User Experience - What is it and how can it be improved?

User Experience: the place where technology, marketing and psychology meet

And in the online environment, as in everyday life, the first impression matters. Especially if you want to sell a product or offer a service.

The world of online commerce is getting bigger every day, customers are becoming more demanding, they know exactly what they want and will not be satisfied with half a measure. And the sad truth is that no matter how good we are at what we do, no matter how unbeatable our offers are, if we do not provide them with a tailored experience, they will not hesitate to leave the site and launch into a new search.

In the article on SEO optimization we tried to explain how to get to the top positions in Google searches as long as we understand its principles we take into account some good practices (or if we turn to a good SEO agency). After passing this first step and attracting the attention of potential customers, it's time to think about how to convince them to stay with us as long as possible.

Something about the human eye and attention

It seems that on the internet we only have 8 seconds to convince users of the quality of the site and the experience it offers.

We also tend to read diagonally the content we find online to find what interests us, which means… about 20% of the words on a web page. A good enough reason to focus on the user experience: if we fail to convince them with crafty words, we can do it with the help of color palette, site architecture, images used and all the other elements on the site.

A website is the business card of a business, and its personality must be transparent through each pixel. Everything must be chosen carefully - the logo and colors we want users to associate with our company, how much space we occupy and how much space we leave free, how we group the information and what fonts we use… Now there are programs and technologies that analyze how it moves the eyes of visitors to a site, and they show us which are the hot areas, which we can take advantage of when building the user experience, and which are the cold ones, respectively the ones that attract us the least attention.

Here are the lessons we can learn by studying this side of consumer behavior:

• the most important information and the most valuable content must be placed at the top of the page;
• if you have a call to action button, the best position for it is at the bottom of the page, where the visitor finishes scrolling the content (unless you have a simple landing page, where it is obvious that the button should be in the spotlight) ;
• headlines should be written as large and clear as possible, and information should be 'broken' into small, easy-to-read blocks of text; as for guidance, due to the fact that we are used to reading from left to right, we will automatically favor the content on the left side of the page - this is simply how the human mind works.

A little psychology before we dive into the murky waters of technical aspects…

But it is important to put ourselves in the consumer's shoes whenever we have the opportunity and to think: what would they like to see on our website? And, most importantly, how would he like to see all this?

In general, it would be good to be able to rely on the feedback of existing customers or on the information that the marketing department has about them, but if it is a small business or a start-up, we can very well trust in our own intuition, but without forgetting to analyze everything in the smallest details. After all, we are, in our turn, online consumers and we know what we like and what we don't like to see on a site, so it is obvious that we will not want to repeat the mistakes of our competitors.

Because we talked about psychology, we need to be clear that in trying to "sell" ourselves online we need to take every opportunity to show the customer that we are trustworthy and that we are the best option.

Our mission and values ​​must be as visible as possible, as well as our story and contact information, in order to start building a relationship with the potential customer. It is also preferable to have, in one form or another, a hierarchical structure of information and content, through which the visitor can navigate intuitively, realizing at every step what to do next. Ideally, we should also include testimonials from satisfied customers, to motivate those who cross our threshold (in this case - those who do us the honor of giving us their click) to consider us, or, why not ?, to buy from us.

But above all, as in a house, if we still made the analogy with the threshold, everything must be orderly and airy, in order to be easier to scrutinize the watchful eye of the visitor.

The importance of UX in terms of marketing

By 2020, the consumer experience will surpass both the price and the product itself as a method of differentiation in a competitive market. We tend to pay special attention to brand experience, but also to the way a product or service makes us feel, and these elements must be included in the UX design.

Statistics show that 89% of customers will turn to a competitor when they are not satisfied with their experience and that 94% of first impressions are based on design. In addition, the credibility of the sites is judged primarily by the way they look and how well it is optimized, only then by the content.

