To create a product that people love, you need to understand what people want, how they think, how they interact with the product and how they will use it. What is the value of user experience (UX) in digital product development and how UX can add value to your business? We propose you to review the main concepts.
What is user experience?
User experience (UX) refers to how people interact with products and, more importantly, how they feel about those interactions. The purpose of UX is to design products that focus on reducing friction and making products more intuitive and enjoyable to use. The discipline called User Experience is a term created by Donald A. Norman in the 1990s while observing people’s behavior and user experience in everyday life. Donald A. Norman is the author of books dealing mainly with usability, cognitive psychology and emotional design. He is co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a group of usability consultants.
What is the value of UX?
The value UX brings to a company is immense and often underestimated. Understanding and implementing user experience is critical for any business that wants to compete successfully in today’s digital landscape. A positive user experience is more important than ever for your business to stand out from the competition. User experience has become the new benchmark for digital product success. As consumers become more demanding, products that are easy to use and provide an engaging experience are the ones that succeed. This is why companies like Google, Apple and Spotify are investing billions to improve the user experience of their products.
The value of the user experience can be intangible.
Quantifying the value of user experience is not a simple task. The metrics you can use to measure its effects are more limited than those used in other areas of product development. But despite these challenges, there are still many ways in which user experience design improves business results, and often they are not immediately obvious. For example:
- Reduce user abandonment rates.
- Reduce user friction and pain.
- Generate engagement with users.
One of the UX strategy to reduce the abandonment rate of users in digital products or services is to design the best experience oriented to the end user. To achieve this we must provide that the product performance is fast to load and easy to navigate, remember that users wait a maximum of 3 seconds to leave a site or an APP. The navigation of the site or App must be easy, that is to say, the user must find everything he needs in an intuitive way. The design has to transmit the brand values, respect the legibility of its typographies, the correct use of color to avoid unnecessary cognitive loads to the user.
The content of the site or product must maintain consistency throughout all interfaces, we must communicate the same brand voice, varying the tone when necessary. Design appropriate and concise confirmation messages, error messages and call to action that allow the user to reduce friction and avoid frustration, in order to prevent them from abandoning the site or product.
Engagement is the process of getting users interested in what you are doing and making them want to stay with your product or service. It is an important part of any user’s experience. It has a direct impact on conversion rates, loyalty and perceptions of a brand. There are a variety of ways companies can engage users; researching, interviewing to learn about their needs in order to create a memorable user experience.
Some facts that show the value of UX
Return on investment, conversion rate improvement and cost reduction are among the main areas where the added value of UX is seen.
Return on Investment
- Studies show that, on average, every $1 invested in UX generates $100 in return.
- Improves conversion rate
- A well-designed user interface could increase your conversion rate to 200% and a better UX design could generate conversion rates up to 400%.
- Cost reduction
- For every USD spent on solving a problem at the UX stage, USD 10 would be spent on the same problem at the development stage and would multiply to USD 100 or more if this problem were solved after a product launch.
In a Forbes research, some data is illustrated:
Research taken from the Forbes site https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2015/11/19/good-ux-is-good-business-how-to-reap-its-benefits/?sh=551c803b4e51
Jeff Bezos, Amazon: He invested 100 times more in UX than in advertising during Amazon’s first year.
Mike Gebbia, Airbnb: credits UX for taking the company to USD 10 billion.
To improve the user experience you have to observe and provide a listening space.
The first step in the process of improving UX is to perform a walkthrough of the product or service to detect all the points of encounter with users. At this point, heuristics are used to evaluate the usability problems detected and an improvement plan is drawn up that includes research, interviews, prototypes and user testing. Interviews are a valuable tool to provide users with a listening space where they feel valued, understood and where we can better manage their needs.
Nielsen, the father of UX recommends usability testing using 5 users. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many tests as necessary and allowed by the scope of the project.
This allows to understand the real problems of the users and provide a solution with value for the user, reducing frictions and increasing their satisfaction with the product or service.
Creating an emotional connection with users and contributing to increase user loyalty
User experience is a key factor in the success of any digital product: if you want your product to succeed, it is essential to focus on UX.
The goal of UX is to understand the user’s behavior, process and motivations, and then create the experience that meets their needs and makes them happy. The ultimate goal of UX value is to create an emotional connection with users, which will increase the likelihood of future interactions and user loyalty. User experience is a process that, through methodologies and tools, we can understand users and their needs.
