Ten Ways WordPress Can Improve Website UX
Aaron Schmidt, Amanda Etches‐Johnson · Library Technology Reports · 2011
User experience (UX) gurus Schmidt and Etches-Johnson talk about ten simple ways to easily improve the UX of WordPress. You're concerned about the user experience of your WordPress site. That's good. We think you should be. While you can't create a good online user experience by just sprinkling some magic UX dust on your site (if only it were that easy!), the good news is that there are a number of features and functions baked right into WordPress that you can take advantage of to enhance the user experience of your site--and maybe even delight your users along the way! 1. Visual Design If you've searched Google for WordPress themes, then you already know that there are literally millions of free theme options. (Caveat emptor: When you download a free theme, you are also downloading the theme designer's coding quirks. Your theme might work just fine for you, but if it doesn't, you might have to dig into the theme files and clean things up on your own.) Choice is good, and even if your site has specific branding needs, you will probably be able to find a theme that will work for you with a little tweaking. One of the best things about the WordPress user experience is that regardless of your theme, there are a few design and layout cues that your users might be familiar with and expect to function in a certain way. Things like sidebars, menus, categories, and post permalinks are common to most WordPress sites, so if your users have seen or used a WordPress site before, they will experience a kind familiarity when navigating your site (which can only be a good thing). 2. Content One of the best things about database-driven CMSs (like WordPress) is the separation of content and design. Once you've decided on and tweaked your WordPress theme to your liking, the only thing you need to focus on is content. Content is important because you can't provide a good user experience with a pleasing design alone. Thanks to WordPress's simple post form, adding content is a breeze, and the built-in ability to publish posts in the future means your users never have to suffer through stale content. 3. Voice Talk to any Web content strategist, and one of the things he or she will harp on is authenticity, especially when it comes to social media. Because WordPress makes it so easy to distribute the content generation workflow and allow many authors to contribute, you're already well on your way to good, authentic content if you incorporate multiple authors and voices. You'd be well-advised to include a set of content guidelines so your users aren't baffled by inconsistency in voice (not a good user experience), but be sure to allow your content folks the latitude to be themselves. There's nothing authentic about marketing copy (especially on a blog), so don't miss the opportunity to really connect with your users through thoughtful, engaging voices. 4. Organization Speaking of consistency, WordPress's built-in archiving is easily one of the best features of the software. Spend some time considering what sort of content will go on your blog and what retrieval mechanisms would be useful to your audience. If you're using the blog for newsy articles, date and category archives make sense. If, on the other hand, you're using the blog functionality to generate subject guides for your site, you can probably dispense with the date archives and put your efforts into building a useful taxonomy out of the category feature. Let your content drive your decisions here, and your users will reap the rewards. 5. Built-in Search There is a usability theory out there that says that users search a site only when they can't figure out how the navigation works or when they lose the scent of what they're looking for. While that might be true, in the strictest human-computer interaction sense, there is a whole subset of users who would rather just search your site to start with instead of using the navigation options you provide (blame Google). …