Have you ever thought over what does your business, small startup and huge successful corporations like Goggle, Apple or Adobe have in common? The answer is very simple and evident. What combines all of you is striving for success! But the success of any business depends on the following factors:
- User and client satisfaction with the product or service;
- Utility and desirability of what you are offering;
- Ease of obtaining the desired or solving the problem.
By the way, your client's feelings and emotions while using your product or service are of great importance. Whether he becomes happy and satisfied after using your website or service or not.
UX-design: its meaning and role?
UX (or User Experience) is the way a user interacts with your system (site, service or product). Whether it is intuitive enough, easy to use and how it simplifies user's problem solving process.
User experience includes all aspects of user interaction with your company, its services and products.
In recent years UX-design became one of the critical aims in Website and application development.
The main UX-designer goal is to make a user's problem solving way as short and simple as possible, while keeping a user system interaction process effective.
UX-designer:
- conducts research and analyzes results;
- on the basis of these data thrashes out prototypes and future system models;
- tests this solution and improves it;
- coordinates the project implementation and conducts final solution analytics to troubleshoot;
- analyzes the existing solution (website, product, service, application) and amends it in order to improve it: increase conversion, enhance the interface and make it user-friendly.
How does bad UX-design destroy your business:
1. You are losing your clients
As the saying goes, a good dress is a card of invitation. It's impossible to overestimate first impression role and too difficult (almost unreal) to make a user come to your website again if the first time he faced challenges and didn't reach his goals.
This picture is borrowed from ib.by
48% of the users who faced a website without adaptive design felt like the company doesn't bother about their convenience.
52% of «mobile» users said that they were not going to use this company service any more.
90% of «mobile» users will never buy anything in online-store if the website isn't optimized for mobile devices.
40% of the users will leave the site if page loading takes more than 3 seconds.
61% of the users leave the site if they didn't manage to find what they needed immediately.
79% of the users stated that they would search for another company's websites that were able to fulfill their requirements if the previous one had been incomprehensible and long loading.
2. You bear losses
It's much more expensive to fix UX errors after developing stage was over.
UX-design errors that were noticed after finishing site or system development cost your business even 100 times more than those ones that were fixed before starting the development.
How does good UX-design save your money and help you to earn more:
1. Good UX promotes income
The research shows that every 1$ you invest in UX brings you from 2$ to 100$ profit back.
2. You reduce your expenses
Well-designed interface helps users to avoid mistakes or shows how to fix them.
It allows to reduce site support cost by 90% by lowering call-center and technical support burden. Hence, it's a great chance to save your money.
The real example is Mc Afee redesign that let to reduce company's support expenses by 90%.
One more case how does your site change after the redesign.
This picture is borrowed from slideshare.net
This picture is borrowed from slideshare.net
This picture is borrowed from slideshare.net
This picture is borrowed from slideshare.net
3. Good UX-design increases conversion and enhances sales
Positive online-store user experience may increase your sales by 30% and reduce bounce rates by 50%.
4. High quality UX-design enhances customer loyalty
Well-developed user experience simplifies user's site, app and system interaction. The user can easily find what he needs and solve his problems fast and straight. Thus, site user interaction productivity is rising.
If the user have managed to solve his problems with the help of your site fast and effectively he is more likely to use your site again instead of looking for something else.
How can you imply this statistics?
1. Spend enough time on research and testing.
85% of user experience problems could be easily found and solved after being tested by 5 users only.
2. Invest in high-quality user interface research and development
There is no doubt that your investment will be paid off for sure.
According to the research and survey results, companies that pay enough attention to user experience design are managed to increase profits by 37%. Moreover, some of the biggest ones have managed to triple this rate.
3. Do not try to copy successful company site's main features
Forget about words like “Could you make us a site like Apple has!” or “You know, Amazon made it another way” etc. Remember that it doesn't matter how successful these companies are, their solutions are not a panacea for your business. Their success is a result of investing enough resources in analytics and research.
Instead of copying just spend your time investigating your target audience, find the variant that is completely yours. There is no universal solution that would suit everybody.
Thus, copying someone's else good idea won't save you neither money nor time.
4. Don't forget about your website's appearance
The Aesthetic Usability Effect does really work
The way your site or application looks like is not less important than its usability and it does also influence greatly user's perception and conversion.
The Aesthetic Usability Effect phenomenon was proved by two Japanese researchers. Kaori Kashimura and Masaaki Kurosu had conducted an experiment so that the participants were to rate some interfaces paying attention at its apparent and inherent usability. In the result, all the examinees had chosen interfaces according to its apparent usability attraction and even the fact of its bad functionality didn't influence their decision.
From two similar by their purpose things a person is more likely to choose the one that looks more attractive, because he would probably find it more convenient and easier to use.
Scrinshots are from mothercare.by (on the left) and foxykids.by (on the right)
5. Do not ever stop
It's impossible to find one perfect solution forever and ever. The world does not stand still, technologies are in constant development and the users are always changing.
86% of users state that high-quality interface development expands their investments
Trust professionals only and do not skimp on the important. Everyone must do their job. You are a great expert of your business, thus your main aim is to convey all the information correctly, but do not interfere with specialist's work. Competent UX-designers and analytics are capable of offering you a solution that would definitely suit you and gain you target audience.
It's not a secret that companies like Apple, Amazon, Adobe, Dropbox and Airbnb are holding user's attention and market leadership for a long period of time. They do not stop investigating, analyzing and looking for better solutions. They constantly improve their products and services and are always ready to invest in high-quality interface development.
