E17: How To Optimize Your Website: Interview with Jennie Cortes
“It’s text, images, and video that support the message that you want to give”
Jennie and I used to work together when we were both living in Puerto Rico! I enjoy her bubbly personality and am so impressed with her skills as web and UX designer, front end developer, professor, content creator, and spreader of joy!
What Is A UX Designer?
UX stands for User Experience so a UX Designer conducts market research to support the end user experience. The goal is to make websites and apps user friendly and to support the needs of the user. After getting feedback from end users, the UX designer may add or improve a feature or create a web or mobile application. Improvements may involve the workflow for a task or even starting all over with designing a new feature or application to provide a solution to a problem.
“Must Haves” For A Successful Website
Know the purpose of the website so that you can ensure the site provides a clear message and accomplishes what you want and need from it. Is your purpose to sell? To inform? To simply have an online presence? What does the customer need to know before buying? How do they reach you?
Have visuals that go with and support the messaging.
Ease of use. The user needs to be able to easily find what they are looking for. Your site needs to guide the customer along in their search for information.
A well designed website can give the customer what they need to know about you and your offerings, set you apart from your competition, and entice the customer to go with your product or service.
How Can You Best Deliver Your Message Via Your Website?
Use a combination of text, images, and video. The combination of communication methods creates content that is dynamic and interesting as well as gives people a better idea of who you are and what you’re offering. Video is able to show your personality, energy, and mannerisms. Text can help improve your SEO. Each has their purpose and place.
When writing text, use short sentences and easy language. Be intentional with your words so your message is concise and easy to understand. Show your personality through your writing; write like you talk!
Along with text, add an image or video and make sure it supports the text. This gives the message more impact.
Create hierarchy in your website using titles, paragraphs, and images. Your flow should show people the order you want them to read within your site.
How To Add a Human Touch To Your Website
People love stories! They will love to see your story, see your progress, and to see behind the scenes. When you bring people along on your journey, they get invested in you, who you are, what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it. Nobody else has your same story so consider this your “secret sauce”. Connecting on a personal level with your customers brings them into your circle and allows them to get to know you. Sharing your struggles as well as your successes makes you relatable and likeable...and if they like you, they’ll want to buy from you!
Remember that not everyone is the right client for you. Your story will connect you with the right people for your offering. Being authentic will attract your tribe. It needs to be a mutual relationship where not only does the client want to work with you, but you want to work with that client.
Guiding People To Take An Action
Always include one clear call to action. Don’t assume people know something; tell them! Only one call to action is needed at a time so as not to overwhelm or confuse the message. For example, for my podcast I may ask people to subscribe so they don’t miss an episode, then later ask them to comment, then leave a review, then to share it.
Tips To Optimize Your Website
Interesting fact: Google penalizes slow loading websites so if your site is slow, it won’t show on search results.
You have to optimize your photos! Resize and/or change the resolution of your photos according to the space where they’ll be used. Then compress them to the smallest size they can be without losing the quality of the photos. Here are a couple great ways to compress your photos:
Using too many fonts on your website also slows it down. Only use one or two fonts and make sure they are easily readable.
Navigation is crucial. Use your creativity somewhere else besides the names of pages! Choose a short simple word that summarizes what your customer will find under that page. Don’t have too many links under each page and keep navigation on the top or left for consistency and ease of use.
Don’t miss Jennie’s answer about her “non-superpower power” in my lightning round of questions!
“Having that combination of all of them (text, images, videos), it’s going to help you create a content that’s dynamic, that’s interesting, and that people are going to enjoy.”
Connect with Jennie!
IG: @JennieCortes