Have you ever visited a website and you fell in love with it for no logical reason except for the fact that the website was pretty and easy to use, well dear reader you just experienced User Experience (UX) in action? According to research, it only takes about 50 milliseconds that’s 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website and decide if to stay or leave, so if your UX is bad it impacts the traffic your site gets. In this article, we are going to talk about UX and how it impacts search engines.

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What is UX and Why Should You Care About it?

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The user experience (UX or UE) simply means how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service.

In other words, UX is the study of users’ interaction with your site. It is the sum total of the user’s experience while interacting with your website or web app. In other words, it is the measurement of the quality of User’s Experience when interacting with a particular website or web app.

We frequently hear usability and UX used alternately, and while usability is an important aspect of UX, it is far more than that. In reality, according to Peter Morville, an expert in the field of User Experience, Morville outlined seven traits that UX designers should consider when creating their websites.

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The usefulness of the site.
Usability
Site Credibility
Accessibility
Desirability
Findability
Valuableness of the site

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Importance of UX design

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UX improves Brand Image

Imagine you visit a website and you hate the way it looks, the buttons you click don’t work as expected, the pages take too long to load, what kind of impression would you have about the brand behind the website? UX helps you promote your brand image, an increase in positive user experience equals more brand belief. Studies show that approximately 60% of users will not recommend a site to a friend if their User Experience is bad, wouldn’t you want to tell your friends about a cool new site you found out?

UX improves Marketing

UX helps provide marketing for your site, the more interesting, efficient, and attractive your site is the more people get attracted to it. The better your User Experience, the more users it attracts users to your site. People will always be devoted to the site which provides them with a better experience, in simple words, UX and marketing are in a linear relationship i.e the better a site’s UX is, the more people who are attracted to it.

UX Increases Site Traffic

The better a site’s user experience, the more traffic the site generates. To put it simply, the better the experience users have on your site, the higher the probability that they’ll come back and also tell their friends and family about your site. This helps increase the traffic to your website.

UX improves SEO

Every business wants their site to be ranked on top of the google search index ahead of their competitors and for a site to achieve top ranking it needs to be Search Engine Optimized(SEO).

To understand how UX helps improve SEO you need to understand how a business ranks top on a search engine. In a nutshell, top search engine ranking is achieved through site traffic. To put it simply, the more people who visit your site and stay there the higher you are ranked. As we have earlier established, the better your site’s UX the more people it attracts so, therefore, the better your site’s UX the higher it is ranked.

UX Increases Revenue Generation

UX helps you increase your site’s revenue stream. The better the experience users have on your site when compared to the experience they had on your competitor’s, the more probable they are to continue subscribing to your service over that of your competitor’s. In simple words, the better your UX the higher the probability that users will pick your service over others available to them.

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UX Fundamentals For Building Search Engines

User-friendly Site Navigation

A robust UX architecture helps project maintainers and developers to ease down navigation. UX helps search engines and sites to determine the size of pages, the content, and their order. However, at times UX gets in conflict with SEO requirements of search engines and traffic building websites. While UX is focused on easing out complexities, SEO relies on keyword stuffing and quantity of content produced. This is one dilemma for developers. However, if you can overcome it, not only it enhances your site’s readability but keeps it SEO-friendly, and navigable.

UX Design to Create SEO-friendly Layouts

Your layout design has the power to either disrupt your SEO practice or take them on a ride. If you are aesthetics-oriented with special attention to fonts, sizes, and the right amount of images and texts, then you might face trouble balancing SEO. Here are a few tips to keep in mind while you use UX to create an SEO-friendly layout:

Using CTAs at the right places on your search engine, or website can help you to enhance your conversion rate optimization (CRO) and keep your site’s longevity in check.
Use videos and images in as many places as possible- visual media has special appeal on aesthetics and looks good to user eyes. Use bullets, numbered lists, and similar elements to promote your search engine amongst peers

Load Speed and UX

The load speed of your search engine/site is often overlooked but an important factor for users to pursue your product. To improve load speed, developers can think about minimising insights from CSS, HTML, JavaScript, while optimising images, clickbaits and redirects. You can employ

GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights and Web.Dev to determine and improve your load speed for sites. Another feature that is important for an optimal UX is mobile responsiveness. Make sure your search engine is not only desktop-friendly, but is readable on mobile servers as well. Who uses Laptops today to open mails or search a query? You can’t deny mobile responsiveness in today’s fast paced world. As per statista, more than 54% of traffic is driven by mobile search only. If you are already a UX savvy, you know the role mobile searches are playing to popularise search engines and enhance engagement metrics.

