7 min read

Here at Usabilla, we love talking about good user experiences (UX) , optimal customer experience (CX) and web design optimization for ecommerce businesses, amongst others. We believe in users, their voices and the value they hold to your business. It is unbelievable how UX is undervalued and overlooked by many businesses and whole industries altogether. You may be asking then, what is UX and why do I need it? Let us explain.

UX Today

The notion of UX has been around for quite some time now, but its value and recognition is becoming more apparent to companies as we advance further into the digital age. Poorly designed products that are rushed to market don’t quite cut it anymore. People want more. Consumers have become accustomed to a certain standard of design and user experiences, that still many companies today are failing to realize. You could even call this the Apple standard, which therein is the idea that products should maintain a level of simplicity and usability which translate to product success. This is not to say that Apple is the only company to have demonstrated good UX but rather they have made it clear the benefits of positive user experiences on a large scale.

Let’s dig a little deeper now into why UX is worth investing into and what ROI you can get. Time and time again, it has been stated in many studies and articles that every dollar spent on UX brings back anywhere between $2 to $100 in return. Before we go further we need to establish some key components and corresponding ideas within User Experience so you know what specific aspects of your business the ROI of UX will bring to you.

Product Goals vs User Needs

Within your business you need to consider both what the goals of your product are in relation to the needs of your users.

Product Goals are:

Decisions influenced from within your organization

Needs to be explicitly understood by everyone involved with the product

What you expect the product to accomplish

User Needs are:

Objectives imposed on your product from outside your organization

Understanding who the users are and what they need through user segmentation

You are not the user and must know that their needs varies from user to user

User needs need to work hand-in-hand with your product goals to shape a positive user experience for your users. Below are some other aspects of user experience and design thinking that will benefit your shape your products for user needs.

Usability

Usability is a core component of a positive user experience. Usability is the ease of use and understanding when someone interacts with or uses any particular product or object. Usability can be evaluated and applied to both physical objects like tools and consumer goods, as well as virtual products like web applications and software.

Human-Centred Design (HCD)

Human-centred design (HCD), also known as user-centric design is an increasingly popular term in product design today. It’s the idea of developing a deeper level of empathy with the users you are designing your products for. This process involves gaining an understanding of user needs, rapid prototyping and involving the users themselves in your design process.

Now keeping in mind usability and HCD, we can begin to assess some key benefits to why an investment and active consideration of UX is beneficial to your business.

Better Products & Brand Loyalty

Good UX is worth thinking about in for many reasons, but first let’s explore the benefits it has for your products. Whether you make SaaS tools or own an ecommerce site, you need to understand that people are interacting with your offerings to accomplish something.

When companies make a website or other digital products, they need to consider who they are designing for. It is essential to understand what your user’s goals are and what tasks they are trying to achieve. Whether that means buying a t-shirt or using a web-based tool to help them do their job, people need your products to be usable. Better usability will ensure that users can accomplish their tasks with ease and minimal frustration. Better design that caters to your users and their needs can help make a product both more effective and more efficient. If users are satisfied with the experience they have with your product, they’re more likely to recommend your business to others as brand advocates.

Increased Revenue

This next one is simple. Better UX = More $$$.

Good usability means better learnability. What this means is that a usable product should be intuitive, making it easier to learn. In the case of an ecommerce store, good UX for the shopper translates to an smooth browsing experience and a quicker checkout process. This in turn equates to an increase in sales for your business. This is quite beneficial because users who cannot navigate themselves or find what they’re looking for, become frustrated and leave deeming your site unusable. If users leave your site satisfied with their experience, they are more likely to return.

As Jakob Nielsen said:

[bctt tweet=”“It is not unusual that a user-centered approach doubles the conversion rate and revenues””]

Increased Conversion

Users who get frustrated as a result of poor UX or an inability to accomplish tasks with ease are unlikely to come back. To ensure your product is usable, it needs to promote a sense of user efficiency. Efficiency in usability can can be viewed in relation to both time and money. If users can find things quickly, they are more likely to convert on your site. For example, if you have a page that prompts users to sign up for an account on your site, you need to make sure the process is straightforward and easy to understand. The better their experience with the sign up is, the more likely they are likely to complete the sign up process. This is applicable to ecommerce sales as well. The more user-friendly your checkout process is, the more likely users are likely to convert and go through with their purchase.

Saving Money & Resources

Redesigning is expensive. There are many factors involved in why increasing usability in your products will save you money and resources. First of all, the development costs. Developers are hired to create and innovate your digital products and websites; ideally they would spend much of their time working on projects to continuously improve your company. However, there is often an obstacle that takes resources away from development teams, and that is correcting errors. If you create a product without the user in mind, it will result in very low adoption rates. If your product lacks usability, then your product will also have even lower retention rates. This will mean you will need to do an overhaul of the product and spend much more money on a redesign; whereas a user-centred approach could have saved you time and money from the start. In fact, according to usability expert Dr. David Tavis, changes can cost 60-100 times as much once the product has become hard-coded. Therefore good UX = money and resources saved.

Next, having a usable product that demonstrates good UX will also save you money in support costs. If your product is intuitive to users, then there is little need for having user documentation or instruction guides. This can also save your support team some work as they can invest their time more effectively in helping customers with other things such as user onboarding. Usable products are more intuitive as they are easier to use and need less training.

Conclusion

This has been a brief overview of what good UX, Usability & Human Centred Design can do for your products and to please your users. If you would like some sources for calcualating the ROI of UX, you can find some calculators here. If you are already investing in UX and would like more resources on proving the value of your UX work, then please check out our blog post on UX Success Metrics.

If you have anything to add or any other comments, please feel free to tell us down below or send us a tweet.













Sources:

The Elements of User Experience

Usability Net

User Testing

User Focus

FastCoDesign