Importance of UX Design in Modern Business

By Piyush Jain

Today, there is tremendous proliferation of digital products for large enterprises to small businesses. Most of the businesses are on digital wheels like mobile apps and websites with the common challenge to secure customer attention like never before. There is a big focus on making an outstanding first impression or providing the audience with the best experience. This has brought focus on UX design, these days UX design has become more important than writing the code for the digital product. That’s why there are many ux organizations providing custom UX services for digital products.

What is a UX design?

UX stands for user experience. User Experience surrounds all the aspects of the end-user interaction with the company, its products and its services. The focus of user experience is to find the synergy between the business goals and user needs. In simple words, it is about how the user feels while using your application, website or software. It caters to the user with preferences, perceptions, emotions, feelings and much more. A positive UX design enhances usability, accessibility and pleasure the interaction with your website or app.

Benefits that come with an effective UX design:

Increases Conversions

Many websites are selling the same product. But customers chose to open websites with easy and effective user experience. Increase in the number of visitors results in growing conversion rate. Since investing in UX design increases the company revenue, partnering with a professional UX design agency is a sound strategy.

According to a study published by Forrester Research stated that, while a great UI could increase the conversion rate of a website by 200%, a great UX could increase the same by almost 400%. Also, according to research done by Forrester, says that usability has a big effect on customers satisfaction; so much so that it:

• Increases their willingness to pay by 14.4%.
• Reduces their reluctance to switch brands by 15.8%.
• Boosts their likelihood to recommend a product by 16.6%.

Lower Support Cost

Having right user experience makes it easier for your visitors to get all the information about the product or services on your website. If users are getting answers to all their queries on the website itself, they will not have to email you or call you. This will lower your support cost.

Supports SEO

There is a significant contribution that an effective UX design makes when it comes to SEO ranking, in addition to link building campaigns – learn more on how to buy backlinks. The ultimate goal of a search engine is to provide users with information in a fast and convenient way. There are various factors that a search engine uses to track user engagement, UX design has a direct and powerful impact. UX design has many factors to focus on, major factors are:

• Load time or page speed. (note: website speed is paramount for UX, and hosting is crucial in order to have a faster website. Buy a quality, fast host, even if they’re a bit on an expensive side. Don’t settle for mediocre hosts that you can get ultra cheap on Black Friday (for example this one) and that you will quickly regret buying later on. Opt for quality right from the start, and your visitors will thank you for it.
• Mobile responsiveness.
• Implementing a user-friendly URL structure.

Increases brand loyalty

Brand loyalty is the tendency of a consumer to buy the same brand of goods repeatedly, rather than competing brands. Building brand loyalty is the core of any business. Hassle-free user experience doesn’t just impress users on first sight but retain them for a long-lasting relationship. A user-centred UX designing and continuous bug fixing are the keys to user retention and maintaining brand loyalty.

Right UX save cost in the long run

Paying attention to UX design in the initial stages of product development is very critical. If you don’t have the right UX and build the product after spending huge money, your customers will not stick to the product. Rebuilding the product after launch will cost time and money, sometimes even forcing entrepreneurs to abandon their product.

According to Robert Pressmen’s book “Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach” “For every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design. 10 dollars will be spent on the same problem during development. and multiply it to 100 dollars or more if the problem had to be solved after the product’s release.” An effective UX designing can save a significant amount of cost in product development.

UX designing cost Overview

An allocation of 15-20% of your project’s total budget to user experience designing usually yields the best ROI. There is no thumb rule, spendings on UX designing may vary from company to company. You may spend more on research, where others may spend more on prototyping. It will depend on your specific project, business goals and objective. Complexity in UX design and research would result in higher designing cost. As we mentioned earlier, the cost of designing is cost-saving because it can take a significant amount of cost and time to fix the same problem post-release. 

Examples of platforms with modern UX design

If you look at companies with well designed UX. They are in the billions in terms of revenue. An iterative UX design helps engage more audience and generates revenue which results in growth. Below are a few examples:

Airbnb

Airbnb is an online platform that connects people who want to rent out their house with the people who are looking for accommodation in the local area. It has been expanded to over 8100 cities and 191 countries. They make a continuous change with their UX design. The company is known for its best UX design and that is the reason why people use Airbnb over other options available. In 2018 the company generated revenue of $1 billion during Q3. In August 2019 a gross revenue of $4,308,726,681 was generated which is 21% of yearly growth. Many case studies depict that the reason for Airbnb growth is that the company is laser-focused on improving its user experience.

Netflix

Netflix is a streaming service known for its variety of content which are award-winning TV shows, movies, documentaries and more with an amazing UX. They have an omnichannel seamless user experience in mobile, tablets, TV as well as desktop. Netflix has a reputation for providing seamless user experience regardless of the device it is being used into. In 2019 Netflix generated revenue of $20.15 billion and $5.73 billion so far in 2020.

Spotify

Spotify is a music streaming platform. The net worth of Spotify has now reached $26 billion. There has been tremendous growth in the platform for the last 5 years. As you can see the difference here. There are several music streaming platforms. Others do not offer the user experience as good as Spotify.

Conclusion

By 2020, customer experience will overtake product and price as a key brand differentiator. It is required to think forward and understand the investment in UX design and its potential. This is the time to shift focus from business goals to user goals, to stay ahead of the curve in the rest of 2020 and upcoming years. It is important to hire an user experience services and consider UX designing as a critical part of the development process. It is one of the processes you can not afford to downplay, as UX is going to be the core of your digital product.

About the Author

Piyush Jain is the founder and CEO of Simpalm, a mobile app development company in the USA. Piyush founded Simpalm in 2009 and has grown it to be a leading mobile and web development company in the DMV area. With a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and a strong background in technology and entrepreneurship, he understands how to solve problems using technology. Under his leadership, Simpalm has delivered 300+ mobile apps and web solutions to clients in startups, enterprises and the federal sector.