The User Experience of your website has probably been neglected for far too long, if it has ever even been addressed at all.
Though it has become a real element through which search engines determine your worthiness to be placed in top positions within search results, most businesses only understand it as a “buzzword” coined by Don Norman in the mid-90’s. Essentially the UX of your website is what stands between you and the conversion from prospect to customer.
Establishing an online presence is far more than just creating a website. Many businesses don’t fully understand the actual purpose of a website or how powerful it can be for lead generation and closing a sale.
Designing a website that incorporates UX design elements is becoming more in demand as businesses begin to understand the importance of UX. Having useless bells and whistles on your website, no longer makes it a good design. Creating the right balance between an excellent user experience and the functionality of the site for your business goals is paramount.
As with anything “new”, so to speak, there is ample room for misconceptions. UX is no exception to this. Many misunderstand everything from the basic fundamentals of what produces exceptional UX to drawing false conclusions about what approach works best.
Perhaps these misconceptions about UX Design are a lack of understanding how to measure a user’s experiences, or possibly it’s simply too new of a concept for businesses to comprehend. Whatever the case, I’m here to educate you about the major misconceptions that exist regarding UX, and the critical role it plays in the conversion of your site.
UX is UI
Image source: Erik Flowers
User Interface Design is not the same as User Experience. This is a great fallacy that leads designers and business owners down an incorrect path when considering the website design.
UI is the end result of UX. UI is what people will see and touch. UI is what results when effective UX is considered. If you have good user interface design, it is a direct result of the research and thoughtfulness you have placed within the UX process.
In truth, thoughtful UX takes into consideration how the user is going to interact with you whether it’s online or off-line. The goal of building a good User Experience is to evoke the user to action. An exceptional user experience provides the user with a sense of the meaning and value of the business, as well as arousing an emotional connection between the business and the user.
User experience is not limited to one source. You provide user experience with the service you provide, the website you design, the applications used, even events that you sponsor. When you contemplate the source, many things are taken into consideration; cognitive science, computer science, human behaviors, and psychology. In addition to these considerations, business functions must also be carefully thought through. Marketing, communication, design, architecture and support are items that facilitate a good user experience, in conjunction with the aforementioned elements, from the first encounter to the close of the sale.
UX Design is design thinking
Image source: Tim Thianthai
Design thinking is literally troubleshooting. You have a problem to solve; understanding your target audience. With design thinking you explore ideas and constraints to better understand your problem so that you can better understand how to resolve this problem.
However, you may have a better understanding of your audience, but that does not directly translate to a better understanding of the UX design. User experience design, in a sense, is a much broader process. Understanding the business model and doing your homework with regards to user research enables you to connect with your audience in a meaningful way through your website, service or product.
Cool design makes better UX
Image source: Vince de Asis
Without exception, it’s fun to have an uber cool design, especially if you’re a developer. It’s exciting to build a site with all the bells and whistles…..”Look what my site can do!” It’s easy for designers to fall into this trap as well. Having all these “cool” functions does not equate to the user feeling compelled to engage with the site. In fact, sometimes it’s just a deterrent because it’s too complicated.
Design is about the entire piece of work. The ease of use, performance and how the whole design can be streamlined to achieve maximum UX. If the process is too complex or cumbersome for the user, this will negatively impact conversions and product usage.
A design centered on real life usage is a must for any designer. Why use a bearing when a bushing will suffice? You want to create a product that will fit the task, easy to understand, usable as well as enjoyable to use.
Bottom line, make it like a K.I.S.S.- Keep It Simple, Stupid.
UX is about usability
Usability is an essential element of web design, you simply cannot ignore the principles of the business and how you are targeting your audience. Usability does no good if you have no understanding of the behavioral responses of your target audience. Usability is rendered useless if it’s not accompanied by learnability.
Some processes are just going to be more complicated than others, and that’s okay, as long as it’s easy to learn the process. If the process on the site is easy to learn the usability be exponentially increased. If the process to learn the action itself is too complicated, you will lose your audience as well as the potential conversion.
There’s no need for a UX specialist
Ha! Just as important as the developer and site designer is the UX specialist. If your website development does not include the assistance of a UX specialist, I can guarantee your site will not perform to its full potential; traffic will be low, bounce rate high, and conversions nearly non-existent.
Your designer will create you a visually stunning site, with no backbone. Your developer will develop a kick-ass site that functions like Amazon™ on steroids, but is so complicated, even Stephen Hawking will have difficulty navigating through it.
