Let’s start with User Experience.

When Google talks about user experience, which is the second most important pillar, after content, to rank an URL, it is talking about the Google’s User experience, that is to say for the topic we are interested in, the user who is in front of the Google Search page.

When a user opens the browser and enters Google, to make a search, at that precise moment begins his path as a Google’s User. His path continues as he scrolls or moves on to the next pages of the SERP.

When the user finds a URL and clicks on it (The Click), the following happens:

1. The Google’s user continues to convert.

2. The user has an additional “master”: the owner of the web page that contains that URL. The Click gives that website a CTR (Click Through Rate), i.e. a conversion.

Google is interested in a smooth experience, so that the user is fully served, that’s why when it talks about user experience it means an user that starts the path when the browser is opened, goes through the Google SERP, and enters a third party website that must continue to provide a good experience.

The website owner is interested in making the user’s stay a pleasant one in order to execute a smooth experience that culminates in a conversion. The website must have certain characteristics that guarantee a successful presence in time and place before the click and after the click in the SERP.

As you can see, when we talk about User Experience it is the smooth experience from the moment Google Search is opened and that should culminate in a conversion on the website. Therefore it is very important to take into account the relationship between SEO and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization).

Customer Satisfaction in Web Design

Conversion Rate, Website Speed, Search Intent and User Experience.

Website Speed

Whether Google says Website Speed is not a ranking factor, at the same time they say User Experience is. I would say how fast the website load is an important factor not only to open the page after The Click but during the whole time the Google’s user, now the website’s user, is navigating.

Website speed plays like the user experience, before and after The Click, and during the whole process.

But there is a difference, you can have a fast website that loads things blocking the main content, like sharing buttons floating along the web page, for example, or disturbing popups that ruin the experience. In that case your website speed is good, but you user experience is awful.

From my own experience, the website speed improves the ranking on the google search index when the website pass from red colors to green colors in the Chrome website speed test (the lighthouse website speed test), or any browser’s Page Speed Insights test. Check this for more information about website speed.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is a term that might sound generic or imply a certain purchase on a website. Conversion rate can be the result of a single view, filling out a form, or any goal that the website owner defines. The important thing is that it must be measured in order to use this traceability to improve the performance of the website, i.e. to increase the CRO.

The times of a flat or inactive website in the sense of not serving a defined purpose are long gone. Today a website must have a clear purpose, mainly to appear in the first 5 pages of the SERP at least.

When we talk about conversion rate in a website we also talk about a fluid process that starts with the click of the URL in the SERP. If a website is not findable, that click will never happen, and the CTR will be null.

The bad thing about a website without a SEO strategy is that the signs that Google Search uses, such as a very low CTR, are interrelated, one depending on the other. Users who use Google search are constantly feeding that information.

Search Intent.

This is another term that is a bit fuzzy and ambiguous. The content published on a website gives Google information to catalog it into a defined topic or set of topics. Google will then present the website to users searching for those topics in Google Search. That information is stored in the Search Console, with a small delay, because Google needs to collect, analyze, classify and debug. Google takes a picture of the flow of a river that carries some search terms, at a specific point in the riverbed of that river. And it presents us with an out-of-date, somewhat shaky photograph. This photograph represents the search intent.

The term search intent is confusing because the photo is not reliable of the reality, it does not present the whole reality, and the reality is changeable. The data must be extracted and analyzed to find the main topics.

Google Trends vs Google Search Console

Google Trends

Google Trends show a general picture of the Google Search situation around the globe. That is not necessarily your user Search Intent. The search intent of a website is a mix of data that comes from the user interaction while using the Google Search and your website. Google Trends is definitely another thing.

Google Search Console

Website owners can find the “picture” information in terms of CTR, Impressions, Position and Clicks in the Google Search Console. How does that quantity data is translated into human-level values, like Search Intent and User Experience? Well, that is the work of SEO experts.

Customer Satisfaction in Web Design

These four concepts of Conversion Rate, Website Speed, User Experience and Search Intent then have in common the fluidity of a multi-stage process, they are systems that are constantly evolving and the ultimate goal is the customer satisfaction.

Elements of Customer Satisfaction in Web Design

What do conversion rate, Website Speed, user experience and search intent have in common.