As the topic mentioned, let’s see the importance of user experience (UX) in this blog. The following figure shows the various components of UX. Focusing on each of these attributes, helps to achieve effective UX in an application or website.

 

 

User Experience

User Experience:

Everyone one of us is a consumer of one or more products. How do you feel when an application or website is terrible or complex to use? You might end up saying the statement – “Was this application designed for me or an engineer?” As a consumer you immediately look for the next option to hop on. But as a marketer of the product you lose a valuable customer (remember the impact of Word of Mouth!!!) which in turn drastically affect the business.

If you take a glance at many successful companies, you will recognize they all generate actually a pleasurable experience for their users. Facebook brought your life and friends online; Twitter introduced a new way for users to communicate, follow, and broadcast news; Apple amuse its customers with a very interactive technology and simple to use software. In contradictory, many software applications or websites are merely designed and developed without giving much importance to the end users’ needs. This results into low user adoption, low throughput, low ROI and project failure.

Well, now it is understood that it is highly important to consider UX for any web application/software/product. But why it is highly important? We could simply say, “It’s important because it deals with our users’ needs — enough said,” and everyone would probably be satisfied with that. But it is not so. There are also some other factor which influence UX.

  • Brand Differentiation: Differentiates your product or service from your competitor
  • Increase User Satisfaction
  • Increase User Adoption
  • Lower Training Costs
  • Increase in Productivity
  • Decrease in Support Cost
  • Improves Efficiency
  • Creates more business opportunity

 

I guess you need a bit more statistics and literature review on this. Well, here you go!

  • According to a study conducted by IBM – ‘Every $1 invested in usability returns between $10 and $100’
  • A study reveals that implementation/customization costs for an Enterprise Software Vendor cut by 40% as a result of a better  ‘out-of-the-box’ experience
  • One of the major E-commerce retailer saw 45% increase in average order size as a result of redesigning their shopping experience

In order to accomplish an efficient UX in a product, the developer/company must explore more about end user of the product – say demographic factors (age, educational level) lifestyle and preferences and so on.

Additionally, performing a usability test helps you to achieve UX competently. Usability testing in its most straightforward form is just running a design past one or more people to see if it works, if it is understandable, easy to interact with and navigate, and easy to find information on. There are various methods for performing usability testing, from the hallway test (where you grab someone walking past you in the hallway or office), to eye-tracking systems (which monitor what part of a screen people’s eyes are focusing on), heat map tracking (which shows where people have clicked on a screenshot or design). Adopting an appropriate method helps achieving in an effective UX.

There is certain User Interface compliance (country specific) that is developed and mandatory to incorporate in a website or application design to open opportunity for people with disabilities as well. For more info on Web Accessibility compliance visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility

In the next blog post, we will look into the ingredients of a successful product.Webinar