Today, mobile applications and webpages are more and more important in almost all the industries. It has been evolving into an interactive experience for users, and in order to transform a visitor into a loyal client, we should offer a high quality experience; UX design. In fact, the easiness to use and the added value provided are key factors to the success of a website & mobile app.
That is why, here at Apiumtech, we specialize in User experience design. In fact, User Experience Design is a process that we go through in order to increase the visitor’s satisfaction while interacting with an interface. The main objective is to enhance the experience by improving the usability and the fluidity of interactions. Nice and easy!
CUSTOMER CENTRIC
I hope we are all aware that UX design is absolutely a customer centric approach. What we’re doing is that we’re building the user’s confidence in our brand by providing him with an environment where he can feel comfortable while navigating. How should we do that?
- By keeping it simple. Today with all the competition and advancements, you have less time to impress customers by your web. It’s very important to make it intuitive and you always need to keep it simple and smooth.
- By making the information clean & clear. Don’t omit to be transparent regarding the user’s information because be sure that in order to build trust and increase your credibility, you need to make the user feels secure.
- By never underestimating User Testing. Put yourself in the user’s shoes. If they are unable to use features of a site, if there are constant errors, it looks like the project has not been completed, as if the developers didn’t really care to finalize it. User testing will just make the developer pay attention to functions or options that were not thought about, and that will help in getting a better usability.
- By always double checking. There’s nothing worst than errors due to a lack of attention. The website might load quickly and have an amazing design, but if you didn’t pay attention to details and have spelling mistakes or even broken buttons, you’re just telling to the user that you didn’t spend enough time to do a last check up and that you actually don’t care.
HOW DOES APIUMTECH DO IT?
Let’s start with: it depends. In fact, obviously we take into consideration different factors as the budget, the clients, the deadlines and the project itself which might result in small changes in the process to follow, but mainly, our process is the following:
- Strategy – As always, first step is strategy. Why? because that’s when you basically determine the objectives you want to achieve and their priorities. In other words, we get the input of requirements, we collect information regarding the image and the brand of the company, the business model and the audience of the product. All of that to transform them into User Stories which will guide the project.
- Research & analysis – To have a well thought user experience, you need to do some research and then analyze the data collected. That’s how we’re able to build the “personas”, a representation of the end users that use our web or application. To consider all the possible actions, we build user cases which are sorts of scenarios of what happens when the users are interacting with our product.
- Design – As you can see in the image above, the design phase has a sort of cycle. To validate the assumptions made, we go back and force based on the user’s feedback. We do sketches and prototypes and “test it” on the end user until we validate the perfect product or interface.
- Delivery to developers – Once the design has been done and chosen, we work with various tools that facilitate the integration to development.
Ok so now that you know more about UX design and the process we go through at Apiumtech to try and provide the best experience to users, you might ask what are the benefits of going through all that work?
BENEFITS OF UX DESIGN
- Competitive advantage – Having a web or app is nothing original nowadays and to be able to compete with the rest of the industry, offering a good experience will definitely help your business.
- Lower costs – the more logical it is, the less support you need to provide. In fact, you’re improving the ease of use and learning for your customers, so yes, if it’s well thought, then you can be sure that you won’t need someone there to explain how to accomplish tasks that are not obvious. Not only are you reducing user assistance costs, but also development costs, maintenance costs, redesign costs, diminishes support costs, and documentation costs.
- Get the user “attached” to your product – By offering a beautiful experience the user falls in love with your product, it almost feels as if it were made for them. In fact, it makes it more ideal for them as UX design enhances the usability of the interface as well as satisfaction of the user, increasing therefore trust in your system. This usually means an increase in the audience size and in the number of return visitors, giving them the confidence to recommend the system to others and an increase in your sales.
MARKETING & UX TESTING
From a marketing point of view, many User Experience tests can be used as tools to increase the results of our marketing efforts.
An example could be the fact that you can understand better how you compare with your competition on the market. In fact, by collecting data on your customer and by analyzing the way that behave on your web and your competitor’s web, you can determine why do they prefer one to another.
Also, it’s the perfect way to test your marketing content. Instead of having to launch a campaign and discover later on that it doesn’t provoque the results you were expecting, with UX design tests you can do that ahead of time and therefore iterate it until you reach better results.
Finally, mainly all companies build their target’s profile, who they are, what they do and how they feel. User testing can help confirm assumptions and determine the how and why behind the persona profile.
In conclusion, UX design is customer centric but it isn’t just about having an amazing design and about the way the users interact with the interface, it actually provides many benefits to the business itself as it encourages the visitors to use the platform.
