User Experience (UX) is an area of investment that is simultaneously incredibly important for your bottom line and incredibly difficult to get buy-in for.
The first challenge is that it’s a little hard to define – there's no one ‘thing’ that is UX. Instead, UX is the total sum of all the little things that make up an interaction between your user and your product (for most companies, the product in question is their website).
So if you're designing the entire interaction between a customer (or potential customer) and you, it's pretty important that it’s done right. Here are three reasons why UX is so crucial to your company and your bottom line.
1. Your Website Is Your Face
Your website is the face of your company. Most customers will check you out online before they buy your product, and if you’ve done your SEO right, your website should be right there at the top of the list when they search you on
Google. It means that when that potential customer lands on your site, they’re rapidly forming a first impression.
A good user experience is essentially a guaranteed good first impression. Why pass that up? By providing the information a user wants quickly and easily, by providing a clean layout that makes accessing more information intuitive and simple, and by making it so that any mistakes that are made are easily corrected, you can build a great relationship with them from the start. The flipside is that a poor user experience can be so damaging that the customer is gone before you know you’ve even had a customer to lose.
2. Happy Users Are Loyal Users
Simon and Garfunkel had it right: you have to
keep the customer satisfied. Whether a potential customer is on your site just to see what you have (for example, a service-based company like us at
Moveable Online), or they’re on your site to buy (like an ecommerce site, e.g.
statuswi.nes.com), a user that has a positive experience is probably going be more inclined to be more generous, more loyal, and have a longer relationship with you. All of which is in your best interests.
But consider the flipside for a minute. Let's say that a company’s UX is really bad. If that company has insanely pre-qualified customers and is the only game in town for their product, then customers will probably keep coming (government visa sites are a great example of this phenomenon).
But unlike government visa sites, most companies face stiff competition. By keeping your users happy, you can help keep them loyal to you. In fact,
89% of customers switched to a competitor following a poor customer experience.
So if your competition isn't providing the UX that your customers are demanding, it's a chance for you to snag some new revenue.
Just make sure your customers are not the ones getting snagged.
3. More Time, More Money
Especially if you're an ecommerce site, but any website really, one core goal is to
keep people on your site. Remember: your website is probably not the only thing that your user is looking at. Personally, I open at least three tabs whenever I open my web browser. So competition for user attention is pretty intense.
Your site needs to be so useful, so compelling, and so intuitive that it actually becomes fun to use. By providing users with what they want, straight away, and making it so clear that users couldn’t possibly
not know what to do, you’ll find that they’ll spend more time on your site versus your competitors, which in turn will further your relationship with them.
These are just three reasons why you should invest in user experience. There are dozens more that all impact your bottom line, so it’s in your best interests to jump on the trend now rather than get left behind.
Think you have a few ways UX can help? Comment below!
