The importance of UI/UX in attracting customers.
In the business world as of today, companies largely depend on the use of websites and other digital options to sell their products and services to their target market. As a matter of fact, if businesses would stand tall amidst the prevalent competition in the market, the way available digital opportunities (be it websites or mobile apps), are utilized cannot be downplayed. Aforementioned digital marketing options would only be effective to the degree of how their UX and UI are designed. UI and UX, are abbreviations for “user interface” and “user experience.” The two concepts are related in that both are key to how well a business will thrive. Before discussing their importance in attracting customers, let’s briefly explain each of them.
User Interface (UI)
Digital marketing has flourished past the agelong usage of websites alone, businesses are now reachable through mobile apps too. The advent of mobile applications affords both the sellers and buyers a much easier means of interaction. Globally, the patronage of online marketing has continued to significantly increase over the years, hence it’d be unwise for enterprises that value business growth to ignore the trend of things. Available to companies now is a wider range of opportunity to reach their target audience. It is however important how companies present their offers to them, and this bring to light the concept of user interface design.
The User Interface (UI) describes how products and services are being presented to end-users. It is that part of a website or application that users interact with. Starting from the look of the advertised product, to the presentation of the brand, the color combination, the shapes, fonts and spacing. Others include the overall function and interactivity of the interface. Hallmarks of a great UI design are outstanding graphics, efficiency and responsiveness. Before you vet a UI design as effective, it has to be aesthetically appealing and delightful to users. However, designers must not in the bid to impress users now make the interface design complex with the use of inconsistent conventions.
User Experience (UX)
Complementing the universal interface in online marketing is the UX (User Experience). UX entails the interactions users have with a business brand, product or service. It is a user’s perception of usability and efficiency, upon his encounter with the product interface of a website or mobile app. Let’s take for instance a buyer who visits an online store to get wears, whom after selecting his choice of dresses to purchase couldn’t checkout with his debit card but was debited. This apparently is a bad experience for him operating the store’s interface. Or say a phone mart without search filter, of which users would have to scroll through a number of pages before finding the devices they wants to buy. Purchasing here is going to be unnecessarily long and complex. This also is a bad experience. So user experience is the overall personal feeling a user has or would have interacting with a product interface.
On account of the fact that buyers in today’s digital age seldom visit office locations to carry out their transactions, UX designs hence becomes an aspect of digital marketing worth expending resources on. Designers of universal experience would ensure that users have a nice time on websites and mobile apps, so they could get intrigued and retained. The resultant user retention is expected to metamorphose into recommending the business to others, hence yielding growth and development for businesses.
Though UI and UX designers have distinct roles, both needs to work hand-in-hand to achieve an excellent online marketing. The UI designer will create designs that will be aesthetically appealing to the user, and the UX designer builds the technical aspects of the website or application. Both functions are intertwined, and when properly performed places enterprises with online presence at vantage position in achieving good success. Here are some of the importance UI and UX have in attracting customers.
1. Interactive UI/UX Aids Customer Acquisition
When a customer newly visits a website or uses a mobile application, his experience with the first few clicks he makes would either prompt him to keep browsing, or cause him to exit. Imagine a potential client browsing through a company’s website and all he gets upon every single click is an error message, you don’t expect him to remain there and waste his time. He’d leave for another business selling the same product or offering selfsame service he wants. A study conducted by Microsoft Corporation has it that, humans cannot retain undivided attention for more than eight seconds. If the UI/UX are designed such that users can easily navigate through the website or app, with top-notch displays popping on every click, they’ll most likely stay for some minutes more. You now see why graphics, and other elements forming the interface, with ease of navigation and overall experience of end-users, cannot be toiled with in online marketing.
Enterprises must know that users are rational beings that need to be convinced within their duration of attention span, that their product(s) or service(s) is worth expending their money on. A user who is impressed and satisfied with the ease of navigation on your mobile app, would definitely recommend it to business friends and associates, and before you know it, that has already paved way to acquire more customers. Hence, UI/UX should be seen as a way of creating a strong brand awareness. So, efficient UI/UX designs for websites and business applications are important to acquiring customers and maintaining their loyalty.
2. User Retention
User Retention is the act of keeping users of a website or application engaged, so that they come back again and again to buy your product or use your service. It is definitely the desire of every business owners to have customers that are loyal to their brand, but not many of them know that the bedrock of customer retention is an effectively designed user interface and user experience. A professionally designed UI/UX would help in building trust in the mind of users, such that even when a business occasionally cannot meet their demands, they see it as only a temporal downtime.
