With the digital marketplace being more competitive than ever, perfecting, and refining user experience (UX) design for all customer touchpoints isn’t an element to be overlooked. Having decent UX design will immediately solidify a sense of trust and familiarity to your digital mediums.
The world is too fast-paced for your digital prospects to try and navigate a complicated multi-staged website and embark on a far-fetched journey of unnecessary clicks to reach their destination. If you fall short in the game by creating an overly-complicated UX design, the chances are other websites will be better designed, adopting a simpler and more user-coherent navigation system.
Overcomplication leads to frustration, higher bounce rates and more importantly - dissatisfied, unreturning leads. So, with that in mind, what exactly constitutes as ‘good’ user experience design?
Simplicity
Whether the user is searching for a customer portal, information, products, a consultancy booking form, or your social links, your design should allow them to navigate your site easily and smoothly so that they can reach their destination quickly without difficulty. And not only is this important for your customer, but for the business, too. Optimising usability often lies with trying to make it as easy as possible for your customer to purchase your product, or to make an enquiry. Having a site that is packed full of call-to-action buttons, with logical and easy-to-follow menu items will really help your customers to follow it.
UX design really does work better if it’s simpler. The easier to use, the more likely your customer is to return to the site. If you’re super web developer savvy with a creative flare for impressive UX design, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the more overcomplicated and impressive your site’s navigation, then the better the customer experience. Technologically speaking, it may be impressive on paper - but are your customers really going to care about your animated buttons and moving background images if it affects the site’s readability and usability, causing confusion? Ensuring that your key areas of focus are easy to read, in a decent-sized font with careful placement.
Design your site navigation according to what your customers are really looking for - whether that’s information, products, or services.
Looks can be deceiving
When it comes to UX design, the little things matter. Well-thought-out UX design is what optimises user experience to be as good as it possibly can be. So just because a site’s UX design will feel simple to use, that doesn’t mean that it requires a design process that is equally as simple. Putting care and thought into UX design will create a simpler outcome.
But to achieve the perfect UX design requires a planning process beforehand. Planning out functionality which navigates well and looks good can completely shape your user experience. Strip it back to your buyer persona and consider which aspects of your UX design they would more heavily benefit from. The design may not work the first time either. Repeated testing and user feedback can help morph the design into an easy, functional design format which perfectly suits your ideal buyer persona. Consider a well-thought sitemap that incorporates pages that fits together functionally and logically, whilst incorporating aesthetic design choices that both reflect the brand and respond correctly.
Your website should reflect your avenues of web traffic, too. For example, if a product had generated a heavy volume of clicks through Facebook traffic - then you’d want a fitting landing page which coheres with your ad, and easy navigation to this content from your homepage, should your customer lose the ad. Forefront your most popular products or services to be the most easily accessible.
Good UX design can be the difference between a prospect and a conversion
Ultimately, having well-designed user experience mechanisms will wholly empathise with every type of customer who has visited your website. UX design is the ‘how’ of your content. How are your customers going to purchase your service or product? How are your customers going to find out important information about your products, services and company? It all comes down to your UX design infrastructure - and in today’s ever-changing competitive markets, it’s not something to dismiss.
