What makes Drupal a great choice from a UX standpoint? What features are responsible for the enhanced end-user experience in Drupal 8? Those features that enable you to easily create an intuitive and enjoyable visitor experience on your own Drupal-based website/application.
And to constantly improve it...
Is it all those performance enhancements that it ships with? Or maybe its “responsive out-of-the-box” nature? Or rather its multilingual capabilities?
1. But First: 7 Evergreen Ways to Improve Your Website's UX
It goes without saying that, in order to create an enjoyable, rich user experience on your Drupal 8 website, you'll need to:
- put together a solid UX strategy
- run extensive user research and map the user's journey
- come up with an effective, well-planned UX design, paying attention to all the latest design trends (and now decoupled Drupal empowers you to tap into a whole range of new possibilities...)
And while carrying out all these phases of the UX design process, make sure to apply the following evergreen techniques for enhancing the visitor's experience.
1.1. Optimize the page loading time
For speed will always be the factor with the biggest influence on the user's experience on your Drupal site.
In this respect, there are tons of performance enhancements that you can implement, ranging from aggregating your JS and CSS files to properly configuring your cache to opting for a CDN, to...
1.2. Use bullets to structure your text
Bulleted lists are the “holy grail” of neatly structured, easy to read content.
For, in vain you invest time and effort in providing content that delivers real value to your website's visitors if you display it as an... “impenetrable” block of text.
In this respect, bullets help you break down the information. The result: users will see the key product or service benefits/will go through all of the presented features a lot quicker.
1.3. Use white space strategically
Speaking of easy to read content: there's no better way to enhance readability and to draw attention to specific elements on a page than... by using the white space itself.
It will automatically direct their attention to the text/image emphasized by all the white space surrounding it.
1.4. UX design is consistent design
From color palette to button styles, from the size of the headings in your text to the chosen font, from the used photos to various design elements... keep consistency across all the pages on your Drupal website.
Otherwise, you risk to confuse and to eventually... tire its visitors.
1.5. Go for visible, attractive CTAs
Always use action words for your calls to action and make sure they're easily recognizable. CTAs play a crucial role in setting up an intuitive, efficient navigation structure on your website...
1.6. Use images wisely
As images are always well-deserved “breaks” for the eye, especially when it's a long text that it's challenged to go through.
And yet, if you fail in using the relevant images, those that perfectly team up with your text... the user experience that you'll deliver will be anything but compelling...
1.7. Make your headings a high priority
Remember to write your headings around some of the main keywords.
Also, strategically design them so that they're highly visible and help users to quickly scan through the content.
2. 4 Features Responsible for the Superior End-User Experience in Drupal 8
Gluing together all the design best practices that make a great user experience does call for a flexible and dynamic web platform.
Drupal 8 is that platform. It comes packed with powerful features that make it easy for you to create the best visitor experience on your website.
Here are the ones with a huge influence on your website's UX:
2.1. Drupal 8 is responsive right out-of-the-box
And responsiveness, along with top page loading speed, still is one of those factors with a great influence on visitors' experience with your Drupal website.
With:
- all the available base themes now being responsive
- the convenience of adapting your images to various screen sizes right from their display properties
… creating a compelling end-user experience in Drupal 8 is dead-simple.
2.2. Enhanced performance
From a performance standpoint, Dries Buytaert's post on Drupal 8's performance optimizations is still one of the most relevant sources.
If Drupal was already built to “inject” enterprise-level performance into static pages, Drupal 8, with all its caching enhancements, is designed to speed up dynamic web pages, as well...
2.3. Multilingual capabilities
Remember the user experience's main facets, ranging from useful to findable, to valuable, to credible to... accessible?
Well, Drupal 8 provides you with multilingual capabilities right out of the box. You get to translate your website's UI, content, configuration, etc.
Meaning that, with this multilingual system at hand, you can easily create an accessible user experience on your website.
2.4. Content personalization (by segment, login time, device, language...)
In this respect, the Aqua Lift Connector module is your most reliable tool.
What it does is bring together customer data and content, so that you can deliver targeted content experiences across multiple channels and devices.
The END!
And these are those robust features that stand behind the superior end-user experience in Drupal 8. The very reasons why this platform, and particularly this version of Drupal, makes your best ally in creating the most compelling UX on your website.
Photo by Lucian Novosel on Unsplash
