UX, or User Experience, is a term present in every start-up and corporation. Some treat it like Cinderella, while others consider it as a core principle of their business.
Do you need it in your company? The biggest mistake is believing that the status quo of your website and product is good.
UX aims to improve all aspects of your product (or website). Anything can be improved, and everything should – that is what UX is all about.
In this post we will discuss what User Experience is and why it is important for your business – the biggest proof that it is needed is the surge of UX experts on the professional market.
What is UX and how should I understand it?
User Experience is the experience of a user directly touching the product. As pioneers of UX Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman have enclosed, it focuses on all dimensions of contact with the product, be it through the company or the services it offers. It’s aim is to optimize these experiences in order to deliver full satisfaction to the receiver.
The biggest cautionary tale is the story of Myspace. Once Facebook began to grow, they quickly reached the same amounts of users in 2009.
2010 was the year when Facebook delivered a finishing blow to Myspace – how?
They simply focused on growing their user base and on improving the user experience, according to Chris DeWolfe, founder of Myspace. Even the marketing initiative where they invited Justin Timberlake to promote their brand didn’t help at all. Yes, UX has beaten marketing.
Brand websites are currently the main form of communication with the clients or customers. Businesses from B2B or B2C sectors must in turn optimize them as much as they can, so they yield the best results.
Optimizing user experience of a website is the defining element of a successful business.
How UX will help me increase sales?
Even though it is a surprising statement, UX does increase sales – if done effectively.
Amazon increased their sales by 29% (up to a staggering amount of $12.83 billion) by adding product recommendations to already browsed items. This experience-enhancing feature was the defining aspect of the business we know and respect today.
According to some analysts, thanks to this UX-born feature, Amazon’s conversion rate increased up to 60%. That’s mind-boggling.
Early reports from 2013 by Econsultancy claim that almost three-quarters (74%) of businesses trust that user experience is important in improving their conversions and sales. 72% claimed that UX improves customer satisfaction as well.
How high customer satisfaction helps my business?
An old adage, high satisfaction equals high remuneration. We always keep this truth somewhere in the back of our heads, but satisfied customers are difficult to put in our KPI’s.
However, high customer satisfaction leads to increased customer retention. The LTV of a customer increases along with the conversion rates.
At UsabilityTools, we believe that user experience of websites and businesses is not just important – it is absolutely crucial. That’s why we offer tools to record users’ activities on a website. All in order to understand their behaviors better and do everything to help them benefit from your business and convert into a sale.
One of our clients, GetBadges, had a low conversion rate on their “register” page. They hooked up our tool and collected recordings of users’ activities.
After watching several recordings, Getbadges noticed a pattern – users were clicking on an incorrectly placed button, which refreshed the page and deleted personal registration info. This made users leave the site in frustration.
GetBadges noticed their error and removed the button – this led to a 40% increase in registers. A simple and even stupid change can have drastic effects on your website.
Here are some tweets collected by inboundmarketingagents.com, which display useful stats about UX:
- Every $1 invested in UX can have a return of up to $100 for your business. – @UXmotel
- A 1-second response keeps users engaged with the content, thereby increasing the conversion rate and reducing abandonments. – @SmashingMag
- 87% of Fortune 500 companies have an easy to find search field on their homepage. – @GoGulf
- 85% of UX problems can be solved by testing with 5 users. – @UltraLinx
- Nearly three quarters (73%) of companies currently not conducting user experience testing will be doing so in the next 12 months. – @eConsultancy
- 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. – @Google
- 47% of websites have a clear call-to-action button that takes users 3 seconds or less to see. – @GoGlobe
- More and more mobile apps use smartphone sensors to know where you are and what you are doing enabling devices to provide users with highly personalized benefits. – @Scobleizer
- More than nine out of 10 (95%) agreed with the statement that ‘good user experience just makes sense’. – @eConsultancy
Is UX worthwhile for outbound?
UX indirectly influences many other areas of a business – from the brand identity to the sales process. Usually, an outbound sales process might last for several months – and it is granted that a potential customer will visit the product’s website. This is where the magic happens, as customers are more likely to buy a product that is attractively presented.
But, the attractiveness has two dimensions: conscious and unconscious. Products are consciously chosen based on visual attractiveness. However, the unconscious attractiveness comes from the underlying experiences with the product – this is what UX is all about. Also, a potential customer is very likely to try out a product before buying. Many websites fail at this stage, as sometimes it is difficult to register. Of course, there are many other reasons that could be detrimental to your customer acquisition process.
Do you want to risk a high dropout rate just because of your website being at fault? I don’t think so.
Conclusion
User Experience is an area that is slowly encroaching all business aspects. The gist of it is to make everything as pleasant for the user or client as possible. It is done on the basis of the assumption that high satisfaction results in high sales – and rightfully so!
Optimizing a website on your own can be difficult – that is why UX designers are finding their places in many companies around the globe. However, smaller businesses can start with watching what their users do. Learn what they do wrong and improve it – this is the true way of making money.