My List for Best Search Engines with Undeniable UX

My list is simple, and I have always been particular about UX that has attracted me to some of these search engines. Here, I have tried to incorporate all UXes that I have liked since the beginning of my dev journey.

Why do I like DuckDuckGo's UX?

DuckDuckGo is lauded for its privacy settings and is placed on top in ensuring user privacy. Google's top-notch rival is known for its instant result and plus results mechanism. With the plus mechanism, users are directed to answers that are relevant to the search query. DuckDuckGo's favicons have fetched global attention lately. These are small, random images you will encounter while scrolling through the address bar of different websites.

Moreover, it is now available in Firefox and Safari as an extension. Also, the search results are compiled from 400 sources. Isn't it amazing? With its very own crawler, it prevents filter bubbles, so your data has minimal chances of misuse by ad agencies. Other features that made me shift to DuckDuckGo include:

Instant Answer mechanism through zero-click info, so you don't have to wait for the correct answers.
Bangs- kind of shortcuts you might want to use to bypass the search ritual and jump on requested websites directly. For Amazon, use !a 55" tv. Find more bangs here.
However, it doesn't include any inherent command to protect user devices from malware and virus risk. While you are sure of your privacy with DuckDuckGo, you can't still take a sigh of relief.

How Does Typesense Ensure User-Friendly UX?

I started Typesense a while ago. Although the open source search engine has some peculiar functionalities, its typo tolerance feature stuck with me the most. It is suitable for users like me who easily fouls up spelling errors. However, I am not the only one. According toxn--research-iia, 71% of people make mistakes in typo/spelling. Typo errors do not only mess up your search results but cause chronic frustration. We've all undoubtedly had the experience where we went on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, looking for a friend or a celebrity (don't deny it), but didn't get the results because we used an 'i' instead of 'l.'

Typesense manages the issue by handling typo/spelling errors made by users, adding to its UX. It can index large chunks of data in few milliseconds. Plus, you can also share selective access to your data. Felt stunned? I was too. You can create API keys to stop the flow of data from your desktop to data processing facilities. Summing in simple words, I recommend Typesense because:

It is open source, so millions of users across the globe have access to Typesense's source code, so are the chances for gradual modifications as per user expectations (that's what UX is all about).
Sorting based on geography, I can weed out content from States, London, or any other place. All I need is the cartographic position of the area. That's how my search is mostly inclined towards my native place only. If you want, you can change back to the original settings.
It is fast, has low latency, and sends instant results. Today, most search engines are already targeting speed components to pacify user requisites, make it one of the most competitive aspects of a search engine UX. I searched song listicles on Typesense a while ago. Got results before time, I started switching tabs for some work.

Building on Datafari's UX

For enterprises, load management is a critical issue that hampers their performance. Datafari solves the problem by managing limited data sources and converging them on one single portal and a special time window management. Processing filters and secure file indexing are other subsets that personally fascinate me.

Datafari has a really catchy search box. Statistics show that up to 30% of site users use a search box when one is offered. Have you ever had to look hard for a search box when you visit a new site and then end up finding it in one secluded corner? Does this make the site more appealing to your eyes as the user? Yes, it does. Datafari uses minimal UI for its search boxes, one ideal for SaaS businesses. When it comes to alluring search boxes, even Typesense and Ecosia provide a curvy, thick, yet user-friendly search box that can catch your attention. Not to mention you get to rope in that 30%.

UX is a very integral part of any website, web app, or mobile app. You can also check out Notion andxn--Couchsurfing-5la. Who on earth wouldn't like their UX? If you need a search engine with satisfactory UX, you can pick anyone from the list. However, you'll need to make sure of your budgets in the future. Typesense but has a minimal price policy for SaaS services. Datafari is enterprise-centric, and the annual plan stands somewhere 7000 euros. When it comes to talking about my personal favorites, I suggest using DuckDuckGo and Typesense. Both are comparatively free and have privacy simplified.

\n Moreover, Aviyel is taking on the journey to monetize open source software and build a global developer community with exchange of knowledge, and ideas. To know more about Aviyel's recent endeavors, follow our discussions here. Join Aviyel’s Twitter space at AviyelHQ.

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Don’t Forget to Read

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Why is UX Important for Building Search Engines?