USER EXPERIENCE (UX) AS A DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Introduction
In today’s technology environment, it is not only a business’s website that is important, but the user’s experience (UX) plays a big role, as well. In the current modern digital era, it’s very important to have a responsive web design that ensures your brand has a better online presence. Whether you have a website, an app, or a mobile application, you must optimize it to capture your customers’ attention.
Websites that have interactive and responsive designs perform better than websites that are poorly optimized. The more ease you provide your customers the longer they will stay on your website, which increases the possibility of leads and potential sales. So, what does an interactive design mean? Why is better user experience important today? Why is it time to invest in UX/UI? Let’s dig deeper and learn more.
What is UX Design?
User experience refers to how your customers feel when they land on your website’s interface. The interaction of the visitors with the various website elements defines the level of user experience. Responsive design and better placement of elements provide an easier to use website and more comfort for users, which ultimately leads to a better user experience.
Why Does a Better User Experience Matter in 2021?
Today, most customers will leave your website within the first few seconds if it is difficult to understand or navigate. Better and improved UX is now one of the core ranking factors among Google search algorithms. In addition to your product’s core functionality and services, it is important to give a great experience.
A great user experience and outstanding functionality makes your customer’s journey better, enabling them to find the content they want easily. This leads to a lot of other benefits in both the short and long run. Let’s explore the benefits of a great user experience.
Benefits of Great User Experience
Save on Development Time
One of the core benefits of investing in user experience (UX)/ user interface (UI) is that it saves your business on development time and costs. According to a study at MITX in 2009, it is estimated that working on user experience at the design level results in saving 50% of website development time.
The concept of UX/UI is to make interactive illustrations at the design level, while leaving the developer to only focus on coding. Your business can then make changes to the design in a few steps rather than developing a whole website and making unlimited iterations. This saves important resources including time, money, and effort.
According to WebFX , if you invest $1 in your website’s UX design in the early stages, it will give a return on investment (ROI) of $100 in the future.
Improve Customer Retention
When you provide an interactive website design your customers will enjoy exploring more about your business and services. They spend more time on the website while engaging with different elements. This leads to a better user experience and ultimately increases the user retention rate. The more they engage on your site the greater the chances of them becoming your potential customers. In today’s competitive marketplace retaining your loyal customers must be your priority.
Boost Sales
The increase in user retention can help you to get leads and boost your conversions, as well. Research by Toptal clearly shows that almost 90% of customers prefer shopping when there is an outstanding UX design. This means the more you invest in the UX/UI of your business’s website the more you will see in revenue.
Get Higher Rankings
It is not only users but search engines that also prefer websites with an optimized design. Search engine optimization is as important as developing and creating content for your website. Great UX is now one of the **core factors** of Google’s ranking algorithm. You can receive higher rankings on Google among your crowd of competitors, so if you have thought to invest in UX/UI design then now is the time.
How to Create a Great User Experience and Implement it
There are many ways to make a great UX design.
Here are the core 6 steps:
1) First, Understand Your Users
As a UX designer, you must know what the customers/visitors want when they land on the website. This can be achieved by creating buyer personas with a set of complete requirements. You can study the demographics, roles, challenges, objectives, and behavior of your customers.
2) Research
Proper and extensive research about visitors is vital. Don’t assume that you know everything about your customers. You can conduct surveys to better understand their needs and challenges. This research can help you to design the website for an even better and interactive user experience.
3) Sketch
After making customers’ personas and understanding their requirements, it’s time to sketch the users’ journey. You must list all the channels through which your customers can land on your website. These channels could include Google, social media, discussion forums, direct links, etc.
4) Design
When you complete the sketch, you can convert all those ideas into a beautiful design. The design must be interactive so your customers feel as though they are interacting with your brand. All important elements, including colors, images, layout, and navigation must represent the brand’s theme. This helps create a better user experience.
5) Implement the Design
Testing the design is the only way to truly understand what your audience likes and doesn’t like. After the completion of the initial design, you can then implement it. After you get the users’ feedback, you may need to tweak the design a bit to make the design even better through iterations.
6) Evaluate
To evaluate what your customers like, you can study user behaviors through various analytics tools. After the implementation of the initial design, you can integrate analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Crazy Egg , into your website. You can make the next decision based on the results gathered from those tools.
Conclusion
In order for your business to remain relevant and compete with other businesses, you must consider implementing a better user experience through responsive web design. A great user experience not only helps you in achieving your business goals, but saves important resources, including development time, cost, and effort. You can achieve customer retention, satisfaction, and ultimately increase conversion rates through a great UX design. If you ever thought to invest in UI/UX, now is the time.
ScreamingBox's digital product experts are ready to help you grow. What are you building now?
ScreamingBox provides quick turn-around and turnkey digital product development by leveraging the power of remote developers, designers, and strategists. We are able to deliver the scalability and flexibility of a digital agency while maintaining the competitive cost, friendliness and accountability of a freelancer. Efficient Pricing, High Quality and Senior Level Experience is the ScreamingBox result. Let's discuss how we can help with your development needs, please fill out the form below and we will contact you to set-up a call.