Websites sometimes don’t work perfectly. Your hosting server slows down, or the user’s Internet provider is slow. And there may be errors on the site itself – no one is immune to this. Anyway, the problems spoil the impression of your service. But this can be compensated by a savvy UX/UI designer from a digital service design agency if he or she tinkers with perceived performance.
Perceived performance or visible performance is what helps the user understand what is happening on the website. For example, loading a page or fulfilling a request. Even if the user has a weak signal and everything is not working well, the right graphic solutions will show that the site is still working. And the fact that it is working slowly may not even be noticed.
Progress bar
It happens that a user found a product in your online store and clicked the “Buy” button, but nothing happened. Thinking that something was broken, he closed the browser tab. But, the request was successful, it just took the server a long time to respond. As a result, the user is left without a purchase, and you are left without a sale.
When nothing happens on the screen for a long time, the user becomes anxious. That’s because it violates the principle of feedback in design, which we told you about recently. If something on the site takes longer than two seconds to load, tell the user directly: dude, it’s loading, be patient. This can be done with the help of various indicators.
The indicator must be animated. The animation is like telling the user: don’t worry, the process is going on. It is even more important that the animation is played immediately after the user’s action. If you press a button, the indicator appears instantly.
Progressive loading
To make your site run smoothly and not lose its appeal even with poor internet, you can use progressive loading. While all the blocks, texts, and pictures are just coming up, let a skeleton screen ahead of them. This is not exactly the page the user is waiting for. This is just a general outline of its structure.
The skeleton screen should be as light as possible so that it loads quickly even if the signal strength is weak. In the end, the user hasn’t gotten the page yet, but they already have a feeling that it’s about to appear. This is reassuring, and the wait is less tiring.
Instead of normal images that have not yet loaded, you can use transparent images. When the desired image is loaded, it will replace the transparent one. Sometimes, instead of a transparent blank, you upload a highly reduced copy of the image and stretch it to the desired size. There is also an option with Progressive JPEG. The more the picture is loaded, the higher its detail.
The main thing, if possible, is not to use the traditional line-by-line loading of pictures from top to bottom. It just screams that the site is slowing down, and this annoys users.
Error message
Do away with pop-ups if possible. They’re annoying. It’s better to place the error message in the page itself.
Signal errors on time. For example, no one likes to fill out forms. And if a user goes through this whole process and because of an error he has to start over, he will be furious.
But the blame can be on your side as well. You just don’t have to be shy about telling the user about it, so that they don’t have to wonder what happened. And you should do it in normal human language. Few people will understand the message “500 Internal Server Error”. Don’t show off, write something like “Sorry, the server is down, but we’re fixing it now”.
Problems in the work of the site can arise for many reasons, and all of them can not be avoided. If the fault is on your side, you can react quickly and fix everything. But you can’t go to fix the equipment of all providers, you can’t distribute normal devices to all users, you can’t take a pump and pump wit and attention into every head. But even in the case of a problem that you can’t objectively influence, you can use UX design to make sure that the user experience is not ruined.
