According to the Interaction Design Foundation, the User Experience (UX) of a product can dictate its success or failure. A product with a great UX helps users solve problems easily and makes them feel pleased during the process. It makes users feel interactions with a product are smooth and effortless. Making sure products have an outstanding UX has a huge impact on the development of a brand. That’s why successful businesses look to improve and innovate to create a seamless experience for their potential users. Let's dive deeper into how to improve User Experience to get the most out of it!
Why is UX Important in Digital Products?
A proper UX has a strong focus on real users' needs and pain points without neglecting business goals. Investing in improving a product’s UX is a huge opportunity for growth; every dollar can yield up to 100$ in return, which represents a 9,900% ROI. Users who have positive experiences when interacting with a product are way more likely to complete transactions. That’s why Google’s "Ten things we know to be true” highlights a "focus on the user, and all else will follow."
Lastly, many experts comment that most companies don't invest enough in UX, and that, can potentially cause a trillion-dollar problem. So, not having a good UX can make you lose opportunities and money. For instance, easy navigation, a key UX metric, is a priority for around 94% of users. Lost orders in online shopping in the US due to poor checkout flow and other usability issues can reach over $200 billion worth.
Aspects of a Seamless User Experience
UX Simplicity
You must ensure the design elements and content included in your digital product are easy to understand and don't overwhelm users. By reducing cognitive load and creating a sense of visual hierarchy with white spaces, you can make your product look modern and elegant. To achieve this you can use design systems, such as Google's Material Design.
UX Usability
Good usability implies that users can accomplish their goals. Also, usability is an indicator that they can do it with as little frustration as possible. It's a clear indicator of how useful your product is. Pay close attention to the user journey with thorough Usability Testing. Make sure usability is optimal and check for room for improvement every time you change a feature or add a new one.
One effective way to enhance usability is by leveraging website annotation tools. These tools play an essential role in improving User Experience by offering real-time confirmation of user actions, reducing uncertainty, and guiding users seamlessly through their interactions with a website. They can transform static interfaces into dynamic environments, where users feel more engaged and confident. By improving feedback mechanisms these tools ensure that users can complete tasks with greater ease and satisfaction, which is critical for maintaining high usability and overall brand success.
UX Accessibility
As the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) pointed out, “making web products accessible to everyone benefits businesses, individuals, and society.” In this context, UX Designers should be familiar with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Designing accessible products for people with different physical abilities is not just a moral obligation but a legal requirement.
UX Responsiveness
UX Designers should pay very close attention to the way they arrange images and other elements based on the device they target. 62% of businesses have reported increased sales as a result of responsive websites, while other studies show that reducing 0.1 seconds of load time for mobile sites can increase conversion rates by 8% and also reduce bounce rates by 8% simultaneously.
These are some of the UX elements we value the most as a UX-driven agency. Yet, as a rule of thumb, you should consider the seven UX factors coined by the UX expert Peter Morville, writer of the book Search Patterns: Design For Discovery. He stated that products must be Useful, Usable, Findable, Credible, Desirable, Accessible, and Valuable. In other words, products must be easy to use and navigate, solve real problems, and convey trust. In addition, all the features of a product should be accessible to people with disabilities; the most important features must be very easy to identify and look appealing to its target audience, and last, products must encourage repeated use.
3 Tips to Improve User Experience (UX)
1. Test and Iterate
Conducting thorough user research and understanding user needs during the entire process is just not enough. Testing will help you validate your assumptions, helping you ensure user satisfaction. Also, it helps businesses future-proof a product idea with a usable prototype before investing in expensive software development. It provides Product Designers with the necessary insights to refine a product and make sure it resonates with its intended audience.
The thing is, testing may be the final phase of the Product Design process. Yet, lots of things can happen after you launch your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or a new feature of an existing product. User behavior (needs and expectations) can shift and evolve quite fast. You should continuously test the efficacy of your product, as there will always be room for improvement. Some of the most effective testing methods include A/B testing, card sorting, and usability testing.
2. Use an End User Experience Monitoring (EUEM) Tool
Digital products involve technical aspects, such as site availability, loading speed, responsiveness, security, and accessibility, that must work together to ensure optimal UX. Manually checking that features properly work can be hard, so using tools like the ones mentioned in the article about End-User Experience monitoring tools is highly recommended to help the design and development team address and fix problems when they arise.
3. Provide Guidance
Regardless of how simple and easy-to-use you may think your product is, you should consider guiding to ensure customer satisfaction. Educating users on how to use your product or service and how to get the most out of it will pay off. There are countless examples of successful businesses that have made excellent learning resources for their users. In fact, popular Design tools like Figma, Adobe, Sketch, and Invision have extensive learning resources and documentation available on their websites. Please note that if you’re planning on using InVision, you must know that it will stop being available by the end of 2024.
Other popular tools, like Webflow and Hubspot, have even created their learning platforms, including video tutorials and courses. Not all products require such extensive learning material. Yet, you must be aware of how important it is to educate your users on how to use your product or service. Apart from learning resources, you must aim to provide impeccable customer service and support.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several areas you should pay attention to if you want to improve your product's User Experience Design process. Often, it's fairly hard or nearly impossible to work on everything that has to be done. That's why it's crucial to assess your product's performance carefully and prioritize your updates accordingly. As a UX-driven agency with over 10 years of experience in the field, we've worked with quite a few distinguished businesses, including Wurrly, Upvio, and Median.
