Blog: Poor user experience and the traffic on your website!

You might have heard Google’s announcement regarding updated metrics to measure Core Web Vitals such as speed, responsiveness, and visual experience modifications, which can significantly improve a website’s user experience. 

This shows Google’s commitment towards user experience in the long run and its belief that it is crucial for the future of search results. Once these changes are implemented to the organic search algorithm, you will soon understand the power possessed by improved UX in boosting traffic flows to your website. It will shock you to know how poor user experience can lead to low traffic on your website. 

How will this affect you?

Traffic!

We’re sure you’ve heard countless times about how poor user experience affects your website, but this announcement will have implications you might not be aware of. The Core Web Vitals, along with Google’s current mechanism, will provide a comprehensive image of the quality of user experience on the web page. 

This means that the websites that offer a good user experience will be able to increase their SEO Google rating rapidly. However, websites with poor user experience might want to gear up to experience a new low in their SEO rating, the likes of which have never been seen before! 

Business success

Google believes that the modifications it is aiming toward will lead to more financial success in the business on the web since the users will interact with less friction and be able to perform smooth transactions. Although this certainly won’t be the case if your website has a poor user experience. It will end up impacting your business gravely. 

So if you’re running an e-commerce website, be sure to focus your resources on improving the UX to take your business to new heights of success. 

Need help figuring this out?

Google intends to modify the Core Web Vitals every year by adding more experience signals to keep track of the varying expectations of the users and increase the elements of user experience. The attempts by Google towards continuous improvements that assist developers, marketers and product teams show that Google sees poor UX as a big red flag

To further help the developers, Google has updated developer tools to spread information regarding the Core Web Vitals. You can also find reports designed for website owners to determine the opportunities for improvement. Google is also working towards bringing news regarding Core Web Vitals through external developer tools.  

Now it is time for the big question.

What exactly does Google want to measure?

Metrics used by Google for measuring user experience 

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This is used to measure the loading performance; any website which takes longer than 2.5 seconds for LCP to occur is considered to have a poor user experience.

First Input Delay (FID):

This is used for measuring interactivity; any website with an FID of more than 100 milliseconds is considered to have a poor user experience.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

This is used for measuring visual stability; any website with a CLS score of less than 0.1 is considered to have a poor user experience.

To break these down, Google basically measures how user-friendly the website is, whether the page takes very long to load, the time taken for something to occur after a click or if the pop-up ads and messages make it hard for the users to read the actual content. 

Factors like mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines also play a vital role in determining if your website has poor UX or not.

The metrics used by Google and the new tools provide inisghts on how to improve user experience on the page but cannot depict the whole picture. Other tools are available to identify the specific cause of the users’ frustrations while visiting the website and suggest changes that will make the experience more pleasent for them. 

Do I really need good user experience to get a higher rating on Google?

While good user experience has become a prerequisite for online success, it is not the only factor that needs to be considered if you want to grow your website. As a website owner, you must realize that obsessing over one aspect while disregarding all others (literally a hundred of them) will make it very hard for you to thrive in the long run. Many other websites may have content similar to yours, however, better user experience will make your website more visible in search. 

Improving poor user experience on your website goes way beyond wanting to have a kickstart with your competitors. User experience is about making the web better for everyone. Yes, your website will be able to get more engagement, but most importantly, you’ll be part of a more significant movement that aims to improve the web experience globally! 

Core Web Vitals is more than a guidance system; it is an initiative through which google aims to “help the diverse ecosystem of web creators, developers, and businesses to improve and deliver more delightful user experiences.”

Many websites are positively impacted by this and are praising Google for pioneering this step towards a better user experience. Some are slowly but surely following Google’s footsteps. We hope that you also become a part of this incredible movement! 

When will this affect my website?

Google has a very vague time frame for implementing the Core Web Vitals. They said that they would not implement it before next year. This will provide you with a comfortable window and the space to assess and consider doable fixes to improve your website’s user interaction and its organic ranking before these factors are executed. Google intends to share more information soon, and once they do, we will be sure to keep you updated!