Rick Hevier explains the profitable power behind creating a top-of-the-line user experience for consumers both on and offline. Explore the intricacies of how to create this type of user experience here.

1. Want Your Customers to Come Back?
MAKE SURE UX IS
OF TOP PRIORITY
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2. Contents
1) Introduction
2) Using data to inform UX strategies
will make or break your campaign.
3) There are three primary factors that
should guide your UX efforts.
4) Adjust your UX strategies to best
meet your customers’ needs or lose
out to your competitors.

3. 1) Introduction

4. A Growing Interest
Staying current with marketing techniques is a
tricky process that involves both adopting new
technology and implementing it in an
effective manner. There are a myriad of ways
to use digital marketing to your business’s
advantage, but I’d like to address an aspect
of marketing that has gained a lot of
attention in recent years: user experience.

5. Its Need
User experience (UX) is, in the words
of the International Organization for
Standardization, “a person’s
perceptions and responses resulting
from the use and or anticipated use of
a product, system or service.” It’s how
an individual reacts to, well, anything.
It’s the task of companies to create
experiences that are appealing to the
user, but many make the mistake of
confusing strong design with good
user experience. While the two
certainly intersect on many levels,
design is only one part of UX. Yes, a
user interface (UI) can look polished,
but if it cannot easily be understood
and operated by users, then it fails to
do its job.
Source: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:9241:-210:ed-1:v1:en

6. First Impressions
UX starts with the first impression and ends
when the user forgets about any given
experience. The old adage has always
been that one can never judge a book by
its cover, but a UX professional knows that
first impressions are everything, especially
when a poorly optimized website can
discourage users in less than a second. An
opinion of a website can be formed within
50 milliseconds, according to a 2006 study.
Much of your first impression is based
around your brand; so, what do you want to
convey to your users in that one brief
moment that you have?
Source: http://anaandjelic.typepad.com/files/attention-web-designers-2.pdf

7. 2) Using data to inform
UX strategies will make
or break your campaign.

8. The Likert Scale
Impressions are a matter of perception. Extensive research is
required to assess user feelings towards your products, systems,
and services and determine how you’d like them to feel. For
instance, a medical care provider would likely want to adopt
clean, friendly imagery for their website, likely in a soothing blue
color scheme. Any UX efforts should be data driven and make use
of both quantitative and qualitative results. Likert scales are often
used among UX professionals to put solid numbers to user opinion.
For the uninitiated, a Likert scale is a surveying method that makes
use of a scale of opinions, usually from one to five, where one
represents low levels of satisfaction or agreement and five
represents high levels.

9. Web Analytics
Beyond this, there’s a wealth of different types of data that can
inform UX. On the quantitative side, clicks or tasks necessary to
reach an objective are common to measure, as are number of
mistakes made. Web analytics and factors such as
microconversions and common interactions can reveal patterns
in user behavior. Heatmaps also allow UX researchers to
determine areas of particular interest when examining websites
or digital UI.

10. Qualitative Research
For qualitative research, the key is to discuss products
with focus groups and get their thoughts and reactions
to certain aspects of the product. Asking specific
questions that generate varied answers are the best for
yielding insight. Field studies and leveraging customer
feedback can also paint a picture of the faults in a site
or product, especially when customers do not know that
they are being evaluated.

11. Quantitative Research
Even beyond quantitative and qualitative, UX researchers need
to ask themselves whether behavioral or attitudinal testing
would be more valuable. The former gauges the ways that users
interact with a system, while attitudinal assessed their feelings
toward it. Consider a combination of the tests listed above to
paint a complete picture of how systems are perceived and
used; you may find patterns that you had not previously
considered.

12. 3) There are three
primary factors that
should guide your UX
efforts.

13. The UX Myth
Good UX design involves creating systems with a purpose. Ricardo
Tayer likened systems creation to a functional human body; while
the outside should be presentable, it needs everything working on
the inside, as well. Even before testing is executed, companies
interested in making an impact through UX should consider the
value that they wish to provide their customers with. There’s a
common myth that marketing and UX are mutually exclusive. This
myth purveys that marketing involves drawing customers in and
benefitting the business, while UX only benefits the customer. The
truth is, UX is something that serves the business in revenue and
reputation, while also addressing user concerns.

14. Accessability
A system that a user can’t reach is of no use
to them. On the outermost level, ensure that
sites, products, and websites are easy to
locate. Within websites, good wayfinding
practices that keep users oriented can
minimize frustration and help them achieve
objectives faster. The faster a customer can
find your products/services the better,
because you are not guaranteed that they will
take the painstaking time to find what they
want from your site. They can simply go
somewhere else.

15. Value
Why would anybody want to use your app or
website? What can they expect to get out of
it? Does it save them time or achieve some
kind of goal? For instance, a website for a
restaurant should be designed with the notion
that users will likely visit to find an address,
determine operating hours, or view a menu.
Take the aspects of your system that you’re
certain will see heavy use and make them
appealing and easy to find.

16. Desirability
While we want to build a system that works as
efficiently as possible, care must also be paid
to intuitive, on-brand, and appealing design.
Users should use systems because they want
to, not just because they have to. Weave your
brand into a design; users should feel the
same way about it as they feel about any
other aspect of your company.

17. There's even more...
There are even more factors worth considering; Peter Morville’s
user experience honeycomb, though published in 2004, is still
very relevant to modern designers.
http://semanticstudios.com/user_experience_design/

18. 4) Adjust your UX
strategies to best meet
your customers’ needs or
lose out to your
competitors.

19. Room for Improvement
The great thing about UX is that there is always room for
improvement. While it may seem frustrating to continually
reevaluate your systems, a product, app, or site that provides
value to your customers in such a way that keeps them coming
back is worth the extra effort. Now’s a great time to get started;
though UX as a concept has been around for years,
improvements in research and technology have made it more
effectual than ever.

20. Strive to serve your
customers first, and
they will support you
right back.

21. Thank you!
By:
R i c k H e v i e r
Find me at:
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