UX Design – Why UX Is Important and Why Should You Care
Want to build a killer app that has hockey stick growth? Or maybe you just want to make your customers happy? If these questions apply to you, then you should carefully think about the UX design of your new website or app.
If you are just starting the journey to building your first-ever app, then focusing on the UX design is the most important thing you can do. If your app can help users solve their problems, do you really need to do anything else?
Well, yes, you do. And among the things that you need to take care of is UX. If you are in doubt, then read on to find out about the importance of UX design and how it can help your success.
What Is User Experience Design And Why Is It Important?
First up, user experience or UX shows the quality of the interaction of users with a computer system – most commonly, an app or website. UX incorporates the attitudes and emotions that users feel while communicating with an app.
The importance of UX lies in the fact that positive emotions translate to loyalty and long-term commitment. A bad user experience – whether because of poor UI, lacking functionality, or bugs – will repel people from your solution, no matter how well it performs its core purpose.
Aside from keeping users happy, UX is important because it improves the success of customers’ satisfaction-conversion journey.
Are UX And UI The Same?
Many people confuse UX (user experience) with UI (user interface) because of their similarities. However, in reality, these two terms are drastically different and are both an important part of an app or website development process.
The UI encompasses everything your user sees and can interact with, including visual design, color scheme, forms, buttons, icons, and layout. UX, on the other hand, encompasses UI and several other components that affect the quality of users’ interaction with your system.
Aside from UI, UX also depends on the responsiveness of your app (or website), its structure, how easily customers can find what they are looking for, and not only.
UI is tightly intertwined with UX because one of the goals of UI engineering is to create an efficient, clean, and easy to use interface. Successful UI engineering leads to better UX – at least, as long as we are talking about UI-related factors.
What Can Great UX Design Do For You
1. Efficient sales funnels
Great UX equals more efficient sales funnels – that is, a more efficient and friction-free satisfaction-conversion-retention pipeline.
Baymard has found that 69.2% of customers abandon their carts after adding items, primarily due to poor cart design and subpar checkout process.
Although great UX most likely wouldn’t be able to help you retain all those 69.2%, a sizable amount of abandoning users would have made a purchase, had you put effort into your sales funnel.
Elements like calls to action, an intuitive layout, and clear navigation can dramatically improve your app’s UX and minimize cases when people shut down your app due to frustration with bugs or general layout.
2. Increased sales & ROI
After a major redesign in 2018, Walmart has recorded a 43% increase in e-commerce sales. The new Walmart website not only looked drastically different but also boasted a more intuitive layout, simplified shopping, and better navigation.
43% is a huge amount even for low-earning businesses, let alone for huge enterprises with multi-million sales. And all this was thanks to improved UX that reduced frustration and provided more clear guidance to buyers.
By the way, with the redesign, Walmart also started providing product recommendations to users based on their individual preferences and purchase history.
It’s difficult to tell how important the addition of this feature has been for the sales increase. However, by recommending customers new products, Walmart increases its chances of making a sale by showing people what they need at the moment (well, hopefully).
3. Reduced long-term costs
This one’s pretty interesting – UX can actually help you reduce your app’s maintenance costs in the long run, especially when it comes to marketing.
We’ve just established that UX improves conversion rate and boosts sales. This means that given the same investment, an app with good UX will make more money than an app with poor user experience!
Furthermore, by recording low sales with a poor-UX app, you will be tempted to increase your marketing expenditure because you aren’t getting what you are expecting!
In contrast, satisfied with the great UX of your app, users are more likely to recommend it to their friends or family, doing free marketing for you.
Marketing aside, good UX will stimulate long-term relationships between you and users. Although you will not necessarily build lasting relationships with all satisfied customers, it is more likely that happy users will stick with you and convert many more times down the line!
4. Improved SEO
Better UX can improve website SEO as well. Although for some people, the connection between SEO and UX may be unclear, it’s pretty darn strong.
One way UX could improve your website’s SEO is by affecting dwell time. Dwell time is an important ranking factor, at least for Google – the longer people stay on your website, the more likely it is that your website will rank higher.
UX impacts dwell time indirectly. That is, Google doesn’t factor in UX as-is – rather, because great UX can keep users on your website longer, careful UX design leads to better SEO.
Final Words
Good UX makes your product stand out. There are plenty of apps and websites out there that perform their purpose well enough, so it can be difficult to persuade people to use exactly your offering.
Well, thoughtful UX design could be the missing link between you and a huge success. Don’t neglect the importance of user experience. Although defining the scope of UX can be challenging, in the end, it’s all worth it.
Take action now and make sure to have your team focus on the right UX, it can mean the difference between good and great!