When designing and maintaining your presence online, it’s important to keep in mind that there may be some remote, rural areas where 5G and 4G coverage could be limited due to geographical challenges and lower population density. Homes in these areas tend to have highly varied internet speeds. If your site does not load promptly or correctly in this environment, you may lose business to competitors with sites that do.
Designing for these users involves first knowing who they are and what you want to share with them. Even if the differences are non-existent, it is important to reiterate to yourself and your team that your visitors may have urban expectations on rural WiFi. Once you’ve established what a rural visitor needs from your website, you can make informed design choices that improve the customer journey and ultimately drive conversions.
What We'll Cover
Considering Remote Areas
Depending where your business is located, or where your target customers are, you may have more visitors located in remote areas than you think. Here are some things to keep in mind when wondering if this applies to you:
- You have a storefront, anywhere. Even if your business is located in the heart of a bustling city, you’re likely within a day’s trip of a rural area. Residents of these areas often plan their trips in advance, especially when visiting urban centers. By considering their needs, you can capture their attention before they even set foot in your store.
- Your online business delivers to remote areas. If your products are available to customers in remote regions, tailoring your website and messaging to this demographic is essential. Highlighting your delivery capabilities and understanding the challenges of rural living can set you apart from competitors.
- Your online services can be accessed by residents in a remote area. This is particularly important for organizations that offer nationwide memberships or services. Some of your potential customers or members may reside in remote areas, using older devices or slower internet connections. Ensuring your website is optimized for speed and accessibility can make or break their decision to engage with your business.
- Your competitors are active in remote areas. This presents a strategic opportunity. If your competitors aren’t focusing on these regions, now is the perfect time to step in and fill that gap. By positioning yourself as a business that caters to the unique needs of remote customers, you can establish a loyal customer base.
There are a wide array of empathetic reasons to consider users in these regions. Everyone should have equal access to your products or services regardless their device or location within your sales area. Easy access to your products, services, ministry, etc, regardless from where they are, is a great addition to your existing brand messaging.
Design strategy
Many factors taken into account for rural and remote users can also be relevant to good web design generally. Revisit the following when designing or optimizing your site:
Optimize Page Load Times:
Fast page load times are crucial for retaining visitors. If your site takes too long to load, visitors are likely to leave, or worse, their initial experience may sour their perception of your brand, leading to lower conversion rates. To ensure speedy loading:
- Compress Images: Use formats optimized for web use, such as .webp, to reduce file sizes without compromising quality.
- Minimize Heavy Multimedia: Limit the use of large images, videos, and other resource-intensive content. Where multimedia is necessary, consider using lower resolution versions for slower connections.
Implement Progressive Loading
Enhance the perceived performance of your website by implementing progressive loading techniques. This ensures that key elements of your site are accessible quickly, even if other parts are still loading:
- Lazy Loading: Load essential content, such as text and primary images, first. Other elements, like additional images and videos, can load in the background as the user interacts with the site.
- Prioritize Above-the-Fold Content: Ensure that the most critical information is visible immediately, improving user engagement and reducing bounce rates.
Utilize Caching and Local Storage
Have e-commerce, regular events, or host a newsletter? For sites that anticipate frequent repeat visitors, caching and local storage are invaluable:
- Local Storage: Save data on the user’s device to speed up load times and improve the user experience, especially in areas with slow or unreliable internet connections.
- Browser Caching: Store static resources, such as images, stylesheets, and scripts, locally on the user’s device. This reduces load times for returning users by minimizing the need for repeated downloads.
Target a “Mobile-First” Approach
- Responsive Design: Leveraging responsive web design with a mobile-first mindset to ensure that the website performs well on devices commonly used in rural areas. Compared to urban areas, device models may span a greater variety of brands and ages in the countryside.
- Testing on Older Devices: If possible, when developing your pages, also test the website directly on older devices and uncommon screen sizes to ensure responsiveness and a universally clean look.
Stick to Minimalist Design
- Reduce Clutter: Simplify the layout to focus on essential content, making navigation easier for users with limited bandwidth.
- Organize Content Effectively: Ensure your pages are well organized so users do not have to scroll around as much to find what they need, and instead can select the page that matters most to them. For ideas, engage with your staff to identify how users interact with them through your website. Then, update accordingly.
Limit Reliance on Third-Party Scripts
- Minimize External Dependencies: Reduce the use of third-party scripts and widgets. Each script adds extra requests that can slow down the page. Where possible, opt for lightweight, self-hosted alternatives to maintain control over your site’s performance.
- Audit Regularly: Periodically review and audit third-party scripts to ensure they are necessary and not causing undue performance issues.
The Takeaway
The difference in internet speeds between rural and urban areas can vary significantly and is influenced by various factors. In general, rural areas tend to experience slower and less consistent internet speeds compared to their urban counterparts. This divide should be a consideration in your web design strategy. As described above, it goes beyond only faster load times. Embracing the unique needs of rural users not only serves as a step towards bridging the digital divide but also provides an edge in bringing your business overlooked market opportunities.
