User experience or UX design is a nuanced art form, a growing field and a hot buzz word. Heading into the online marketplace, you may be asking yourself just how important user experience is to your brand and business. Looking at the numbers, there are clear indications that UX design can play a major role in key aspects of your online success.
1. Bounce Rates
Nothing is scarier to a web developer or business owner than growing bounce rates. Once you’ve invested capital in developing your online brand, you want to know that users are sticking around and coming back for more. That’s why it’s worth noting that 88% of consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience and 94% of first impressions are design-related. On an intuitive level, this makes basic sense. Whether your users are looking for media, merchandise, social networking or any other need, given the tremendous amount of competitors on the web, a negative user experience will send them pretty quickly to the competition. In terms of the power of UX design to reverse negative traffic, consider that Time.com’s bounce rates dropped by 15% after they adopted continuous scroll.
2. Revenue
Traffic, bounce rates and other indicators of online presence are great, but if you’re investing on the web, you’re ultimately looking at your bottom line. UX design is a sort of amorphous figure that spreads across a number of different fields and industries, whereas your main concern, revenue, is pretty straightforward. In terms of UX design basics, clear CTAs are up there in the first rules and so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that good UX design translates into increased revenue. In terms of hard evidence, ESPN.com saw a 35% increase in revenue after incorporating community suggestions into their homepage design.
3. Competitive Edge
Once again, the online marketplace is highly competitive. Every startup and business innovation is accompanied by ten more hopefuls trying to do it bigger and better. Facebook came after Myspace and blew it out of the water. Lyft and Uber still vie over the same pool of drivers and passengers. For every small corner and major player on the web, there are at least a dozen competitors. Ensuring positive user experience provides an invaluable edge within consumer groups that are accustomed to stream-lined, slick and easy to use products. In terms of the earlier mention of CTAs, keep in mind that only 47% of websites have clear CTAs.
Summary
It’s worth keeping in mind that UX design is still in many ways an abstract concept. It incorporates elements of traditional web design and development, along with aspects of cognitive science, psychology and individual clever observations of human behavior. UX design itself is in many ways highly complex, but the bottom line is simple. Make a user’s experience enjoyable and they will come back for more.
