UX in technical terms means user experience design. However, user experience design is a concept that has many dimensions and it includes a lot of things other than just design and coding. It is the thought that is put behind creating that particular design and much more.
What is your UX?
The focus of you UX is largely on the usability of the website or the product. It is designing, while keeping the customer in mind. It is basically where you are trying to create a website, which will generate positive emotions or great experiences for the customer or end user when he interacts with your website. The overall idea is to keep the customer as the focal point while designing anything.
You might wonder why this is important for a small business? Let’s look at the elements that matter to better explain why UX is important.
Elements that matter for UX
Successful U X designs consider elements like
Usability
The structure of your website should be easy to navigate and be intuitive to a great level.
Functionality
Everything that is there on your website should serve a purpose. Gone are the days of flashing gimmicky banners. If a particular element does not serve a purpose, it should be removed.
First impression
First impression, of your website matters a lot in UX. Does your site communicate what it wants to in the first few seconds is critical to hold on to that customer.
Adaptability
Today more and more customers are viewing your websites via mobiles. Ensuring that your website is adaptable to different screens, will contribute a great deal in customer retention.
Easy navigation
Spending time on your site architecture will help you determine the use of navigation. When someone lands on your website, they are expecting certain information. It needs to be easily and intuitively available.
Design
Clean design, good placement of elements, colour palette, elements used and overall structure matter when it comes to a good design. Having a great slider that takes a long time to load, will only result in Bounce rates.
This important elements eventually lead to a customer’s interest in your product or service.
Why should UX matter to a small business?
The customer is impatient
According to a study by Akamai
47% of people expect the page to load in less than 2 seconds.
40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
It is crucial for small business to not lose people just because the website took longer to load. We could have great offerings, however if a customer does not wait to see it, then we are losing ROI.
Mobile friendly
Today when almost 90% of the audience for any business access the website via mobile, it is important for the businesses to have a mobile friendly site.
In fact according to a survey, 85% of adults think that accompanies mobile website should be as good as the desktop version. Having a Responsive website, that is quick to load will be useful.
Clean layouts
70% of the audience, who accessed small business website said that the websites did not display clear call to actions, the sales, offer or Seasons collection, etc.
Offering no information or too much information, directing people to the homepage rather than a specific landing page etc. will contribute to non engaged audience.
Bounce rates
UX designed website can decrease Bounce rate significantly for the website. As the page loads faster and there are immediate and relevant call to action, the bouncer rates come down as audience find what you’re looking for immediately.
Apart from these benefits UX also helps in
More engagement if images and videos load faster. As UX encompasses faster load time, the images and videos are rendered in such a way that they are lighter to load. This is known to have increased customer engagement.
Value offered to the user
Knowing immediate call to action, and the clarity about the value that the website will offer to the user will go a long way in retaining and returning customer. Customers seldom revisit a website where they had a bad experience
Doing it again is a waste of time and money
It is important to spend time while you design the first time as redesigning means creating the whole thing again, which is not only expensive but also time consuming. Also the customers who have had a bad experience the first time will take a lot more effort to reconnect.
UX is not a thing in design but it is a whole new perspective of how a website design is viewed. It is more than pretty pictures and beyond the latest fad. The value that it adds to business is so immense that even big businesses take note of it and have been spending enough time and money to master it.
A detailed infographic about UX and its importance, that was first published by Digital Information World can be seen here.
