So you’re in the process of building a website for your business. You’ve got all these ideas, people working away writing code and bug fixing along the way.
But have you put much thought into the UX design?
UX Design — or user experience design — is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s the way the customer experiences your website. You don’t want to miss out on sales because people can’t navigate your site properly.
UX covers a huge amount of things from curated products, website design, and interactions with your company, site, and product.
Maybe you will be using a UX design agency, or perhaps you have an in-house team. Either way, in this article, we are going to explain why UX Design is so important.
Curious? Read on!
What’s the Difference Between UX and UI?
Often confused, the terms UX and UI do, in fact, mean different things. It’s essential to clarify these differences to give you the best chance of having an amazing UX design.
UI, or User Interface, is to do with the visuals of your site — the buttons, the fonts, layout, everything to do with the interface.
UX design is all about the actual interactions with your site. Does everything flow? Is the process from start to finish smooth? Good UX design equals customer satisfaction with minimal effort.
Now that is all cleared up, on with the main information as to why UX design is important.
Competitive Edge
Every step of the way, you want to be thinking about competing with other sites.
Good UX will help give you the competitive edge you need and can even increase your sales. You can keep ahead of the competition by making things straightforward for your customers. Provide them with an easy experience that gives them the exact result they want with minimum fuss.
Innovation
By keeping on top of your UX design, you will be keeping up with the latest tech, the latest innovations, and keep the latest trends in design.
You can trial new things for your site, see what works, test if it makes the overall process of using your site easier or harder. If it makes it more difficult, get rid of it. You want to constantly be checking in and testing your site to keep up with your competitors.
Saving Time and Money
You will save yourself a significant amount of money if you invest in the User Experience side of early development.
Putting in the research and budget for testing what works and what doesn’t means you won’t get caught later and lose loyal customers. Getting started during the creation and development stages makes the cost of changes and updates far smaller than if you have a fully up and running site.
You will also learn how to fix potential problems as you go, so should trouble occur later down the line, it’ll be an easier fix.
Finally, it will also save you and your customers a lot of time. You as a company won’t have to constantly put your site up and take it down to make small tweaks if you get your site close to perfect before launch. Your customers will also spend less time searching your site, meaning they are less likely to get frustrated and leave.
In Conclusion
UX design can, in fact, make or break your site. It is the difference between happy customers and many emails saying how difficult your site is to navigate. Get your UX sorted as early as possible, so you don’t get caught out later down the line.
