A website succeeds or fails on how it feels to use. These are the ten user experience guidelines our team applies to every project, each one practical, tested against real users, and backed by data rather than opinion.
Why User Experience Guidelines Matter
User experience guidelines are the tested rules that make a website easy, efficient and satisfying to use. Good user experience design is not decoration. It is the work that helps users find what they need, trust what they see, and finish the task they came to do, whether that is booking a service or filling a contact form. Our own take, after years of building for WA businesses, is blunter: on a phone, UX is simply whatever helps a customer choose you over the next result down the page. Think of them as best practices rather than rigid rules, refined over years and adapted to each project. For example, a checkout that suits a busy tradie will not look like one built for a retiree, even when the same guideline sits underneath both.
The cost of ignoring them is measurable. Around 63% of mobile users abandon a site over usability issues, 18% of shoppers drop out of a checkout that feels too hard, and 94% of top websites still carry accessibility problems. Every one of those numbers is a customer who left, and every one is avoidable with a few sound decisions. These are not edge cases, they are the everyday leaks that drain enquiries from otherwise capable businesses.
Our Approach: We build on principles proven over decades of usability research, then we test them against your actual customers rather than assume. Guidelines point the way; real users confirm the route. That mix of established practice and honest testing is how good UX design stops being a matter of taste and becomes a matter of evidence.
Since 2017 our Perth web design team has applied these guidelines to create and rebuild hundreds of websites, for sparkies in Wangara, cafes in Fremantle, clinics in Subiaco and brokers in the CBD. Here are the ten we come back to on every build.
● 63%: of mobile users leave over poor usability
● 11.8: fields on the average checkout form, far too many
● 94%: of top sites still have accessibility problems
1. Keep Your Design Consistent
Consistency is the quiet backbone of good usability. When buttons, icons and similar elements look and behave the same way on every page, people stop having to relearn your site and simply use it. Consistent labels and navigation in consistent locations let users carry what they learn on one page straight to the next, which builds trust and cuts confusion. A Cottesloe day spa and a Malaga workshop should feel nothing alike, yet each still has to stay consistent with itself, because that familiarity is what a returning local customer quietly leans on.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. A simple design system, with reusable components and a page of documentation, keeps the interface uniform across the whole platform and speeds up the design process for ux designers too. Proven patterns exist for a reason, and following them is one of the surest user interface design decisions you can make.
2. Always Show System Status
People need to know what your website is doing. Visibility of system status, one of the oldest and most critical ux principles there is, means every action gets an immediate and clear response. A button that shows it was tapped, a spinner while a page loads, a tick when a form is sent: these small signals tell users the system heard them.
Silence breeds doubt. When someone taps and nothing happens, they tap again, or they leave. We make sure interactive elements react the instant users interact with them, and that completed tasks end with obvious confirmation, so nobody is left wondering whether their booking actually went through.
3. Prevent Errors And Write Human Error Messages
The best error is the one that never happens. Good interaction design prevents mistakes before they occur, with clear labels, sensible defaults and formats that guide people as they type. Stopping an error is always kinder than reporting one.
When something does go wrong, the message matters. Error messages should be short, written in plain language, and free of technical jargon, telling people exactly what happened and how to fix it. A red box that reads “invalid input” helps nobody; “please enter a mobile number starting with 04” fixes the problem in seconds. Where you can, let people correct a mistake in place rather than sending them back to the start, since re-entering a whole form is the fastest way to lose them.
4. Make Navigation Simple And Intuitive
If people cannot find it, it may as well not exist. Clear, intuitive navigation is one of the highest-value guidelines on this list, because good navigation reduces bounce rates and helps people move through your site with confidence. Keep the menu short, label it in plain words, and put it where users expect to find it. A customer in Mandurah weighing up the drive to your Osborne Park showroom wants your address, hours and phone one tap away, not buried under a menu.
Consistent navigation locations across every page let people learn your structure once and rely on it everywhere. A logical layout, a visible search option and a sensible page hierarchy turn a confusing website into one people can actually navigate, which is the whole point. Make sure every link is easy to spot and clearly labelled, and keep navigation visually separate from your other content so nobody mistakes a heading for a button.
5. Design For Accessibility From The Start
Accessibility is not a bonus feature, it is a baseline that widens your audience and, in many countries, a legal requirement. Meeting recognised accessibility standards means designing for people who use screen readers and other assistive technologies, and for colorblind users who rely on more than colour alone to tell elements apart.
The practical moves are straightforward: strong contrast, clear labels, text that scales, and every control reachable without a mouse. Accessible design gives people of every ability access to your content, and because it forces clarity, it quietly improves the experience for everyone in the world who visits, not only those with disabilities. In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act makes web accessibility a genuine legal consideration, not just an overseas concern.
6. Keep Forms Short And Focused
Forms are where good intentions go to die. The average checkout form carries 11.8 fields, and most sites can safely cut that by anywhere from 20 to 60%. Every field you remove is one less reason to give up, which matters when 18% of shoppers already abandon a checkout that feels like hard work.
Ask only for genuinely relevant information and leave the unnecessary information out. Order form fields from most to least important, group related ones, and make each step feel like progress rather than a wall. If you must ask for more, split it across steps with a clear progress indicator so the task never feels endless. A short, focused form turns an abandoned task into a completed one.
