more traffic.

How Can I Create a Great User Interface?

It's one thing to know the importance of a user-friendly interface. It's quite another to know how to make one! We've collected three great user interface design tips to help you do exactly that.

1. Understand Your Users

Knowing who will visit your website can guide how you design your interface. Older people may prefer clicking since it requires less dexterity than swiping.

Writers like typing so, if they're your target audience, your interface should work on desktop devices.

A good way to get this right is to interview your users. Watch how they use your interface. Ask what they'd like it to do.

Then, take their advice to heart and implement it!

2. Make the Result Clear

Your interface should have the perfect number of calls-to-action, like buttons to click, or forms to complete. Make it crystal clear what happens when a user takes those actions.

What does that button do? Where will the form information go?

By making this clear, you remove any doubts a user might have about taking that action.

3. Create an Easy-To-Learn Interface

Chances are, yours is not the only website your users visit. By creating a complicated or unusual interface, you're asking them to remember a lot.

Creating an easy-to-learn interface makes it more likely your users will return. They'll be able to get the most out of the interface and enjoy using it.

One of the reasons why platforms like Canva succeed where people shy away from using Adobe Photoshop is that Canva makes it easy to learn how to perform actions.

Make Your Interface User-Friendly

Having a user-friendly interface is important to give your visitors the best user experience of your website or app. If they enjoy using it, they'll keep coming back.

It's much easier to do business with an existing customer than it is to find new ones. Why not give them a great reason to stick with you?

Curious about improving your user experience too? Check out our article about how to design a great website UX.