In today’s marketing world, it’s all about the conversions. You want your business to grow and thrive, which means you need to leverage social platforms, your mobile apps, and your website to get you out there- and all those items need to be driving your bottom line. Your user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are a critical part of your digital presence, and without careful attention, can drag down your other marketing activities too. Here’s some smart ways to create a better UX/UI experience for your customers.

Smart UX/UI Design

The specific needs of a particular piece of media can vary, but there’s something all good UX/UI designs have in common:

• Sensible Structure: Content is laid out so it flows logically, is easy to find, and smartly organized according to your customer’s needs
• Interface Wireframe Design: Coupled with this, you’ve invested in predicting how users will engage with your content, and planned an easy flow.
• Design Elements: Everything you’ve used visually, from images, colors and fonts to creative design ads is used smartly, cohesively, and seamlessly without impacting load times. There’s a great display ads example here to see.
• User Behavior: You’ve created a way to engage the user, implement features they want, and identified what matters most to them

 

Sensible Development

Even with all these elements in place, it’s not enough to just hope for the best. You should be looking at what your competition is doing right (and wrong). You’re listening to customer feedback, even if it seems silly or petty to you. Remember, negative feedback means a conversion failure, so it’s important to know what caused it. And you should be constantly testing what your users respond well to, and what they don’t like. This should never be a one-and-done exercise, but rather a process of constant vetting and improvement.

Think Launch- and Beyond

Once you have hashed out a product you believe is what your customers want, it’s going to all lie in the details. Tiny things can turn people off your digital media immediately- think slow loads, features they don’t engage with cluttering up their experience, broken links or payment portal issues. While engaging with customers directly for feedback is important, it shouldn’t be your only choice, either. Make sure you have the analytics in place to track catch-points in the sales funnel too. Pay attention to the positives and what’s working well, as well as the negatives, so you can build on these for the future.

Drive Retention

Churn is inevitable, no matter what your business is. Sometimes people only need your product once. And you can’t please everyone. As this report suggests, most apps remain on a phone for 5 days or less. Don’t let that discourage you, however. Those same analytic tools will help you identify where the sticking points lie, and how to improve them. It will also help you identify what’s in your control- such as your UX design- and what isn’t, such as cost of living and data usage for the end user. Make sure you’re proactively driving retention with this aspect, too- don’t only reward first-time users, but offer sweeteners, engagement, and encouragement that will help you keep those who are loyal.

Stay Fresh

Even the best product gets stale with time. User expectations change, and they want new features or information. Others may fall away even though they were once important. Security needs change. Consider offering incentives to update your app, too, and give end-users plenty of warning. Heavy handed changes don’t go over well.

User satisfaction is key to any digital product you offer. Make sure your focus on UX/UI is a priority, and pay attention to what your users are telling you. It’s hard work, but it will be well worth it when you see the ROI roll in.