What Is UX
User Experience (UX) is a term used by web developers, webmasters and designers to express total satisfaction that a user obtains once he used your product or your system.
If their experience is a good one, then they are happy. If your users don’t have a good experience they will not visit again your website or use your application.
And they will talk about it with their friends and last but not least, indirectly to the search engines.
User Experience (UX) represents the perception remained in anyone’s mind after a series of interactions between people, devices and events – or a combination of them.
UX Designers focus on site architecture, page layout and on the elements of interaction and accessibility.
How Can User Experience Help You In The Long Run
Think about it as a physical location.
Let’s say that you own a clothing store located in one of the biggest malls that your city has to offer.
Considering the fact that you have a very high competition, simply because your store can be found between multiple stores that are selling the same products, the User Experience concept starts from the moment that a potential customer crosses your threshold – unless you have a strong brand awareness.
From that moment every single detail can be crucial in the buying process.
How your store looks like, the layout, the clothes that are hanging on the plastic mannequins, price tags, the dressing room, the checkout process, music and even the predominant smell, as Martin Lindstrom stated:
“Of all our senses, smell is the most primal and deeply rooted and closely tied to how we experience brands and products. The feel of a product also plays an important role on whether we decide to buy it. Colors can also be very powerful in generating emotional connect to a brand. Colors can increase brand recognition by up to 80%. Colored ads hold consumer’s attention much more than black & white ones.”
How can you transpose this into the “on-line world”?
If they are visiting your website and browsing through your products, it means they at least have some sort of intention to buy something – here UX comes in handy.
You have to keep your potential customers happy during their visit. They don’t want to feel overwhelmed.
Everything has to be set-up in the perfect position and place. Every piece of information has to appear at the exact moment.
Think about it like this way: even your grandma should be able to buy a product from your e-commerce website – golden rule is: keep it simple.
Image source: https://freshlime.com/
If they are happy with their experience – they will come back.
If they are happy with their experience – they will recommend your business to all their friends.
If they are happy with their experience during the shopping spree and after the purchase – they will come back for more and recommend your business.
This is keeping your customers happy – This is developing a friendly relationship with your customers.
In other words: you’re building customer loyalty – long time benefit.
Making The Best Out Of UX – Golden Rules
Opt in for a simple and easy to navigate design. Drop out all your compromises and be present on all the devices in the best possible way.
Give up to mono-chromatic descriptions and create sensory experiences. Tell your story in pictures and text because it is the best strategy for long term success.
Storytelling in words and pictures
Plain text in a picture or two, abstractive applied in the home page, the blog news or strategically placed in your blog, no longer have the same effect as they used to have back in the days.
Nowadays if you want success in web design, the secret revolves around the concept of User Experience.
That means you have to pass the limit of unidirectional communication and distance and to try and bring the customer in the company’s environment, created especially for him.
With design, pictures and in particular, text, though always the decade anthem “Content is king” is in the spotlight, we often overlook one of the most important details – Emotion is convincing.
Image source: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/
Create real and concrete experience that gives the user the impression that you know him personally even if he never entered before on your website.
Show to your customers that your product is not about money and market share, but about him (the customer) and how it could make his life more beautiful.
Simple design
Strong essences are held in small bottles. An undesirable result of extreme creativity has always been a place full of ideas in which we can hardly notice the brilliant ones.
Differentiate yourself by simplicity and elements that prove their place in the page.
Help your users to observe what you want them to see, because your website talks about quality, value and respect for the eye of the beholder.
Responsive design
It became indispensable. Less because it’s fashionable and all specialized articles talk about it, and more because users are multi-device and your website must be present in perfect shape and adapted to any of them.
Because your goal is to be everywhere at the highest level and transform satisfied users into satisfied customers.
80% of internet users own a smartphone – using their smartphone to check their e-mails or book a table at their restaurant and many other different activities over the web.
Image Source: http://www.smartinsights.com/
Navigation symbols
From the website presentation and the complexity of an online store with hundreds of pages, menu navigation and additional options will always be the circulatory system of an effective web design.
This means a focus on user experience and easy to access content, navigation occupying an important place among the priorities.
Arrows, pluses and three parallel lines are just a few simple symbols that are trending.
Image source: http://www.dtelepathy.com/
Highlighted links and big buttons, reducing the number of levels, sorting options and combining labels with relevant pictures. The options are endless and using them in a native way will take the user directly to the desired content.
