What is UX? Let’s Go!
User experience (UX) is a critical aspect of any business. If a potential customer lands on your website and it’s difficult to navigate or poorly designed, they may bounce right off. In fact, according to a study done by the Nielsen Norman Group, 60% of users who have a bad experience with your brand will not come back again. This means that improving your user experience can make all the difference in whether or not someone finds what they need quickly and easily when visiting your site.
READ: How To Design A Website? 10 Tips On Effective Website Design
What is UX?
UX is more than just the look and feel of a website or app. It also includes how easy it is to use, and whether it has any bugs. If you’re looking for an example of UX, think about the first time you used Uber: You downloaded the app, got in your car and were on your way to work before you knew what hit you—all because of how seamless their experience was from start to finish!
The main goal of UX design is to create products that are both useful and enjoyable for consumers. This means that creating great user experiences involves creating something people want by thinking about things like:
- Who is going to use it?
- How will they use it?
- What do they need out of this product or service?
UX is not the same as UI (User Interface)
User experience (UX) is everything from the look and feel of a website, to how easy it is to navigate, to whether or not users are able to perform certain tasks easily. User interface (UI) is the actual layout of that site, including things like fonts and buttons.
Think of it this way: UX is like how you feel after using something; UI is what you see while using that thing. Your feelings about how a product works are based on UX decisions—the features it offers, how you interact with them, etc.—and your visual experience comes from UI choices—the colors used throughout the design layout.
UX is not the same as CX (Customer Experience)
CX is the overall impression of a company and its services, including interactions with employees. UX refers to how customers interact with a specific product or service. For example, a customer may use an app for ordering food at a restaurant instead of calling or visiting the restaurant in person. This kind of interaction doesn’t affect CX overall, but it does affect UX because it’s how users interact with this specific app.
User experience is more than just websites
User experience is more than just websites. It’s about people, emotions and context. User experience is the entire experience of interacting with a product or service—from its first impression to its last interaction.
Think about your favorite website: You probably don’t think about it as a whole user journey (the term for all of the moments that make up an interaction from start to finish). Instead, you might have very specific moments in mind: Maybe it was when you discovered that perfect job listing; maybe it was when you ordered something online for delivery; or maybe it was when information appeared onscreen in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
Those individual experiences make up your overall user journey and will help drive whether or not people return again and again.
Understanding user experience starts with psychology
User experience is a combination of psychology and design. User experience can be different from user interface (UI), customer experience, and even user engagement.
User experience design is a process that focuses on creating an emotional connection with the user by identifying their needs and making sure the product or service provides what they want in order to meet those needs. It’s about taking into account all of your customers’ habits, preferences, interests and goals so you know what makes them tick — before they even think about buying something from you!
UX can be used to increase sales and conversions
UX can be used to increase sales and conversions. UX is a critical aspect of the customer journey, but it’s not just about aesthetics—it’s about creating a positive user experience. By improving your users’ experiences with your product or service, you can help improve their overall perception of your brand and increase sales and conversions.
It’s true that there are many factors that go into making a purchase decision—from price to quality to how likely they are to recommend it on social media sites—but if someone has trouble using whatever it is you’re selling, then that might put them off from buying it altogether (and even more so if they have bad things to say about the experience).
UX increases brand loyalty and customer retention
Since you can’t look at the future, let’s talk about the past. If we were to ask you what brands have done a good job of implementing user experience (UX) in their products, services, or websites over the last decade, what would you say? You might name a few companies that come to mind: Apple, Netflix and Facebook are just a few examples of major businesses that have made UX a core part of their brand identity. Why do these companies use such an important concept? Because it works! Study after study has proven that great UX increases customer loyalty and satisfaction while also increasing sales revenue by up to 40 percent.
UX improves user engagement with improved content strategy
UX is a broad term that encompasses the user’s mental and emotional experience with a product. It’s not just about websites or apps, but how people interact with any type of device or service—from their car to their phone to their bank account.
READ: What Is Content Strategy?
What we call UX (user experience) is actually two different things. The first is UI (user interface). These are the design elements you see when using an app or website—the buttons, labels, menus and images on your screen. The second component is CX (customer experience), which refers to all touchpoints between you and your company: from marketing content to customer service interactions to product development cycles themselves.
UX can improve your SEO efforts
If you’re looking to improve the organic search traffic for your website, UX is an important factor to consider.
There are several ways that UX can help increase SEO:
- It improves user experience
- It improves user engagement
- It improves satisfaction with brand and messaging
In turn, these benefits contribute to improved rankings in search engines and improved conversion rates on your site—which means more qualified prospects contacting you and more money in your pocket!
READ: Get Your Content Team Engaged With SEO
User experience has a profound effect on your website’s bounce rate
Even though you’ve heard about it before, you might still be fuzzy on what exactly the bounce rate is. The bounce rate is simply the percentage of users who leave your site without scrolling or clicking past the first page. For example, if someone comes to your website and views only one page before leaving, then their bounce rate would be 100%.
The bounce rate can tell you a lot about how engaging your website is. If most people are bouncing off of it very quickly after visiting—say they’re not even making it past that second page—it may be time to consider revamping some elements or adding more engaging content!
User experience can reduce customer service costs for your business
In addition to improving the experience of your customers, UX can also reduce your business’s costs.
- You won’t receive as many support calls. If a user is able to complete his or her entire transaction without error, then there will be less need for customer service. The fewer support calls you receive, the less time and money will be spent on them.
- You’ll spend less time answering support calls. When users are able to complete their tasks with ease in an intuitive UI, they’re not likely to call in with questions about how something works. Instead of spending precious hours on phone calls with unhappy customers who didn’t understand how something worked (or were confused by poor design), you’ll spend less time hearing from these people—and more time working on other things that are important for your business’ success!
- Your employees will have more autonomy over their workflow because they aren’t constantly jumping between tasks related to customer service issues or fixing bugs in poorly-designed software interface elements like logins or button placement on websites; this saves everyone involved extra stress while also increasing productivity because workers don’t feel bogged down by distractions during work hours!
Understanding user experience will help you form a better strategy for your business
User experience is the aspect of a product that affects how easy it is for the user to accomplish their task, whether that’s making a purchase or completing an action like registering for an account.
In short: UX matters because it has a direct impact on how many people will buy from you, how well they understand your product and brand after using it, their loyalty to your business, and so much more.
Conclusion
So, what is user experience? It’s a way to increase the value that your customers receive from interacting with your products or services, which will in turn increase sales and conversions. User experience is also important because it can improve brand loyalty and customer retention. By understanding this concept better, you can form a better strategy for your business!
Need an expert to help you win at UX? We can deliver powerful insights on your current design or design a new experience entirely to help you win and retain users! We build websites with awesome UX!