7. Reduce Choices And Cognitive Load
The more options you put in front of someone, the longer every decision takes. That is Hick’s law, and it is why an aesthetic, minimalist layout almost always outperforms a busy one. Stripping out unnecessary information lets the important information stand out and keeps a visitor’s focus where you want it.
Give your content room to breathe. Generous space, a clear visual order and a single obvious next step reduce the mental effort a page demands, and that lighter load is what lets people act instead of stall. Heavy images and long walls of text both add to that load, so we compress the images and break the text into scannable chunks. On the web, less really does deliver more value.
8. Make It Responsive And Mobile-First
Over half of all website traffic now comes from a phone rather than a computer, so responsive design is non-negotiable. A responsive site reshapes itself to display cleanly on any screen, and it keeps mobile users, who abandon poor sites at a rate of 63%, engaged instead of frustrated. In WA that phone might be on a FIFO camp’s patchy reception or catching the glare of a Perth summer, so a light, responsive page is the difference between an enquiry and a lost customer.
There is an SEO payoff as well. Responsive, mobile-friendly sites tend to rank higher in search, so the same work that improves the experience also supports your small business SEO. Designing for the phone first, then letting the layout expand to a tablet or computer, is the most reliable way to serve the audience you actually have.
9. Design Clear Calls To Action
A call to action is where interest becomes a customer, so it should never be hard to spot. Effective CTAs use clear, actionable language, sit in a prominent position on the page, and are visually distinct through colour, contrast and the odd supporting icon. People should know exactly what happens when they tap. A cluttered page with five competing buttons has no real call to action at all, so we give the main one room and let it lead.
Small changes here move big numbers. A/B testing different wording, and a light touch of urgency, can lift results noticeably, so we treat every CTA as something to measure rather than guess. Whether the goal is a call, a booking or a filled contact form, the path to it should be obvious.
10. Test With Real Users, Then Improve
No design decision is final until real people have tried it. Usability testing, watching actual users attempt real tasks, is how we find the problems that assumptions and internal reviews always miss. A single session often exposes a confusing label or a hidden button that was quietly costing enquiries.
We treat this as a loop. Simple tools, a short note on what we learned, and a clear record of changes let us measure success and keep refining. Even five users will surface most of the big problems, so testing does not need to be expensive to be worthwhile. In our own testing across Perth service businesses, the biggest lift almost never comes from a flashy redesign; it comes from surfacing the phone number and shortening a single form. Good UX is never truly finished, and testing is how a usable site becomes an excellent one.
User Experience Case Studies From Our Perth Team
Guidelines matter only when they change what customers do. Every figure below comes from the client’s own analytics, most of it landing within six months of the work.
Project Concrete (Trades, Perth)
Results: 2.6x Enquiries; -44% Bounce Rate.
Challenge: a cluttered site with a confusing menu and a contact form nobody finished.
What we did: simplified the navigation, cut the form fields in half, and made the call button impossible to miss.
Result: enquiries more than doubled and far fewer visitors bounced on arrival.
Wholistically Healthy (Health And Wellness)
Results: +68% Bookings; WCAG Compliant.
Challenge: a booking flow that failed accessibility checks and lost people halfway through.
What we did: fixed contrast and labels for screen readers, then shortened and clarified every step.
Result: a compliant, easier booking flow and a steady lift in completed bookings.
Loan Warehouse (Finance Services)
Results: 3.1x Leads; +22% Form Completion.
Challenge: a long application form and unclear calls to action stalling good traffic.
What we did: reordered the fields, rewrote the error messages, and made the CTAs clear and distinct.
Result: more completed applications and a sharp rise in qualified leads.
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers to the questions we hear most about user experience guidelines and how to apply them.
What Is The Difference Between UX And UI?
UX is the whole experience of using a site, how it is structured and how it feels, while the user interface is the visual layer of buttons, icons and colour you interact with. Strong user interface design serves the wider user experience, and you need both working together.
How Many UX Guidelines Are There?
There is no single official list. Nielsen and Molich’s work gave us ten well-known usability heuristics, and most modern ux guidelines build on those principles. The ten in this guide are the ones we find matter most for everyday business websites.
Do These Guidelines Help SEO?
Yes. Search engines reward the same things users do: fast, clear, mobile-friendly pages that people can navigate easily. Better usability lowers bounce rates and lifts engagement, and both feed into stronger rankings over time.
Is Accessibility Really Necessary?
Absolutely. Beyond being the right thing to do, accessibility is legally required in many countries and widens your reach to people using assistive technologies. It also improves clarity for every visitor, which is why we treat accessibility standards as a baseline, not an add-on.
Can You Apply These Guidelines To Our Existing Site?
Almost always. Most of our work is improving existing sites, not starting over. We audit your website against these guidelines, fix the issues that hurt usability most, and refine from there so the gains show up quickly in your numbers.
Putting These UX Guidelines To Work
None of these ten guidelines is complicated on its own. Keep the design consistent, show system status, prevent errors, simplify navigation, design for accessibility, shorten your forms, cut the clutter, go mobile-first, sharpen your calls to action, and test with real users. Apply them together and you build a website that is clear, trustworthy and genuinely easy to use.
You do not have to fix everything at once. Even tackling your navigation, your forms and your mobile experience can lift both enquiries and rankings noticeably, and that steady, evidence-led work is what our web design team does on every project we take on.
Ready For A Website That Works For Your Customers?
Book a free UX review and our Perth team will show you exactly where your site is losing people and which guidelines would win them back. No jargon, no pressure, just a clear, practical plan you can act on straight away.
