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Any business at its core wants to make the world a better place, increase its sales as well as increase its growth. Since the global movement toward technologies and digitalization, web and mobile app development has become extremely important. Yet, even if the product is valuable and should be popular among its users, the visual appearance and physical contact with it may ruin everything. Previously, user experience relied on face-to-face communication, but as business goes online, user experience (UX) becomes entirely dependent on the design of the application’s interface. A winning outcome is a well-designed app or platform that covers users’ needs and causes minimum irritation. Such a combination guarantees the return of this user and gives a chance they will share this experience with others. As a linking point between user and business, UX/UI plays a crucial role. Its proper integration allows for optimizing costs, increasing sales, and gaining customer loyalty. To ensure it, we’ve prepared a detailed article for you.
What are UI and UX
UI/UX are inseparable elements of application development that ensure your ideas coincide with users’ expectations and possibilities. User interface or UI represents a product’s design, layouts, and content. UI corresponds to how much information is on your screen. How convenient is it? Here the main focus is on the esthetical part of the application. Colors, fonts, icons, space, number of items, all these things are collected and connected so that your UI design looks perfect. UI designers work on making the app’s interface intuitive and understandable to the user and using UI patterns – a basic set of rules that allows users to recognize the functions of buttons. So that, despite color selection, the user knew this button meant “save” and other “delete.” Proper usage of these patterns allows users to navigate your app frictionlessly, even if they see it for the first time. So UI is not only about the aesthetic look of your application. With bad UI (the one that does not pay attention to users’ needs), users waste lots of time discovering what buttons and symbols stand for, and as a result, they leave applications and negative reviews.
The UX or user experience is about designing the whole experience of potential users. This process includes a great amount of analytics to convert them into working solutions. The UX design process includes planning the customer’s journey, searching for optimal decisions, and removing potential obstacles. To achieve the best results, UX designers conduct research, provide prototypes and wireframes, and follow agile approaches, as consumers’ needs constantly evolve, and so the applications do. Applying UX knowledge of user behavior and UI aesthetic look, we receive meaningful applications that cover users’ needs and provide them with an enhanced experience.
If you still are unsure whether to spend some time and money on UI/UX, these numbers may change your mind.
▪ According to recent statistics, 70% of online businesses that fail do so because of bad usability.
▪ 94% of a website’s first impressions are due to its design.
▪ Slow-loading websites lead to a $2.6 billion revenue loss each year.
▪ 90% of users won’t return to a site solely due to bad UX
▪ A one-second delay in page response results in a 7% reduction in conversions.
What are the components of Good UI/UX
Simple and Untangled
Simple and straightforward design attracts more than complex and hyper-designed one. There is no need to overload websites or applications with extra elements, buttons, and acidic color pictures. Instead, try to make it convenient and untangled. Remember, the best solutions are the ones that cause the least frustration.
White Space
While adding visuals, texts, and buttons, remember to add some white space. It becomes crucial when it comes to the height of the text. Remember to mix the line height properly. Otherwise, you risk forcing users’ look at a massive block of letters that leads nowhere.
Readability and Typography
In the design of website fonts, their size, colors, and everything related to this cause matters. Remember, if a calligraphically beautiful font looks excellent on printed books, it won’t look the same on a digital screen. Praise your buyers. Generally, fonts such as Calibri, Verdana, Arial, etc., are quite easy to read and comprehend. You can freely mix them with other sans serif or bold fonts.
Navigation
The more straightforward navigation your website possesses, the higher chances your visitor will stay and stay for a while. Various studies reveal that navigation is most important to gaining visitors. Pages’ logical hierarchy and consistency make them understandable and pleasant to watch and use.
Load Time
Statistics show that every year time granted for page load is reducing, which causes greater demands for site creators and business owners. Page optimization can assist you in this tricky question without function loss.
Mobile Friendliness
The rise of mobile usability is growing annually. Online businesses should also adapt to this point and ensure the desktop version is mobile-friendly. If not, it’s high time to gather your engineering team.
Information Architecture (IA) aims to organize content so that users would quickly adjust to the website or application’s functionality and easily find everything they need. In terms of UX, this also includes convenient navigation despite the browser being used.
The application’s design or website plays a major role, so the very name of the concept speaks for itself. Interaction design aims to create a product that enables users to achieve their objectives in the best possible way. Interaction design links UI and UX, which include various elements like words, visual representations, consideration of space, and object’s position, time spent on interaction, user’s behavior, and reaction to the product. All five elements ensure proper interaction between the user and your product.
Comprehensible navigation is the key to successful design. The first time a user comes to your website or sees your application is crucial as you can observe and ensure if your solution covers their needs and how user-friendly it is.
Before letting your creation see the world, designers perform wireframing. Starting with a low fidelity level of prototyping, mostly sketches, moving to mid and high, closest to the final version of the product. Design is an ongoing process. Not all the ideas might fit the actual product, so no wonder that most modifications occur at this stage. It is a time worth spending.
Visual Design is not just about images, colors, icons, and font selection but also the appearance of the application identification and impacts of interaction for the end users. While finalizing the visual design, pay much attention to this point, as it is the first thing that affects the users’ behavior.
What are the benefits for business?
A proper UX design takes time and requires resources, but the outcome of your website or application is worth every penny. The solution that attracts consumers covers their needs and creates loyalty to the product. This is what will impact your business and benefit you a hundred times. Among already listed benefits are:
▪ Cost optimization – at the core of UX design is a customer, ensuring that the product appeals to users and covers its needs. It takes fewer implementations and enhancements in the future. With the proper UX, you reduce costs from the start, as post-development changes are way cheaper than complete rebranding.
▪ Sales and conversions – as statistics show, UX/UI plays a significant role to end users, and many potential users may never return because of its lack. By keeping the UX intuitive and minimizing the number of steps to take, customers are much more likely to stay and make a purchase.
▪ Improved SEO ranking – a good UX grants you a higher position in Google’s rank, as proper architecture is built. A well-thought-out design affects the visitors’ behavior and is directly related to effective SEO promotion. And, of course, page optimization plays its role as well.
Among other potential benefits that UX design provides are better ROI, reduced time to market, and fewer customer support calls or messages once the product is in use.
Conclusion
Once users come to your website or solution, they may see a well-organized and optimized page with intuitive navigation and pleasant design. Or they may be frustrated with a lasting load, complex boxes, and endless links that, despite your best intentions, didn’t make them stay or buy your product.
Here at Proffiz, we are turning business goals into lucrative solutions that attract end users and bring revenue. For over five years, we have supported and enhanced various industries, made them accessible, technologically updated, and alluring. See all of our works and contact us for more information.
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