As a small business owner, you are probably researching customers, finding your target audience, and creating a customer acquisition plan for your business. However, you also need to consider building up your online following. But, how do you do that?
Creating a positive user experience can mean the difference between a few sales per month versus hundreds. Learn what is user experience, why is user experience important, and ways to improve user experience below.
What is user experience?
User experience (UX) is a user’s interaction and experience using your product or service, including your business website. What is their experience? How easy is your website to use? How does it make users feel?
Your user experience design can make or break the success of your business and brand. The goal of UX design is to create an easy-to-use, efficient, and all-around pleasant experience for product users and website visitors. Not to mention, you want to do what you can to make your website stand out.
Combining market research, product development, and, of course, design, can help you create the best user experience.
UX vs. UI design
Another term typically associated with UX design is user interface design (UI). UX and UI work hand in hand to impact the overall user experience.
The UI design is the visual and interactive aspect of your website’s interface (e.g., buttons). UI is similar to graphic design. It consists of your website’s visual design, color scheme, layouts, and typography.
On the other hand, UX design includes designing your website and layouts along with analyzing user satisfaction. UX design can range anywhere from the layout of a supermarket to the usability of a mobile application.
However, UX is not only limited to your business’s website. You should also incorporate UX into your product or service.
Importance of UX design
User experience is a crucial part of attracting customers to your website or application. And, digital interactions matter just as much as face-to-face customer interactions.
Customers or potential customers must know how to interact with your website and enjoy the interaction. If they don’t have a good user experience, they likely will not return.
UX is a key component for your business’s website because you want users to easily navigate and use your website. Ignoring UX can result in a sloppy website with unhappy users who will go to competitors’ websites instead. The better the UX, the more likely users will return to your website.
As a small business owner, first impressions matter. Consistent and satisfied users will help boost future website traffic and, hopefully, sales.
Investing in user experience gives you the benefit of being able to improve your website based on customer preferences. Overall, UX measures the quality of website interactions, allowing you to measure the quantity of website success and conversions.
Developing or improving your UX
Developing, or improving, your UX is something that takes time, testing, and lots of effort. Be aware that UX components typically vary depending on your business.
Determine the factors that matter most to your UX. Review tips to help you optimize your business’s UX below.
Research
Do as much research as possible to determine who is your user. You can categorize users by reviewing their behavior on your website or application. Find out how long each user spends on your website, what they are looking for, and which users lead to conversions.
Consider the user
While building and testing your UX design, keep in mind who will be using the website or application. Create an interface that is a mixture of visually appealing and helpful features for the user.
Consider asking for input from multiple employees (e.g., marketing or sales). Your employees can help you come up with user-friendly ideas and designs.
Test ideas
The best way to create a good UX for your website is to do UX testing. Testing the usability of your website or app is an essential step before implementing your layout or design.
You should start the testing process as soon as possible. Do usability testing early on when you start your small business. Test frequently to fix issues before they become major problems.
The more tests you do, the better. Usability testing allows you to find what works best for your website and users.