User experience (UX) – how to design for a good user experience
Good user experience (UX) is the foundation of every effective website. User-centered design has become an obligation on every digital project. Plenty of people wrongly equate UX with interface aesthetics alone. In reality it’s a far broader concept covering the entirety of the experience of using a product.
Here’s what you’ll learn!
In this article I’ll explain what user experience really is, what its core principles are, and how to design intuitive digital solutions effectively.
User experience (UX) – definition and meaning
User experience is the sum of the impressions and emotions a user feels while using an online store, website, app, program or other product (offline ones included).
UX design means building websites (and the other products listed above) oriented around a positive user experience.
All right, but… what is a positive experience?
In short – sites, apps and stores are well designed for UX if they:
- answer the user’s needs and expectations,
- are intuitive, clear, plain and comprehensible,
- put the user at the center of the design process.
Put even more simply – experience design aims to avoid forcing the person using the product to think (to make an effort). And that’s the fundamental rule of UX.
The most important principle in user experience design
The golden rule of UX is: “Don’t make me think.”
I know that line can seem odd at first, but it really is worth committing to memory.
If I had to give you one single most important principle for increasing the positive experience of people visiting your site, this sentence would be it.
What’s it about?
Every website should be comprehensible, obvious and self-explanatory.
A person visiting your store or website shouldn’t have to puzzle over its content or the layout of the interface.
They should be thinking roughly like this: “OK, here’s the product list. I can click here to see the product. Oh, and here I can add the product to the cart.”
The job of the person doing user experience design, the UX designer, is to eliminate questions like:
- “There’s a lot going on here. Where do I start?”,
- “Why did they call it that? What does it mean?”,
- “Can I click this?”,
- “Why is this here?”,
- “How do I get out of this?”,
- “Where do I find ___?”.
You’re probably thinking: “All right, but that doesn’t really matter. Even if someone asks themselves those questions, nothing bad happens.”
The problem is that each of those questions increases the user’s cognitive load and diverts their attention. And with it, lowers the user experience.
Which may mean the user doesn’t convert on your website, and that has a direct effect on your business metrics and your marketing.
The truth is people don’t like puzzling over how to do something. Sure, they like puzzles — but when they’re in the mood for entertainment, not when they’re looking for the right product, service or shipping information.
If your user doesn’t find the information they’re looking for, or has trouble finding it, they’ll simply leave your site and start looking for it at a competitor.
How to optimize user experience – the research process
There’s no such thing as universal practices that work everywhere in interaction design. Just because change X worked on one website doesn’t mean it will work on yours.
Every store is different – different business characteristics, different challenges, different audiences, different problems, and it needs different solutions during the design process.
I’ve tested identical UX design changes across different stores. In some they worked well, in others the opposite. Sometimes adding a so-called best practice lowers UX and sales.
We recently ran a test on the product page of one of our clients. It involved removing the product video. Putting video on a product page comes up constantly in e-commerce best-practice checklists, and you’d assume it’s a factor that lifts sales. So we ran an A/B test. Variant A: page with video. Variant B: page without video. Result: a 4.2% conversion lift in variant B.
Solutions that worked on another website don’t have to work on yours.
The heart of UX optimization is running research, finding problems and solving them. An effective UX designer combines research skills with a visual sense of aesthetics.
So instead of copying solutions from competitors or shipping solutions from “UX/UI best practice” checklists, bring the following process into your business:
- Run research (user testing, conversations with customer support, Google Analytics analysis, Hotjar analysis)
- Find the problems and the growth opportunities
- Design solutions to those problems
- Test those solutions (run A/B tests, for instance) and verify that they really do work on your site
A functional, methodical process like that will help you build software that genuinely answers user needs.
An example of optimizing UX in e-commerce
Here’s an example of good optimization in an online store:
I noticed in Google Analytics that a great many visitors were going back from checkout to the cart. There’s obviously a problem here. So I checked whether our checkout was loading too slowly. According to Google Analytics the checkout loads in only 2 seconds, so that’s not why users are going back to the cart.
So I ran a manual expert review of the checkout and cart. I noticed that the checkout summary has no product images and no information about shipping time. Both of those are in the cart. I also looked at Hotjar and analyzed recordings of users who had been on the checkout page. It turned out a large share of them fill in the form, choose payment and delivery methods, and then desperately hunt for some piece of information – scrolling up and down the page, then going back to the cart.
In all likelihood the absence of product images and shipping time information in the checkout lowers UX, and with it sales. The best thing now is to run an A/B test and verify whether that hypothesis holds. If it does, we ship the change to the store.
What the example above shows is that good optimization consists of:
- Analyzing WHERE the problem is that’s leaking your money.
- Analyzing WHY there’s a problem in that place.
- Finding a potential solution to that problem.
- Testing that solution and checking whether it actually works.
The importance of good UX in digital technology
Good UX has become one of the most important elements of success in the IT and digital industry. Interface designers devote more and more attention to how users interact with products and mobile apps.
In an era of ever-greater market competition, every element of a website has to be functional and usable. User experience design isn’t only an aesthetic user interface (UI), it’s also a deep understanding of cognitive psychology and the needs of your target audience.
User experience design requires a range of research methods, building prototypes, and constant testing and iteration. Only that approach lets you build a product that genuinely satisfies the end user.
Summary
If you want to improve UX, follow the Don’t make me think principle; run research, identify user problems, write down ideas for optimizing your website and validate those ideas (using A/B tests, for instance).
Good UX is an investment that pays back through greater customer loyalty, better conversion and higher business metrics. Beginners and experienced UX designers alike have to remember that at the center of every project stands a person – a user with their own needs, expectations and limitations.
Effective interaction design requires technical competence and empathy for users in equal measure. Only by combining those two can you build a genuinely effective, intuitive digital product.