Biggest Mistakes in UX – Rookie Flaws in Your Design
For any entrepreneur, the website dedicated to his business aims to win new customers, to increase the level of sales and the company’s brand awareness.
Your visitors expect to find useful and easily accessible content in an appealing format. Therefore, to optimize the image of your site you must avoid some of the most often committed mistakes.
1. Setting the wrong contrast and colors
Calling the services of a skilled web designer can save you from losing visitors to your site. Some of the users that are landing on your website are occasional users and if you don’t capture their attention, they’re gone – you must provide a palette of colors, tones and contrast that don’t bother their eyes and don’t hinder the reading process.
2. Pages are too crowded
Loading pages with too much content, with useless links or too many advertisements will redirect your customers to other sites (mainly to your competition). The customer gets tired when he has to make decisions in a maze of unconnected information. Therefore, it is recommended to group information in submenus.
Moreover, center your attention on eliminating too long text which can be found in one block. Instead, you can group text in smaller windows with an attractive preview. Users will choose the necessary information based on the description of the preview.
Image source: http://www.topdesignmag.com/
Pay attention to the links! Do not overlook the links that send to invalid pages or pages under construction. Website maintenance gives a touch of professionalism and shows respect for your users.
3. Graphics and poor quality photos
You must realize that your business website is dedicated as a business card and can create a favorable picture if you invest in the services of web design specialists and in the acquisition of quality images that arouse the interest of users for your published content.
The use of free stock images can make you lose customers. Consider the possibility that the same pictures were used by other sites and this might print a poor reputation about your business. Choose paid pictures and make sure you are gaining the copyright. In this way you will ensure that you are the only website that has a certain image.
4. Do not use Flash or automatically music applications
They are annoying and they are both sending away your visitors.
What Is Conversion Rate and How Do We Measure It?
Online conversion rate is one of the most important indicators in measuring the performance of online marketing actions.
Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs and online business owners encounter difficulties when it comes to define what it is and how to calculate conversion rate.
Here’s how to calculate conversion rate: divide the number of visitors to your web page that did what you wanted them do with the total number of visitors. Conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to do what you want them to do.
In conclusion, we have many elements that form the conversion rate:
- the number of visitors to a web page for a certain period of time;
- an objective action that you have for those visitors;
- a system for measuring the activity of visitors to your web page
- a flow of movement of users in website
Using Goals in Google Analytics, we can measure whether a site meets its goals or not, and check the Funnel steps for problems that usually arise preventing the achievement of these objectives.
If we’re interested in the conversion rate of a website / online store, using Goals and Funnel (channels) helps us in better understanding the buyout process and optimize it.
In online stores, when following the conversion rate, the main measured objective is Ecommerce Conversion Rate, but this does not apply to a presentation website or a blog.
When a user will achieve the desired goal of the site, this goal is scored as a conversion in Google Analytics account.
What Can We Measure With Goals in Google Analytics?
Completion of the contact form / inquiry
Subscriptions to our newsletter
Number of accounts created in a website
Blog articles comments
Time spent on site / blog / online shop
The number of pages visited site / blog / online shop
Downloaded informative materials
Adding products to cart, etc.
How Can UX Help You Increasing Your Conversion Rate
Conversion rate optimization is one of the most important components in the online marketing strategy.
In an environment in which we have so many choices, opportunities and information, conversion rate optimization can be defined as the art and science of capturing the attention of visitors and turn them into buyers.
Specifically, this is a marketing strategy, whose primary purpose is to maximize revenue while increasing the just customers by personalizing their experience.
The average conversion rate for ecommerce is 3%, which means that 97% of visitors leave a website without buying. Focusing your efforts on conversion rate optimization will aim to increase the number of customers and maintain their loyalty.
Most Valuable Things To Keep In Mind And Tools You Could Use
Conversion rate – the percentage of users who fulfill a predefined purpose called conversion. This may be a sale, a filled up form or whatever you think is important to achieve the objectives of the analyzed website.
Macro conversion – conversion type that has a direct impact on the main objectives of a website. If the purpose of an ecommerce website is to attract more sales, then a macro-conversion will be defined as a transaction.
Micro-conversion – consumer way to checkout including repeated interactions with the website.
Conversion path – is the path that a visitor makes on your website through the checkout process (or any type of conversion).
Author Bio: Mike is a Digital Marketing professional and currently working as a PR manager at #TruConversion.com He truly loves Online marketing and anything digital. He is very focused about who he works for. Once he starts work, he is fully committed to his duties and responsibilities at that company. Catch him on Twitter here.
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