UI and UX: Your secret weapons against digital competition

DOING business in the digital age means that your website or app makes a first impression on your customer, not your sales executive. For many companies today, the entire customer journey and lifecycle is digital.

Fail to make a good first impression and you ruin your chances of converting prospects into clients. Let them down by offering a poor experience and your customers will move on to other providers in the market – on another domain – with a perfect substitute to offer.

Provide a good user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) and you convert your prospects into customers, earn their loyalty, and turn them into fans and advocates of your brand.

A good UI and UX are your secret weapons when dealing with competition on the Internet.

Food for thought

Have you heard anyone complain about Apple product being difficult to operate? Well, it’s because they’re designed to be intuitive and provide a good UI and UX from the get-go.

What do Amazon, Etsy, and Netflix have in common? A great UI and an awesome UX. Sometimes, these interfaces and experiences are built on more than just design – they’re powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Whether you’re a big enterprise-grade marketplace or a niche product or service provider, a great UI and UX can help you make a dent in the universe if it meets (or rather, exceeds) user expectations.

The world is waking up to the reality that providing a good UI and UX are non-negotiable. So, whether it is a software like Sugar CRM or a Samsung Pay, everyone is making it a priority this year.

.@SugarCRM Releases the World’s Most Beautiful #CRM. Learn more about our new modern, sleek user interface: https://t.co/vKMWXEeoW5 pic.twitter.com/OP7fPUiRdP

— SugarCRM (@SugarCRM) February 3, 2018

Actionable insights

Don’t be intimidated by the AI and ML bit of things just because some of the most leading-edge companies are doing it. The first steps to a good UI and UX are easy and results are almost instant. Here are some ideas you should explore:

Do away with complications. Whether it is your choice of website or app, your content, or your customer journey, make sure even a five-year-old can follow what you say without calling out to mama for help.

Remember that less is more. If someone can pay for their cart in two steps, don’t make them go through three. The more hurdles you put in their way, the less likely it is they’ll enjoy the experience.

Make room for error. Remember that your customers are real people and they’re bound to make mistakes with their inquiries, specifications, and orders. If you can plan for it and let them make changes without penalizing them for it, you’ll win big – guaranteed.

Under-promise and over-deliver. That’s how you provide a good experience. Set expectations that you’re sure to meet, then deliver more value than your customers can expect.

Make UI & UX enhancements your mission. Track user behaviour on your website and understand what they struggle with. Then improve those features or areas. Track again. Learn again. Improve again. UI and UX, specialists will tell you, isn’t a one-time project – it’s a continuous exercise.

There’s tech for everything

Now that you know how important UI and UX are to your business, here are a few tools you can use immediately to learn about where improvements can be made.

UserTesting – Get real users from your target audience pool to visit your site and see what attracts them the most or what they feel is the most difficult to do. Learn about their experience, quickly and effectively.

Pro tip: Use it to peek at a competitors site and learn what they do better and what they struggle with too. Want a preview? Head over to their website now.

Hotjar / CrazyEgg – Use a tiny snippet, a script, to see the heatmap on different pages of your website. What do they hover over the most, what do they click on, where does their mouse wander? Discover answers to all these questions and more through these tools.

Pro tip: Use this tool to learn about the black hole in your digital experience where hot prospects turn cold.

Lookback.io – Sometimes, your customers expressions matter more than their mouse click. This tool lets you do that. Track eye balls, facial expressions, and sounds to understand how your users feel about the web or mobile experience you offer.

Pro tip: Use it to learn from your most valued target audience, from any part of the world – but remember to choose your sample wisely.

Well, now that you know all about UI and UX, tell us in the comments section below how you plan on improving things for your users.

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not that good! ?#WednesdayWisdom #AgencyLife pic.twitter.com/5KKji9gLbt

— Focus (@FocusIMC) January 31, 2018

 

 

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