An engaging and rewarding User Experience will give your organization an edge over its competitors.
As UX becomes an ever more important factor, staying competitive in this area is essential.
Follow these tips to keep your business’s UX on the cutting edge of innovation.
1. Integrate UX with Your Overall Business Strategy
It’s no longer enough to have a User Experience that achieves the bare minimum of functionality.
Your business needs a UX in line with its values.
As Paul Bryan of UX Matters states, “If User Experience is to become a strategic partner, the UX team’s designs should directly reflect the company’s business priorities.”
This means that UX managers and employees need to become familiar with their organization’s overall plans and objectives, so that they can tailor the User Experience to help further these goals. The UX team needs to understand what the organization’s market niche is, who makes up the key demographic, along with other important information so that they can design a User Experience that reflects these aspects of the organization.
2. Maximize Simplicity in Your UX Design
In an article for UX Magazine, Geyer states that the best innovations are ones that “make your life easier.”
Gartner reports that a common UX misconception is that “it is better to have a UI with lots of dynamic menus, animation, multimedia, rich graphics and other visual effects, even if it slows down the page-load time and decreases the responsiveness of the interface.”
In reality, obsessing over a visual experience can result in unnecessary development work that negatively impacts usability, UX, brand experience and overall business value.
Flashy graphics and intricate interfaces have their place, but the most important thing is that the UX is simple and clear. Innovation for its own sake isn’t nearly as effective as a change that makes things easier for the user.
When proposing new ideas to update your UX, you and your employees should ask:
Will this innovation make the UX simpler?Users want an experience that makes life easier for them and by focusing your innovation on achieving simplicity, you and your UX team will draw more users to your organization’s website.
3. Design Your UX to Fit the User’s Needs
While this may seem like an obvious point, it is incredibly important to design a UX that is focused on the user’s needs and desires.
Rafael Laguna, co-founder and CEO of OX, criticizes Twitter and Facebook for making users wade through copious unwanted advertisements and claims that these organizations risk losing users with their exploitative designs.
Laguna states that:
“UX must be driven by good design because the cost of bad design is ridiculously expensive (i.e. driving people away from your offering). Make products that people are happy to pay for, or at least services that they return time and again to without the need for over-the-top sponsorship.”
Focus on creating an experience that engages users and develops a positive relationship between them and your organization.
Filling your website with ads or other quick ways to make money may seem tempting, but it won’t pay off in the long run. If you offer users an experience that is focused on them and caters to their needs, your organization will benefit from their high levels of customer satisfaction and increased brand loyalty.
Get Started on UX Innovation!
Using these tactics, you and the rest of your UX team can lead innovation within your organization. Give your business a competitive advantage with a simple, integrated and user-focused UX.
