User Experience! No, don’t get confused. And think it as your website’s visual appearance as User Experience. User Experience is not about the visual beauty of your website but is about its usability experience. User Experience, shortly known as UX can make a great deal to your business. While User Interface, UI, is definitely necessary, but excellent website design with terrible usability is sure of no use. And for this reason, we are going to discuss all UX related components. And of course its importance for your business or blog.
Why User Experience is Important
Don Norman, the father of User Experience (UX), defines it as a scientific tool that encompasses all elements of the ultimate satisfaction of the user with the company, its products, and services. For better understanding, let’s take a real-time example. A car with incredible exterior design, fascinating interiors, and the premium color is definitely going to attract you, but what if it is not able to deliver an optimum driving experience! Definitely, you would not buy it as the ultimate use of the car is not just look smart, but provide a smooth and fast driving experience.
Similar is the case with your business’s website. If your site is beautiful then it might make an outstanding first impression, but if its usability is not up to the mark and users are not able to get a tune to its functionality then the experience would be quite bad. Ultimately, it will break your business revenue, and you will end up meeting losses. So now that you have known the importance of UX for your business let’s have a glance at the major facets of UX, which you need to consider for enhancing your business revenue.
Important Facets of User Experience (UX)
Beneficial – You need to ensure that your website, products or services are beneficial to the customers in one way or the other. The more profitable the products, the better experience it would deliver to the users.
Usability – User-friendliness or convenience of using is another essential aspect of UX. A website too confusing or complicated ends up lacking viewers.
Navigation – You must strive to create websites with excellent navigation and hassle-free functionality. Also, make sure that your users can find out conveniently what they are looking for and have a great end-user satisfaction.
Accessibility – Websites these days must be accessible on all small and big platforms so that maximum numbers of users can use it without experiencing any trouble.
Desirability – Our thirst for efficiency must be supported with an appreciation for the power and value of the brand, identity, image, and all other elements related to design and appearance.
Customer Satisfaction – Your website must always deliver features and content that can offer maximum satisfaction the users. Your ultimate goal must be to provide users with solutions that can best solve their problems or queries or end-requirements.
Credibility – Websites needs to be trustworthy. You must offer your users with solutions, which they can trust and that can make them believe that you are offering credible solutions.
Factors influencing your Website’s User Experience(UX)
Website’s Load Time
The loading time of a website creates a significant role in contributing towards its user experience. If a website consumes more time to load then probably, the customer would leave the page and would even miss the vital information on that page. According to recent studies, almost 38% of visitors opted for another site and left websites having loading time of more than 6 seconds. Now, this is a huge percentage! So to enhance your site’s user experience, you need to ensure that it holds less load time.
Your Brand’s Perception
The brand image of your website is another major factor that may influence the overall user experience to a great extent. You can enhance your business’s brand through social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and expand as it would make it simpler for customers to find your business online. Also, if your website is already delivering excellent UX, then your clients would free confident to post positive criticisms about your business on social platforms. This is a free way of marketing business and is highly useful regarding preparing valuable clientele bank.
Factors influencing your Website’s User Experience(UX)
Organic Rankings
Although there is no straight link between the organic rankings and UX, it definitely creates a significant impact on the overall user-experience. It is because Google closely monitors websites with good user experience and hence delivers better rankings to those who are able to offer maximum end-user satisfaction to their customers. User experience is directly related to the quality of the content on the website, and since the content is always given importance, so it is essential that you make sure that your website holds high-quality content and receives higher organic rankings for better user experience.
Customer Reviews
Social networks have an enormous impact on the new age buyers. According to a study by Hubspot, almost 75% of people are likely to buy products that are referred by their friend on a social platform. Also, over 91% of individuals consider brand recommendations from friends and 75% of trust customer review products and services online. With such a massive volume of people trusting the suggestions of their social friends, reviews and referrals from clients can be a big game changer for your business.
Reasons for Investing in User Experience (UX)
- Conversion Rate – A successful website experiences around 10% conversion, and if you deliver quality, then more people would get attracted towards your website, and this would generate more conversions. If your website is not able to convert 1 out of 10 leads into real-time business, then it is the time that you must make necessary modifications on your website. UX is a highly significant aspect of a user’s buying path, and you, therefore, need to lay high focus on this aspect.
- Investing more time can bring you more money – It is direct! If a user spends more time on your website, then there are better chances that he will spend his money too. For this, your website’s UX must be strong to meet the end user’s goals, then they will surely make a buying decision.
- Trust is the key to success – An excellent user-eccentric design is a right key to winning customer’s loyalty and hence ultimate success. Users love coming back to websites that are easy to use, have less load time, and are accessible. Also, loyal clients would promote your business advertising through word of mouth. It is but essential to remember that negative user experience can even ruin the image of your business, as clients are more prone to disclose negative views about a product or service. So you need to work to deliver a positive UX to your customers and win their trust and meet their expectations. It would help you to enjoy long – term gains.
More reasons for Investing in User Experience (UX)
- Intelligent use of Valuable Resources – If you are investing your time in UX, and still you are not able to reap gains then it must not be disheartening as you have been at least able to use maximum use of your available resources. With proper use of your resources, you can over time create an experience that optimally meets customer’s needs.
- An increasing number of Happy Customers – User Experience is all about customer’s experience, expectations, and needs. Moreover, you can adopt a user-oriented methodology for your website and identify what your customers exactly want and how you can deliver them with maximum satisfaction. So rather than deciding on earning more money, you must decide your ultimate goal to be happy customers as more number of satisfied customers will automatically bring your maximum gains. Additionally, it is also an excellent way to win over your competitors, especially if they fail to meet the needs of customers in the same market.
Even More Reasons for Investing in User Experience
- Enhanced Customer Support – If you are planning to enhance your better user experience, then definitely you would improve all possible interfaces. One such means is introducing a customer support chat box as this can help you identify all problems that your clients are always experiencing with your site. You can make your team work on such problems and fix them, and you can even act proactive and use these findings as a tool for the future.
- Win over your competitors – The way your users search online is a method to identify your opponent’s strategies and marketing ideas. You can spy on your clients and check out where they are moving. Running user tests on your competitors is another way to determine their course of action.
- You tend to update your site frequently – In the urge of creating excellent UX, you have to keep your website updated. And employ only advanced technology and tools. By upgrading your website with latest versions, you will be able to create more user engagement, which would eventually result in an increase in sales.
Better user experiences can result in greater results.
I am a 33-year-old gentleman from a lower-middle-class family hailing from a small village Narasinghpur in Cuttack, Odisha, INDIA. I have a post-graduate degree in M.Tech from BITS Pilani. I started blogging back in June 2014. You can check out my journey and all that I have learnt all these years on my website.