What is User Experience?

The User Experience Professionals Association defines user experience (UX) like this: “Every aspect of the user’s interaction with a product, service, or company that make up the user’s perceptions of the whole. User experience design as a discipline is concerned with all the elements that together make up that interface, including layout, visual design, text, brand, sound and interaction.”

User experience is about the overall experience of a person when using a product (such as a website), specifically referring to how easy or pleasing the product is to use. Digital user experience encompasses all aspects of a person’s interaction with your web or mobile site including behavior, actions, perceptions and satisfaction. Putting an emphasis on user experience will not only benefit your customers but will consequently deliver results for your company.

Implementing key SEO components and strategic digital marketing campaigns might be the key to online success, however, if users are not engaging with the content on your website, results will be limited.  Increasing site visits and interactions in a forceful way might not be practicable, but you can take control of the actions taken on your site to then give a boost to features and improve the level of customer experience.

In essence, user experience gauges the site’s interactions quality, which in turn measures the quantity of site success and conversions. An increasing number of businesses are finding the value gained from investing in user experience as part of their digital marketing strategy. Many companies have seen tremendous benefits from their commitment to maintaining customer experience at the forefront of their digital marketing campaigns.

The adoption of user experience as the guiding force for improvements and enhancements, allowing companies to make changes based on user interaction and not just what they think will be the best for their customers. By measuring user interactions on their clients’ sites, they have seen improvements and results.

Why UX matters?

The main components of a high level User Experience success is increasing attention and coordinating efforts. It does not matter which is the level of the site’s creativeness and content optimization if your target audience is not able to efficiently interact with it and enjoy that interaction. Your website provides that crucial first impression of your company allowing only a few minutes to win a client over or turn them away.

By enhancing and improving websites based on user experience, companies have created momentum to drive their clients forward and produce results. Delivering a good and understandable website navigation will certainly make the difference and gives the opportunity to many companies persuade their site’s visitors and potential clients and finally convert them to loyal customers.

To put is simply, UX has a vital importance in the digital world because it tries to satisfy and fulfill the needs of the user. Its goal is to provide experiences in a positive way that maintains users loyal to the brand or product. Moreover, UX allows you to define the journeys of your customer on your website, which are most conductive to the success of the company.

A good User Experience meets all the exact customer’s needs and it is necessary if you are willing to persuade and attract customers from your website or your application. According to many studies:

• 79% of visitors are going to leave the site or the app if the content is not optimized.
• If your site is not mobile friendly, mobile users are five times more likely to leave a task.
• 88% of the customers who have been confronted with a bad UX are likely not to visit the site or the app again.
• 39% of people will not continue engaging with a website if the load time is long.
• 51% of people believe that the most critical issue about many company websites is the lack of contact information.
• UX design is really helpful and useful for boosting conversion rates up to 400%.
• A well designed user interface affects the conversion rates in a positive way too up to a 200 percent.

Google has indicated that UX is one factor in search engine rankings. They want to deliver results that customers want to land on so more people use their search engine. Serving up a crummy site is not going to please searchers. Thus a site must be easy to use, navigate and understand.

Further, the Usability Professionals Association defines six key benefits to adding UX to the design and development process:

• increased productivity
• increased sales
• decreased training and support costs
• reduced development time and costs
• reduced maintenance costs
• increased customer satisfaction

The point is that your website is now akin to someone walking into your store or office. If someone encounters a bad experience, doesn’t find what he/she needs, or not be able to reach someone, he/she is going to leave and not come back.

You can also think of it in this way: the more time, money and effort you spend for the quality of your site and make it seems fantastic upfront, the less you’ll likely have to deal with bugs, changes or any other issues after its release.

Writer: Lefteris Daniilidis

Graphic Designer: Perrine Kerambrun