Also in terms of marketing, it is worth mentioning that our work is not over after we have optimized the site for search engines. Once we have the content, with the keywords and all the other details that can help the consumer to orient himself, we need to keep him on the site for as long as possible, giving him a quality experience. This adds to the credibility of the site and joins the efforts of SEO specialists to take a site as high as possible in Google searches.

All of these contribute to the overall image of the brand or business and can ultimately influence sales.

And yet… What is UX (User Experience)?

User experience design is a process that helps us create products that provide users with memorable and quality experiences.

In short, here we are talking about all the methods and approaches used to ensure that a site responds specifically and appropriately to the needs of the market to which we refer. This means that every piece of the site matters and that nothing can be left to chance. From the speed of loading the site and the optimization for mobile, to the customer experience at checkout, everything must go smoothly, and the waiting time should be as short as possible.

The design must be as simple and intuitive as possible, so that no customer gets lost along the way. If he encounters errors every time he fills in a field on the site, then his experience will not be a good one. If he enters the site with a specific purpose (to search for a certain article or a certain product) and fails to get where he intended, again- he will not think of this process as a positive experience.

The main goal of UX is to eliminate as many of the possible obstacles that the visitor of a site may encounter, so that he stays there as long as possible and, ideally, to buy what is offered to him.

Kevin P. Nichols and Donald Chesnut, authors of the UX For Dummies guide, summed up the idea as best they could: a well-developed user experience means building your site based on the needs of the consumers you address. To achieve this, everything must be thought of as a whole, and web design, customer understanding (based on user research), business strategy planning and data analysis must be brought together in a coherent whole.

There are four important steps behind designing a truly good user experience:

• a clear and well-defined premise of experience, goals and objectives;
  
• documentation to support and define all technical aspects, functionality and content necessary to achieve the objectives. As it is about the people - our client, our master; so the whole experience must be built around his needs and expectations;
• a testing process to verify that the design is good; validation is a crucial point, so it is very necessary to check the designs and the direction we are heading as we complete each stage;
• a coherent plan - each goal and objective of a business must correspond to a certain step that the customer takes as he advances in this so-called user experience, so we must be very clear about what we intend to do in order to be efficient in developing an easy-to-use product. That is why, here as well as in the case of businesses, we need from the very beginning a concrete and current plan, with quantifiable objectives, which we should tick on paper as we fulfill them.

A good UX design is not visible to the naked eye.

Only after we left the site and realized how fast everything went do we realize that we gave gold: the ideal user experience.

Gone are the days when everything had to stand out in order to make room in the mind and intentions of the consumer. Today we have to do more with less, and things must always be as we used to be: simple and predictable. There is no room for aggressive pop-ups, poorly placed banners or clutter through the categories of the site, and here are some examples of companies that have understood better than anyone what it means to give the customer what he expects from you.

It's all about the workflow (the steps the user takes in his online journey: search bar -> search -> click on the result -> jump to another page -> click on the "About" section, etc.) and the information architecture, ie the way it is structured on the site (ideally logically and grouped into specific categories). Revolut has understood how important it is to have all the information that helps you manage your finances, so group your expenses into categories such as transportation, restaurant or shopping at various stores, to have a clear record of spending and more easily analyze what is really needed and what is wasted.

They also solved an important problem that they knew card users were facing: blocking in case of losing it. Just by entering the application, you can block your card with a single click, which saves you from the extended waiting time at the bank's call center or from going to the nearest branch. With its friendly and easy-to-use interface, Revolut has managed to attract 180,000 customers in the first 3 months since its launch, and today has over 3 million users.

But the reverse is also true: you can use the user experience as a differentiation strategy even if you work in a very competitive category or sell the most common products, such as clothes and personal care products. As I said at the beginning, customers are looking to buy a story, an experience, rather than a stand-alone product, so it's important to invest in UX design.

A special experience turns a visitor into a client, and the client into a lawyer of your business. So now, more than ever, it is appropriate to open the company's website, navigate it carefully and ask the crucial question: have we done enough for the user or are there still ways we can improve it? The answer will be reflected in the the latter on the business. And for that, maybe you should come to our site to clarify your options.