IMPORTANCE OF USER EXPERIENCE (UX)
In today’s fast-paced interface industry, UX design is becoming more and more important. The WiseRetial UX team is here to explain what “User Experience” is.
WHAT IS THE USER EXPERIENCE?
UX is a person’s feeling when communicating with the system. This includes a website, web application, desktop software, and basically any form of human/device interaction. WHY IS UX IMPORTANT?
Simply put, UX is important because it tries to satisfy the needs of the user. It aims to provide positive experiences that keep users loyal to the product or brand. Additionally, a meaningful user experience allows you to determine the customer journey on your website that is most conducive to business success.
WHAT MAKES A GREAT USER EXPERIENCE?
There is no correct answer to this question. The truth is that the user experience is different for everyone. The most important thing to remember when designing web and user interfaces is that you are not your users. Don’t assume you know what they want or need.
So how do you define a great experience? Get closer to your users. Talk to them, watch them use your product, dig into their heads and question their decisions. Your users and customers will teach you, so be careful! Listen, observe and ask questions.
UX PROCESS METHODS
There are several steps to go through when developing a user experience. Here are 8 basic steps to get started:
1. USER AND HUMAN PROFILE
The first step in this process is knowing your audience. This allows you to develop experiences that involve the user’s voice and emotions. To get started, you’ll want to create a user persona, which is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and your existing audience data. Once you’ve finished developing your user persona (or your personality), you’ll have a profile of the person(s) your site is for. Character building involves diving into your website analytics and other customer data while conducting internal and external interviews and surveys. You can even talk to “human-like” objects that reflect the same characteristics as your existing users.
Some general characteristics you want to consider when developing your personality include:
Demographics (age, location, family status, occupation, etc.)
Personality (introverted, extroverted, creative, etc.)
Motivation (fear, encouragement, power, etc.)
And almost any other information that will help you get to know your users
Personas should (and will) take a long time to develop. You must follow many steps to ensure that you have all the data and information needed to develop a useful character. And keep in mind that they can change over time as your business and customer base grow.
2. INTERFACE TEST
When creating a user interface, the more data you can collect, the better. Conduct a study to compare the effectiveness and quality of experience between different user interfaces, including your current website. Something as small as changing a word can affect the effectiveness of your page. The Google Optimization Platform is a powerful interface testing tool. With Optimize, you can split your website impressions into two groups and show each group a different version of the pages on your site. Once you have a statistically significant sample size, you can see which version is better than the other and make adjustments accordingly.
3. USER SURVEY
Interview current and potential users of the system to gain insight into the most effective design. Because user experience is subjective, the best way to get first-hand insights is to research and interact with users. An element on the page that you think is already active may be completely invisible to the user.
4. USER Flowchart
Create a diagram showing how users should move in a system. Start by deciding how you expect them to move around the site, then compare that to how they actually interact with it. User personality will help you here – when you understand the profiles of users on your site, you can better plan for an optimal experience for them.
Additionally, some analytics tools can let you see how users interact with your site in real time. Platforms like Mouseflow can even track the visitor’s mouse position on the page at any given time. You can also view heat maps of the areas on the page that attract the most attention.
Once you know how people are using your website, be ready to change almost anything. The most effective websites are the ones that put the user experience first.
5. SITEMAPS
Once you’ve researched the user flow that visitors expect to your site, careful planning is essential. Start by creating a sitemap for the pages you want to create. A sitemap is a clearly organized hierarchy of all the pages and subpages on your website.
Creating a sitemap makes it easy to visualize how users will get from point A to point B on the site and how many clicks it will take to do so. Instead of making structural changes after the site is built, sitemaps help your team weed out bad ideas earlier and show you all the final pages you’ll need Design and write content. It is an effective tool to increase the efficiency of the website building process.
IT’S TIME TO START THINKING ABOUT YOUR OWN SITE’S User Experience
When is the last time you took a hard look at the user journey of your website? If it’s been awhile, it’s in your best interest to revisit it and make sure you aren’t losing users due to a confusing user experience.
