Why Is the User Experience Important?

Why the User Experience Is Important

User experience is a relatively new term that’s being thrown around on the web recently. However, there are still a lot of websites that don’t give it nearly the attention it deserves. Here we help you to understand what the user experience is, and why it’s important.

What is the “user experience”?
Let’s start with the basics. “User experience” is the name given to the collective factors that encompass all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services and its products. Which is all very well, but what does it mean? Put simply, it’s the art of communicating a sense of value to your customers by making their visit to your website as simple, elegant and generally pleasant as possible. A few proven benefits are:

• Growing visitor numbers and build brand perception/loyalty
• Increasing sales and conversions
• Improving Google search rankings
• Reducing customer churn
• Reducing the costs of development and support

Believe it or not, some people come to certain websites purely for the user experience, rather than to actually buy anything. Above all else, these people appreciate feeling valued, and feeling like they’re a part of something. They are invaluable in helping to build awareness of your brand, and to some businesses they can even be just as important as paying customers. Never underestimate the importance of improving your user experience.

That all sounds great! Er…how do I do that?
The end-goal of improving your User eXperience (UX) is to seamlessly and elegantly integrate all parts of your website together into a single comprehensive entity. Maybe you remember the worst website you ever visited, and the reasons why you left. If it’s too slow, or parts of it don’t work, or sometimes if it just looks unpolished, people will leave and not come back. Improving your UX is about eliminating those problems, helping you attract and keep customers coming back to your website. Now, an important distinction to make: user experience is not the same thing as usability. Usability concerns how easy the interface is to use, whereas UX is about how a customer feels when using a system. They are connected, but not the same.

Should I ask a specialist?
There is a fine art in creating a memorable user experience. Big names websites like Amazon and Netflix are masters of it, and achieve this by constantly testing their software and surveying their customers. It’s difficult to quantify a good customer experience in terms of data – numbers of page views or conversion rates won’t necessarily tell you what you need to know about the UX, so the best way to do it is often to ask your customers directly. A skilled UX professional doesn’t come cheap, but they’re well worth investing in if you have the money to hire them. If not, you may have the option to train a member of your existing web development team in UX development. There are a lot of overlaps between UX and other aspects of web design, so it might end up being easier than you’d think.

It’s true that smaller businesses or start-ups may find it expensive and maybe not an initial priority, but it’s worth remembering that a website with a good user experience is always going to have a significant advantage over the competition.