The Benefits of Investing in User-Friendly (UX) Web Design
What is UX web design? UX is all about user experience. Let’s take your mobile phone as an example. The way your phone feels in your hand, its size, the fact that you can personalise it to your taste, all play an important part in the pleasure and meaning it has for you as an object, quite apart from its functionality. UX design is what web design teams use to create websites that are both relevant and meaningful for their target visitors.
How do web designers design an experience? It starts with making the website good to look at, intuitive to use, and easy to navigate. UX goes one step further, though. It asks 3 important questions:
- What are the particular problems that visitors come to this website to solve?
- What is it that customers need, which this product can supply?
- How can we make interacting with this website as pleasant and stress-free as possible?
In this article, the Imagefix web design team discusses how UX design works, and 5 benefits it offers to business.
What is UX Design? – Asking Why, What, and How
Any design task starts with questions, and UX design is no different. The goal of UX is to create a satisfying user experience, so the start point has to be defining that experience. Once the experience is defined, the challenge is to design the things that can help to create at experience for the user. The are two stages to this process.
Stage One – Defining the User Experience
The way web designers define user experience is through the use of 3 questions:
- Why do users come to the website? This questions the motivations of visitors to the website. Are they seeking a solution to a problem, do they need the product to fulfil a particular task, or are they attracted to a set of values associated to owning the product?
- What can users do with the website? This question relates to functionality. Can users buy a product from the website? Can they get useful information about a product, compare it with other similar products, or check out the experiences of other people who have bought the product.
- How can the functionality be aligned to users’ motivations? The answers to this question may include the inclusion of helpful prompts that can guide users to their goal, the intuitive nature of their navigation through the system, and the visuals that help them to make meaning from their interaction with the site.
Stage Two – Creating a UX Design – Google
It’s not by accident that Google is the site the majority of online searchers go to. Why? Because it knows exactly what purpose it serves – looking for something online – and it serves that purpose elegantly and intuitively. It’s a distraction-free website that offers you one, simple focus, a search bar.
An additional UX feature that makes Google so popular with users is the way that the ‘auto-suggest’ feature helps with defining your search. You simply start typing in the search bar and Google will help you to define your query. Then, once you submit it, the response is almost instantaneous, with results listed according to their appropriateness.
What are the Benefits of UX Web Design?
Some of the benefits of UX web design are obvious, others less so. Here are our 5 top UX benefits to business:
- Enhanced User Satisfaction. Working with a UX web designer helps businesses create websites and digital experiences that prioritise user needs and preferences. This focus on user satisfaction leads to improved customer engagement, increased trust, and higher chances of user conversion or retention.
- Increased Conversion Rates. A UX web designer optimises the user journey by identifying pain points and streamlining the path to desired actions such as purchases, sign-ups, or enquiries. This optimisation can lead to higher conversion rates and drive tangible business results.
- Competitive Advantage. User experience is now a key differentiator for businesses with an online presence. Using a UX web designer gives businesses the opportunity to stand out from competitors by delivering superior and intuitive experiences that leave a lasting impression on website visitors.
- Reduced Design Costs. UX web designers conducting user research and testing in order to identify and address usability issues early on in the design process. By catching potential problems as part of the initial design phase, businesses avoid costly redesigns or fixes later on, leading to substantial cost savings.
- Improved Brand Perception. A well-designed website with intuitive user experience can significantly enhance a business’s brand perception. When users have positive interactions with a website or digital product, they’re more likely to view the brand as trustworthy, reliable, and customer-focused, ultimately strengthening brand loyalty and advocacy.
Imagefix Design is Focused on the User
For the Imagefix web design team UX is the most logical way to design for business clients. After all, our goal is always to drive tangible business results. Our web designers understand UX design and its impact on businesses. By taking time to understand our clients’ businesses, we are able to apply our knowledge to create satisfying and engaging experiences for their customers.
Working with Imagefix web design allows clients to experience the impact UX has on their business in terms of increased conversions, improved brand perception and greater customer satisfaction.
We hope we’ve answered the question ‘What is UX web design?’. If you would like to talk about a new website that incorporates UX design, give us a call on 01525 715608.
