What makes UX Design so important?

What is the user experience?

User experience, or UX for short, is about all the aspects of your product that a user encounters. This includes things like your landing page, website, and product itself, as well as other facets of your business.

UX is a rather recent buzzword, but its origins date back to the early nineties—that's when Donald Norman first used it to classify Apple's cognitive scientists. Norman was interested in finding out how customers use Apple products and was empathetic to what "minimal fuss" meant to them. He prioritised this feature so that the nature of the device is accessible and user-friendly.

But why is UX design important for your business?

UX is important because it tries to fulfil the user’s needs. It aims to provide positive experiences that keep users loyal to the product or brand. In addition, a meaningful user experience will allow you to define customer journeys on your website that are most conducive to business success.

To make the most of your investment and ensure that users are satisfied throughout their experience, you need to strike a balance between features and functionalities in your product's user interface. You have to provide an enjoyable and successful experience for them right from the very first impressions.

This is going to have a significant impact on company visibility. One year ago, Google announced that it was introducing a new ranking algorithm. Though this is not big news at all—Google changes its factors regularly—this announcement was a huge bomb!

It looks like Google is taking the user experience more seriously than in the past. They’re moving away from rankings based solely on search demand and looking to see how satisfying a site is for visitors. If your website has a bad experience for visitors, it may not rank anymore.

Trustworthy user experience is playing a more and more important role in business success. Here are 5 main reasons why this should be at the forefront of your mind:

• Brand recognition

Almost all first impressions are design-related. While the user interface is in charge of the initial impression, the user experience determines if you can sustain this experience in the long run.

If you see your users coming back for more, that means you were able to fulfil their needs and keep them happy. This often results in a higher retention rate for your app, making it more likely people will use the service for longer periods of time.

• Fosters customer loyalty

User experience is about your users' emotions and feelings. Their experience can have a long-term effect on their behavior.

If users find your service helpful, pleasant, easy to use & have a positive experience with it, they will be loyal. They will keep coming back and paying you back by using your services.

• Convert new users

Good UX design is often a battle between good visual design and delivering rich functionality and ease of use at the same time. In order to achieve that, you need to provide your users with a seamless experience without any unnecessary steps.

When people love what you're making, it not only increases the loyalty of your current customers but strengthens the bond with new visitors that tried your product. This means a higher chance for them to subscribe, purchase, or pay anything in general.

• UX design boosts your SEO.

That’s right, good UX design can result in healthy SEO rankings. Google has always been on the forefront of providing a user-friendly experience to its users. It is natural that they want to provide the best answer as quickly as possible and do it by presenting the most relevant information first in their search results.

• Makes your product great

Great UX design requires research, analysis, and testing before pushing anything live. Doing these things from the outset will automatically put the end-user first.

Companies that use a user-testing approach for UX design will prevent usability issues or problems from even emerging, thus saving time, money, and effort. It's easier and cheaper to find these bugs before launching your product to the public.

Which in turn will make your product a great one.

Wrapping up

When it comes to UX, there is no "right" answer to what great UX looks like. What matters most is that you know your users and that design decisions are guided by your end goal.

Give them options.

A great user experience is intuitive, efficient, and relevant. Ultimately, this means that the design’s center of attention is the user. They provide a quality experience by being cognizant of the goal they want to achieve.

Get close with your customers. Ask them questions and watch how they use your product. Figure out what they're thinking and why they act the way they do.

Your customers can teach you a lot. Listen to them, and observe how they use your service.

In general, a great user experience is imperative to online success. It leads to higher customer lifetime value and greater product awareness.

It's time to rethink your site's UX. Redesign it in a way that works for you, not against you.