Now that so many people use their phones instead of desktop computers, mobile UI UX design has become necessary to give users a smooth experience across platforms. Consumers appreciate and reward smart design, but there are also technical benefits to delivering a good user experience. Here are the main two ways that UI UX design can boost performance in search.
Design Elements Indicate User Intent
UI UX designers must think a lot about the user’s intent and how they’ll interface with a site or app. Google’s algorithms are no different, taking cues from a page’s design to figure out what’s on it and which search terms it best matches.
For example, a text-heavy article is judged by slightly different standards than an e-commerce or other service page. Online stores, video-sharing sites, and online casinos have some design philosophies in common; they all use segmented pages filled with visual elements advertising different products/videos/games.
This can be seen with the live casino games at Paddy’s, where each live-streamed lobby is presented on-page with an image advertising each game. This approach is mirrored on mobile to encourage scrolling down to each new game. Google’s crawlers know the difference between text-heavy and image-heavy pages and, along with the help of critical and branded keywords, can figure out why people go to these pages.
With that information, Google can anticipate the user’s intent and guide them to the appropriate pages. You can find the full rundown of user intent at Semrush. People go to an online casino to play the games available, while others go to a news site or an industry blog to stay informed. Designers should stay in the appropriate lane when drafting for both desktop and mobile platforms. A news site that has more image embeds than text is considered low quality. It won’t just disappoint readers; it can confuse Google’s crawlers and harm performance. The reverse is also true – no one wants a product page that’s surrounded by walls of text. That’s why they tend to smuggle text-heavy content at the footer of the page for those who want to scroll down and read it.
Fast Pages Rank Better
UI UX design isn’t just about making a page look great, it also has to load fast and provide a smooth, seamless experience. This is something that every designer needs to consider, but mobile designers even more so. As a rule, mobile users are more sensitive to slow, unresponsive pages. This is because they may be using their phone on-the-go, and surrounded by other distractions, instead of sitting at a desk computer.
Page speed is the quintessential example of how UI UX design impacts SEO. A perfect page can and will be hobbled in search if it takes a long time to load. Naturally, it also turns users away, and so harms traffic and increases bounce rate, further punishing the site in its search performance.
According to research, more than 50% of mobile users will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. Google’s official recommendation is that a page should load within one or two seconds. Despite this, mobile page speeds are generally slower than desktops, as found in reports aggregated here by HubSpot. This means savvy designers can give their site/app a much-needed advantage over the average competitor.
By meeting Google’s expectations for user intent and page speed, UI UX designers can give their projects a boost in critical SEO metrics. A consistent, fast-loading page should find it easier to settle into its niche, target the right keywords, and keep both human and algorithmic interest.