User experience (UX) can feel like a slippery subject to nail down, since much of what UX encompasses — the ease of interaction and how it feels to use — can feel subjective, especially for digital entities like websites, software or apps. No matter your comfort level talking about UX, there’s no denying that creating a good user experience is mission critical for any business. Positive UX helps define your customers’ journey through your site and builds loyalty and trust for your brand.

Want to give your UX a refresh? Tired of losing customers halfway down the funnel? Rocket55’s UX experts can help.

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Why is User Experience Important?

Very simply, UX is important because it is designed to fulfill user needs. User experiences that are designed to provide smooth, intuitive and easy movement through a website or app make it simple for users to fulfill their needs, whether that is making a purchase, signing up for company news and product updates or reaching out for a consultation or quote.

Do you remember the last time you visited a website and immediately bounced? Chances are some combination of poor layout, confusing messaging and a difficult interface — in other words: bad UX — were to blame. A positive user experience gives your business more time to make its pitch and keep the user’s attention.

What Makes Great User Experience Design?

This is where things start getting nebulous — the truth is user experience is different for every audience. Another truth? You are not your users. Don’t assume you know what they want or what they need. Finding out what your users value, how they navigate your site, how they use your product or service and why they make decisions throughout the conversion process are all vital pieces of information that make up the puzzle of great UX.

Designing a Positive User Experience

Before all else, good UX begins and good websites start with research and testing. Getting a detailed understanding of your audience will help you understand their motivations, personality types, demographics and behaviors. Taking that learning and testing how users respond to elements designed with them in mind will allow your business to create a website that is optimized to make it easy for your audience to fulfill their needs.

The Basics of UX Research

Conducting research can be done in a wide variety of ways, but the end goal is always the same: gathering as much data as possible that will directly inform how the user experience of the site will be designed. Some of the common methods of UX research include:

Customer Interviews

Surveys are less personal than interviews, so you do lose out on one-on-one conversation and the ability to observe body language, but they do offer the opportunity for anonymity and honesty that some people may not feel comfortable with in an interview setting. Choosing which questions to ask is important — as is using a mix of specific and open-ended questions like:

  • How does the website make you feel?
  • Do you use or notice [this specific design element]
  • Where do you become confused?
  • Does anything make using the website hard?
  • How would you go about making a purchase from the homepage?
  • Does the language across the site resonate with you?
  • What do you wish was better about the user experience?

There are hundreds, if not thousands of questions you can ask in your surveys. Choosing the ones that will provide unique and impactful insights will determine how valuable your surveys will be.

Personas

Personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on market research and data on your existing audience. Using surveys and interviews as first steps can help you build out more accurate and robust personas. Some of the common traits you want to consider as you develop your persona include:

  • Demographics (age, location, familial status, career, etc.)
  • Personality (introvert, extrovert, creative, etc.)
  • Motivations (fear, incentivization, power, etc.)
  • And nearly any other piece of information that will help you get to know your users

As your business grows and your marketing becomes more refined, the personas you create will naturally evolve and change. By revisiting them on a regular basis after data collection efforts, you can be sure your UX design and other choices are still aligned with your customer base.

Testing UX Decisions

Testing should be an ongoing part of refining the user experience. It can be just as useful for data collection in the initial stages of evaluating existing UX or when designing a completely new site. The tests covered below will concentrate on their value in data collection for improving existing websites through redesign or tweaks to UX, but many can be used during the process of designing a completely new site as well.

Tree Testing

By laying out your website’s architecture and giving your testers a goal (purchasing a product, finding a piece of information, requesting a quote, etc.), you can study how users navigate your site. By studying the pathways that users take to get to their ultimate destination, you can learn where the snags, confusion and pain points are in your UX.

First-Click Testing

Tracking where users click first on any page is a key indicator of the success of that specific session, but also a broader indication of the overall quality of the user experience. With the first-click test you can measure what pieces of the UX are intuitive, what crucial elements are being missed, ideal paths for users to take and even where buttons, CTAs and similar elements should be placed on the page.

Usability Testing

Whether it is a tweak to your user experience or a complete site overhaul, once you have the new pieces in place, the whole system should be tested. Keep in mind the type of data that you want to be testing for and tracking, then allow users to use the prototype or finished design. When you have a strong sample, evaluate how your updated UX is affecting your users and how they navigate your site. If you aren’t seeing what you hoped for or expected, use the new data to make further changes to optimize the user experience.

Work With UX Experts

Whether you are ready to dive into the details of your site’s UX or aren’t sure where to start with making your user experience better for your users, Rocket55’s crew of UX experts are ready to step in.

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