What is user experience?
User experience or ‘UX’ is a term that designers commonly refer to when they are considering the customer’s view of a product or service. In other words, it’s about putting yourself in your clients’ shoes and appreciating the way they see things, so you can identify opportunities for improvement.
Why is it important?
In its most general sense, user experience design can be boiled down to two major themes: saving time and grabbing attention. The success of major tech companies – such as Amazon and Facebook – that have enhanced these aspects of their offering, have shown why every business should be paying attention to UX.
How can you improve your company’s UX?
The first step is to take a high-level audit of all of your business’ online touch points. From your corporate website to email marketing campaigns and social media channels, there are plenty of opportunities for you to make some UX refinements that will have a big impact.
To help you get started, here are five common scenarios with room for improvement:
1. Confirm that your website meets accessibility standards
Web accessibility is about ensuring people of all abilities can access the information on your website. For example, many government agencies are required to provide their services in a non-discriminatory manner. This includes things like asking your developer if they are using ARIA tags, so blind users can have content read out to them by a screen reader. For full details, see the Web content accessibility guidelines version 2.0 (WCAG 2.0).
2. Make sure your website is mobile friendly
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d have noticed the astronomical rise of smartphones over the past decade. Take a look around the next time you’re on a train or a bus and you’ll see what I mean. So it’s important your website can meet your clients where they are browsing. If your website is clunky to use on mobile, have a chat to your developer and ask them about improving the ‘responsive’ nature of your site – this is the term techies use to describe making a site mobile friendly.
3. Include caption text in your social media videos
While we’re talking mobile, it’s important to remember to make your content appropriate for its context. Think back to that person on the bus, listening to music in their headphones and having a casual scroll through LinkedIn – are they going to press pause on Ed Sheeran and listen to your company’s video? Not likely. However, the good news is, you can still get your message across by asking your video editor to include caption text in these types of videos.
4. Safeguard your online advertising against ad blockers
The rise of ad blockers – settings which stop the display of online advertising – has been a key theme of the web over the past few years. This has reached a head with tech giants including Google, Apple, and Samsung introducing ad blocking services built into their browsers. For marketers, this means new and creative approaches are needed to diversify the advertising mix. Some examples of this include ‘Native Advertising’ and the use of ‘Influencers’. To get some more ideas, take a look here.
5. Explain your processes in the most user-friendly way
The way you describe a complex scenario to your client can make or break their chances of understanding the situation and acting upon your recommendations. A sample case might involve a client who has learning difficulties when it comes to long passages of text. The good news is, there are a number of professionals taking new approaches by illustrating workflows with graphics, mind maps or even cartoons! For more detail, you can read about the rise of ‘Comic Contracts’ here.
