User experience is becoming one of the most important factors of a successful business. How can you tap into the power of user experience and boost your business?

4 Tips to Make User’s Experiences Even Better

1. Look into UX consulting. A UX consultant focuses on the business of the design of a user experience. They will look at your business from the inside out to help you get a better understanding of your business. They will work alongside you, going through your business model, analysing your goals, collecting data about your target audience, and gathering all this information into one integrated system. They will help a business to become more user-centred and digitally advanced. You will gain validated and actionable insights that will help you to make sustainable business decisions.
2. View feedback as your friend. Don’t be afraid to both share and ask for immediate feedback. It’s often the case that using a product or service invokes some immediate feedback, either positive or negative, so use it. The feedback from your customers is valuable too and far too many businesses ignore comments from users on social media. If you do this, you’re giving your customers the power to control your public image. Even if an issue can’t be resolved quickly, respond quickly. Prove that you value the user and their opinion.
3. Be transparent and keep it simple. Avoid the trap of sneaking subscriptions into the fine print – this is going to put people off straight away. A great way to offer a product in a clear way is to use a video as this will help your user fully understand what they’re buying or signing up for. Further to this, remember that less is more. Use simple colours and fewer features. Keep things crisp, clean, neat, and attractive.
4. It’s the personal touch that counts. Technology plays a big part in our lives today, but a lot of customer experience improvements come by creating real connections. Human interaction is essential. People don’t want to be talking to a bot with automated responses, they want a person who can really help them, understand them, and relate to them. For those wanted to use automated experience solutions, the technology needs to be based on human interactions to give them a personal touch.

If those few suggestions got your brain into gear, it’s time to put them into practice. To motivate you to action, it’s good to contemplate the reasons as to why.

Why UX Matters – What the Studies Show

There have been multiple studies into why UX matters, and they show:

• 79 percent of visitors will leave a site and search again if the content they find isn’t optimised
• If the website is not optimised for mobile users, they are five times more likely to abandon what they were trying to do. Mobile users are there because the need is urgent and two-thirds of them want to make a purchase on the same day – you really don’t want them to give up because they can’t easily use the website or app on their device.
• By listening to their community suggestions when redesigning their homepage, the revenues for ESPN.com jumped up by 35 per cent. Doesn’t that prove our second point above? Feedback is your friend!
• A good experience makes a good impression while on the other hand, if online customers have a bad experience, 80 per cent of them are less likely to use the site again in the future.
• If images won’t load, or take too long to do so, a staggering 39% of people will stop using the website and look elsewhere.
• 51 per cent of people think that the contact information is the most important section missing from many company websites. If the details are hidden in links at the bottom of the page, or deep within the bowels of the website, people are going to give up looking for them and find another business that’s easier to contact.
• A well-designed user interface can boost a website’s conversion rate by a staggering 200 per cent, while a 400 per cent boost is seen with a better UX design.

User experience encompasses everything that a user interacts with, a product, service, or company. It involves everything they perceive that contributes to their opinion of the whole company. A successful business will be concerned with all the elements that make up this experience, including the layout, visual design, brand, text, interaction, and sound. A good user experience goes above and beyond meeting the needs of the customer, it creates something that is a joy to use, something they will look forward to interacting with again. Several disciplines need to work together, from marketing to interface design, to achieve a high-quality user experience. It spans from the restroom customers use in-store to the virtual shopping basket they fill on their website.

It may feel overwhelming as you begin to tackle the plethora of issues that need to be addressed in attaining an enjoyable customer experience, so the best thing you can do is research and plan. Research the industry’s latest best practices and search particularly for the aspects that will apply to you and your business. Plan ahead, start the processes early and pre-empt problems before they arise. Figure out who your ideal user is and plan with them in mind. You need to be adaptable and flexible, willing to adjust your ideas and viewpoints to cater for your target audience and thereby reach your business goals. Take each step at a time and be grateful for all the help you can get. Use the experience of your team, the feedback of your users and professional advice from a ux consultant if you need it. No two roads to success are the same, so it will take some time and effort to find the road that suits you. However, with your future depending on your user, it’s worth any expenditure to build a business that will not only survive but thrive in today’s competitive market.