One of the outstanding strategies adopted by the world’s largest company by revenue, Wamart, is the provision of enhanced checkout options that allows their customers to conveniently pay for their purchases. Designers of UI/UX must know that the greatest need of a mobile app or website user is an easy and simple way to shop. A UX designer must think like a customer and appropriately structure the user flow, as it is crucial for an efficient customer retention plan.
The UI also has outstanding features you can use to improve user retention, one of them is the look, especially when you’re dealing with mobile app users. They want an interface that is intuitive and easy to use. If your app or website is complex for customers to use, know that you’re already repelling a big percentage of your target audience. Again, unpalatable experience with apps may result in users leaving bad reviews on Play Store, hence inhibiting the growth of your business. When making your UI/UX designs, use standardized conventions to style your graphics, and watch your visual hierarchies too. Carefully structure your user flow by anticipating the likely movement or paths users might follow on your website, from the entry point through to the final interaction. This would help you to come up with a design that optimizes user experience.
Furthermore, the universal interface affords businesses the privilege to interact with their users. As a UI designer, you could create customer support systems like live chat, feedback loops and FAQs, so users can receive help promptly on any question or complaints they might have about any of your products or services.
Let’s take a look at Facebook and Twitter, opening their apps has become an unconscious action for many of us. What exactly do you think is the reason for this? As at 2020, daily active users of Facebook was reported to be 1.82 billion people. Isn’t this incredible for a single enterprise? Great UI/UX designs are team players for achieving this.
3. Builds Company Brand
A basic truth of online marketing every designer of user interface and user experience must know is that the first impression of users most of the times is the only impression they will have about a business. There’re numerous companies selling a single product or offering a service, so when they do not get what they want from one, they simply leave and check another. UI/UX designs can be used to create a wonderful first impressions and build a competitive brand identity. As a matter of fact, when mentioning the essentials of a quality user interface design, branding cannot be sidetracked.
Branding seeks to exploit an alloy of marketing and psychological techniques that promotes a product or service to the target market. Though a brand could either be visual or verbal, the commonly used form is the visual. This is probably because customers find it faster and easier relating with visuals than reading multiple lines of write-ups. Visual branding takes to account the use of logos, colors, graphic elements, and typography. There’s no other quick way of giving a product or service a good name like through the use of top-notch UI/UX designs.
A good mix of graphics and imageries, would catch users’ attention to read your sales copy containing your offer. Small business startups can as well leverage on this to survive the keen competition in the market.
4. Ease of Use
Ease of use in the context of digital marketing describes how effortlessly users can interact with a brand through a website or mobile app. It is important in a UI/UX design that users of the website or app must be able to navigate their way without any complications. When a user newly visits a website, he/she would expect to quickly sight certain widgets like “search”, “create account”, “about us.” Easily finding these buttons may lead to a successful website visitation, and probably a purchase/patronage of your product/service.
Another simple thing that can help you win users over to your business is the use of simple words in your interface. You don’t expect a user to check meanings of words from the dictionary before understanding what you’re to saying, and still keep browsing your website. Communication should be done in Basic English.
Usability of your app and site encapsulates majority of what we refer to as user experience. It passes a clear message about the viability of your product. All these should lead you to ask yourself as a UI/UX designer — “how can I possibly ease the complexity of what users would have to do to achieve their goals?” Check your website and mobile app, how accessible is the search icon? Is it filter-enabled? How long does it take to have the search results displayed on the screen? What’s the error rate like? All these put together might be helpful in monopolizing customer loyalty.
5. Ease of Communicating Success Stories
UI/UX designs has varied features that enhances business growth. One of them is using the interface to share a company’s portfolio and testimonials. A sterling way of making mark in using UX design to attract users is to have portfolios that make strong impression on potential shoppers. A portfolio presents graphics of your outstanding jobs. More than showing users your gallery of your previously executed projects, tell them about your problem-solving proficiency. Communicating how you have successfully solved problems for others and your willingness to do the same for them, would be helpful in winning them over.
Well-written testimonials by users of your product, or clients you have worked for could also go a long way in attracting more users.
Conclusion
A delightfully and professionally designed UI/UX has lots of benefits to every success-oriented businesses. You’re not wasting resources for employing UI/UX designers. It’s good for your business. You will find the multiple yields in your ROI.