Your UX specialist will take all of that, reel in the over-the-top elements that will surely negatively impact the sites performance, and combine that with their knowledge of your target audience, your business model, and their general knowledge about human behavior and emotion resulting in a spectacular user experience for your visitors.
A UX specialist or team will spend a great deal of effort researching what your particular target is looking for. These specialists help you identify how best to solve your problem. The tools they use give them real data to analyze, it’s not guess work or conjecture. Interviews will be conducted, perhaps surveys will be distributed to glean the real intent of your particular targets.
At the end of the day, you simply cannot have a fantastic conversions without thoughtful user experience design, and you can’t have that without a UX specialist.
UX design is easy
Perhaps if you have a crystal ball this would be easier. But alas, most of us don’t have some mystical oracle to advise us how to design a site that will appeal to our target audience.
Though we use useful tools to learn as much as we can about your business and your target audience, there is not a one size fits all solution. This is probably the most common misconception among designers and clients; the belief that your business falls into category “A” therefore solution “AB” is perfect.
Another trap I see again and again with companies is the notion that they are just like their end user. If this were true, you would not be reading this article. Businesses are NOT the end user, you already have your problem solved; you already have the products or services you’re trying to sell. By that very situation your behavior toward a website will be different than those of your target audience.
An added disparity to the UX design is communication between developers, designers and clients. Overcoming the hurdles of explanation why a particular design, module or code won’t suit the end user. It goes back to the fact that developers and designers are not disciplined in UX experience.
UX is not about how you randomly think users will interact. It’s about skilled, precise calculation built from mountains of data carefully sifted through and analyzed.
UX doesn’t need testing
Image source: Tyler Zenk
Did you buy your car before test driving it? Did you take the word of the company that it was a great car and had everything you wanted or needed? Probably not. Just as you took your car for a test drive, website UX also needs to be test driven.
From our perspective, we have put together a detailed, finely-tuned strategy for the user experience. All aspects of a site has been gone over with a fine toothed comb and should work EXACTLY as we expect. Therein lies the problem with testing it ourselves; we have too much knowledge of the site. Again, we are not the end user, the business is not the end user, only the end user can determine if the site actually produces the results we expect.
Blind testing is essential for testing UX. Real life people taking the site for a test drive. People who have no idea how it is supposed to work will reveal things you hadn’t even thought about.
Even with careful planning, some “right” answers will not be found until the site is tested for true end user experience.
UX is a single discipline
This could not be further from the truth if it grew legs and ran! Everything we’ve talked about thus far is ALL user experience, from educating the clients, the research, the site design, the functional development of the site to the final testing. UX is far from a single discipline. It is the common awareness of all the elements that make up a cohesive website experience for the user.
Each project has its own set of challenges that require multiple skillsets, with a hierarchy of “technicians”, if you will, to overcome those challenges. Each person on the team has specific focuses that are all intertwined to become the end product; a website that will convert easily, function properly and visitors will return because the first experience was exceptional.
UX is not a must
Regardless of whether you are producing a tangible product or an interactive experience like a website, UX is what, in the end, will convert to a sale. The whole process start to finish is about how your client feels about their perceived experience. If you do not take this seriously and wave it off as just another buzzword for the day, you will not realize the ROI (return on investment) you are seeking.
Again, this is for all aspects of business. Incorporating the user experience in the development of your products, services or websites is an absolute must if you expect to have satisfied customers or visitors to your site.
Ending thoughts
Any organization or business that is ready and willing to accept UX as an integral part of their business will find that their bottom-line will drastically be affected in a very pleasant way.
A wise business willing to change the mindset to a sustained and centralized UX mindset will see positive changes throughout the entire business. When teams learn think about problems in a different way, they also learn to solve them in a different way.
Those who engineer your products will think like a user and anticipate what a user might desire. Even your design or marketing department will begin to think outside the box, developing strategies that go beyond, “Does it look pretty?”, they’ll consider the functionality of what they are doing and how the end user could be more engaged.
A happy customer is a recurring customer. When you deliver the user experience that the customer is expecting, perhaps even better than expected, they will come back for more of your offerings. Over time you can re-market to a satisfied customer.
Give a customer less of an experience than they expect, not only will you lose them, chances are they will share that experience with other people. That too will affect your bottom line, and not in a good way.
Catering to the user experience is no longer an option for your business, not in your website design nor in your product or service development.
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