UX design (user experience) is the study of users’ needs and objectives when we talk about their experience of interacting with a website or an application.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Therefore, its development is better left to UX agencies. Below we will tell you why this will be the best solution.
UX is about when you use the site and feel that everything is in the right place, you do not spend a lot of time looking for information that interests you, and everything is clear and easy to understand. It means that behind this beautiful appearance of the site is a good UX agency.
Focus on the Target Audience
Top UX agencies make great websites for people, not search engine robots. The first step before creating a website is to determine the customer’s avatar who will buy the product. To do this, you need to do a target audience analysis. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Why will people want to use this product?
- What characteristics of the product are essential to the customer?
- How will the customer buy the product if determined?
- What is their monthly income?
- What is their marital status?
- What are their hobbies, interests, and passions?
Don’t forget that customer needs change, and UX agencies should analyze your audience constantly to update your product.
Why UX is Necessary for Modern Business
What lies beneath the words “user experience”? How do UX agencies affect a company’s long-term success, and what can lead to financial losses?
The success of UX is affected by several values that are important to the audience:
- Safety comes first — the product should not pose a threat to users, their data, finances;
- stability is essential — the service should not break down be unavailable;
- speed of operation, system response to button presses, and other user actions play a significant role: if an application takes a long time to load and lags, gives out errors, you won’t want to work with it;
- the product should have a user-friendly structure and navigation, understandable at an intuitive level;
- Technical support should be consistent with the overall style and tone of the resource, aimed at the convenience of the client;
- A unified style of high-quality design content is essential.
Why Businesses Need to Consider User Experience
By providing customers with a good UX from UX agencies, the company increases their loyalty. For example, if a person turned to a product with a specific need and the product helped them quickly and comfortably close it, with a high probability, they will recommend this service or resource to others. As a result, the company will get repeat purchases, good reviews, and free recommendations.
The user experience helps clients make purchases — as a consequence, the company’s profit grows. The mechanics here are simple: if the ordering process is fast, convenient, and does not cause additional questions, there will be fewer doubts from customers. They won’t go away to “think about it, see some more,” but buy right away.
Too, an intuitively understandable product reduces the cost of consultation and guidance on usage, “tweaking,” and redesigning.
In a competitive environment, a thoughtful UX is essential for a company. You can lose many customers to an uncomfortable website or app even with a new product, a reasonable sales force, and a communication strategy.
How User Experience is Researched
The very notion of user experience comes from the moment users start interacting with a product, either during its use after release or with research during the design phase.
User experience research helps understand how attractive and user-friendly the product will be, identify strengths and points of growth, and compare it to its competitors’ counterparts. You can find out how exactly users work with the product, what they lack, whether the navigation is straightforward, whether it is easy to find the information they need, how people assess the appearance, interface design, and much more.
The researcher’s tools are interviews with users and many technical indicators (metrics) reflecting the user experience when using the product. For example, the number of clicks required to solve a user’s problem, the percentage of errors and successful operations, and other metrics are measured.
This research is the first step in working with UX agencies; further, you may see the user interaction scenarios with the product and the formalized idea of the project. The next step is to create prototypes and then conduct testing.
Why Should We Even Think About the User Experience?
Why can’t we just give a pretty picture? Because profit is vital for business, a beautiful design without considering the client’s comfort will not work. So, if you work out the main points of contact with the customer on your site or in the app (contacts, pop-ups with an offer, online consultations, sliders, etc.), you can significantly increase the conversion even in one day rate of the resource.
But improving UX metrics once and for all will not work: they need to be monitored all the time because they can change over time depending on many factors. For example, mobile devices have increased over the past decade, and companies that did not pay attention to the adaptability of their software products for different devices have suffered losses.
We go to the user to save time and money on a non-viable idea and, conversely, to squeeze the most out of a great product. So who else should we talk to about how the product should look, how it will be used, what problems arise during use?
Let your customer be a full participant in creating the product. Not only will this approach save money on unnecessary development, but it will also make your users a little happier; they will need to devote less energy to figuring out how your product works.
How UX Agencies Help You Save Money and Increase Revenue
UX agency research and iterative testing save company resources. You’ll spend ten times more if you don’t consider the user experience by fixing a problem at the development stage. And if you’re talking about a product already on the market, that amount should be multiplied by another 10.
UX agencies make the website or app usability, thoughtful navigation, quality content, visual hierarchy: if you pay attention to each of these points, you get an intuitive product to the user, help solve their problems quickly and easily, and increase its revenue.
Does a Startup Need UX Agencies at this Stage of Product Development?
Of course, you say, there are so many tasks for the team at the startup that a person who knows UX design would be indispensable. But is this true? Let’s look into it.
All design from UX agencies is based on common sense. At the early stages of product development, you should pay attention only to the core features and all the “features” you can add later. Try to do everything at once. It will take you an indefinite period of development, and you will have to redo your product now and then, “fitting” all the “necessary” elements in your opinion.
In general, there are a few things you need to know and understand. The most awkward services you are likely to encounter are two.
The product is at a late stage of development when the main functions are combined with additional (and sometimes wholly unnecessary) functionality.
The Idea for the Product is not Completely Obvious
Also, in the UX design, there is a specific reference point. For example, when UX agencies design a system of internal communication, we should focus on the interface of Facebook groups. Why should we do so? It’s straightforward: if you do not have enough experience in UX design, you should use the development of successful products as a springboard to gain some skills.
The most important thing is to build a hierarchy of your product’s features, identify the most important ones, and focus on them for the first time. The next thing is to determine what the users want, not what you want them to do. UX agencies will help you with this.
Of course, you have to make a simple prototype. This way, you can test the layout of your product and get the first feedback from friends, colleagues, etc.