WHY AFFILIATES SHOULD CARE ABOUT UX IN 2021

What do you care about a lot of as an affiliate? Is it traffic? Is it conversions? To be reasonable, it’s probably both. Without the traffic you would have no conversions. What about the users? Do you appreciate your users, about how they reach your site and what they do when they arrive?

Well, in 2021, if you appreciate driving traffic to your affiliate website and increasing conversions from that traffic, you ‘d better begin putting your users front and centre in your plans, since user experience (UX) is going to end up being much more vital to your success.

The focus on UX for affiliates is absolutely nothing new. I gave a talk at London Affiliate Conference in 2017 about UX and its significance for affiliate sites, and four years on it’s great to see affiliate sites that concentrate on the user experience. Unfortunately, however, there are still plenty of sites out there that continue to follow the usual format: throw as much traffic as you can at your website and hope that something sticks. These sites are covered in advertisements, which leave the user puzzled as to what to do next. Sound familiar? If this is you, you require to change. Don’t take my word for it, listen to your users and naturally, listen to Google.

WHAT DOES PAGE EXPERIENCE ACTUALLY MEAN?

To start with, let’s clear something up.

Google isn’t the bad guy. Google has actually been putting its users initially since the start of the search engine, as without the users searching, there would be no Google. That’s why it is always attempting to provide users the most appropriate and valuable information as rapidly as possible.

The Page Experience rollout in May this year is another nod because instructions and puts more focus on existing ranking signals such as page speed, usability, mobile-first and no intrusive interstitials, to name a few. These will all be anchored by a group of signals called Core Web Vitals. More on those later on, but ultimately Google is trying to suggest to users that your site is going to offer the very best experience out there. As an affiliate you require to ask yourself a few key concerns, such as does my website load rapidly and can my users find what they are looking for quickly?

Google has even hinted at including some ranking signals to websites in search results that will offer an excellent user experience, to help searchers find the results they need. Even though we aren’t sure simply yet how much weight Google will put on these– and they might not penalize websites straight– if your site isn’t flagged as providing a great user experience, well, you know the rest.

CORE WEB VITALS

You’re going to be hearing a lot about Core Web Vitals over the next year, so it’s crucial that you understand what they are and how they can impact your affiliate website. So here’s a fast rundown on what they are and why you ought to care.

Up is Largest Contentful Paint, basically how long it takes a user to see your page load after they follow a link. The distinction with this brand-new signal compared to basic page speed is it measures how long it takes for a user to see something of worth that they can see totally on your page.

The 2nd Core Web Vital to consider is First Input Delay (FID). This is essential as it measures for how long it takes a user to communicate with an aspect on your page. This could be clicking on a link, entering their e-mail in a membership box, essentially anything you want your user to do. Aside from the technical technique, this is an excellent aspect to focus on as it makes you really consider the user journey and how users move through your site, or more notably how you desire them to move through your site.

CLS keeps the focus on stability on a web page, making sure that users know where they are. If you have third party advertisements that are slow to load, this can in some cases trigger motion on the page, which can be distracting and can disorientate the users.

An initial step to comprehending how your website measures up is running it through complimentary measurement tools like gtmetrix.com. It will offer you a fast rundown of your website’s Core Web Vitals and also some pointers on how to enhance your rating.

UX FOR AFFILIATE SITES

So, we’re all concurred that UX is a must for affiliate sites. We require great UX to get traffic to our site, and we require it to make users take the actions we desire them to on website. So we have a great concept of what Google is looking for, however what do our users desire when they land on our site?

As an initial step, you wish to find out who your users are, how they discovered you, what they like, and what keeps them engaged. This will permit you to create valuable content across all channels that will keep them coming back for more.

Analytics is a need for any website, but I’m still astonished at the number of affiliates that do not track what users do on their site. They track where they originate from and how to get more from those keywords or locations, however what do they on-page?

Affiliates should be taking a look at page designs and styles and asking themselves questions such as: what are my users brought in to on-page? Where are they clicking? How long are they scrolling for? Does that affiliate advertisement work there?

On-page tracking tools are an excellent method to get a graph of user behaviour on your site. Hotjar is one of the leaders in the area and the level of detail that can be returned is really beneficial when carrying out A/B multivariate tests, and their impact on user behaviour. With heat maps and user recordings, you can start to construct a genuine understanding of your user and what makes them tick.

DON’T MAKE YOUR USERS THINK

As soon as you know what your users like, make it simple for them to find it. Too frequently I see websites with a flashing myriad of offers and promotional banners, or long screeds of text that only serve to confuse or bore the user.

When upgrading a site, we like to ask the website owner to take the 10-step, 5-step test. Ask them what they see and what they must do as a user.

KEEP IMPROVING

If you’re looking to improve conversions, you ought to constantly be evaluating your site and looking for methods to enhance its efficiency to make sure you do not get left behind. Run brief tests on crucial pages by making some little layout or style changes. The whole point is to stay flexible and keep enhancing.

We know that Google is focusing on user experience to improve the results it serves in rankings. If you’re looking to enhance the outcomes you get from your users, you need to be focusing on user experience too.