How much are your peers prioritizing different efforts across their website? How much time do they spend on accessibility? What’s normal? We wanted to know, too. Monsido’s 2022 State of Websites report was conceived in order to gain a deeper insight into the current state of websites and discover what organizations in both the public and private sector prioritize from a resource and focus perspective, what their biggest challenges are when it comes to website compliance, and where they’ll be focusing their digital efforts this year.
The report is based on a survey of 160 web, marketing, and communications leaders and specialists from around the world coming from various industries.The questions asked in the survey were specifically designed to shed some light on how organizations currently prioritize website efforts, their plans on enhancing their sites in 2022, and where their main challenges lie in achieving their goals.
Website Trends In 2022
The report identified four major trends of focus in 2022 that stood out head and shoulders above the rest. These trends are as follows:
- Improving the user experience (or UX)
- Accessibility
- Doing a redesign
- Growing traffic
The above trends are indicative of how the last two years have transformed the way that many companies view their websites. The rising adoption of digital communications and the increasing reliance on digital channels has placed a heightened emphasis on user experience. With websites acting as a single source of truth for most organizations, it’s more important than ever the experience aligns with not only user expectation but is also an accessible one.
A Key UX Insight
One of the report's more significant and illuminating findings is that online organizations are responding to this shifting digital landscape by placing far greater focus on improving the user experience, with nearly half (49%) of those surveyed citing the user experience (UX) as their top priority in 2022.
This makes perfect sense, as customer service is quickly becoming a major competitive metric. Indeed, current research reveals that as many as 88% of visitors will leave a website due to a bad user experience. Whether an organization seeks to make a visitor a customer or to serve a constituent digitally versus in-person, the website has become the most important real estate to maintain and continually optimize.
Companies Need to Step It up if They Want to Ensure a Great UX in 2022
Despite the fact that many of the respondents mentioned UX as a main area of focus, the report also revealed that the very same organizations are in fact only dedicating a comparatively small amount of time on enhancing visitor satisfaction.
Almost half of the respondents confessed to spending just two hours or less each month working on their website’s technical performance, with 23% spending even less time (under an hour a month) analyzing user behavior and addressing areas that could be optimized from a usability or design perspective.
Intentions aside, to reach the goal of improving website UX organizations will need to take a close look at how they prioritize their digital efforts and address any discrepancy between what it takes to optimize the user experience and the resources and time available to dedicate to these efforts. This gap will need to be bridged by those who want to make a meaningful improvement to their UX in 2022.
Keep in mind that UX is not a one off task, but should rather be thought of as a continuous goal to perpetually strive towards. We are big proponents of the saying, “it’s a journey, not a destination.” While it can feel overwhelming, especially for those who like their list checked off at the end of the day, it’s actually the continual and incremental steps that make the biggest difference. Leaders should set this expectation with teams working on the website accordingly.
For more insights into the top web trends and forecasts click on the following link to read the full 2022 State of Websites Report. For more inspiration on how to tackle improving the website user experience visit our resource library.
2022 State of Websites Report
