Understanding the User Experience

Autoplay wasn’t a practical choice for many of Netflix’s subscribers. When designing a product, Marcus’ mantra is “Practical. Purposeful. Profitable.” If your product is practical and you are able to convey the purpose of it, nine times out of ten, it will also be profitable. Find out how focusing on perfecting your user experience will help your company grow, become more successful, and turn your average customer into a brand ambassador.

Do you remember your last great meal out? The one where the food was terrific, the conversation was lively, the decor was perfect for the occasion, and your server was funny and helpful? You had a great user experience. Too often, UX tends to focus on the tech world, relating only to websites and apps, but it can and should be focused on all sorts of businesses. Customers and their happiness are the lifeblood of small businesses.

At its core, user experience means taking into account what customers want, need, and value. It means realizing that your older clients might not know how to navigate a crowded website filled with millennial jargon. Similarly, it means keeping up with industry trends that competitors are using to stay on top of the market. It serves clients and customers first, with an eye on fulfilling your company’s objectives. Designing for user experience will build loyalty, break down purchase barriers, and ultimately make your company more profitable and healthy.

Top-notch UX means that customers aren’t counting the minutes they have to spend in your store or on your website to check out. When a customer has fun exploring while feeling comfortable, they’re much more likely to return. Retention creates lifelong revenue, and that’s a reliable way to run a business. Simplicity is the key. Don’t burden your clients with too many bells and whistles. Take a page from Google. When the Internet was in its infancy, Yahoo, AltaVista, and Lycos were kings. Slowly, their homepages became hubs of news, email alerts, stock market information, and more. Google cut through the extras and provided a simple white page with a search bar and two buttons. Now, they own 94% of the search engine market share. (Shaw, 2020). Loyalty built the Google empire, and it did it through simplicity and innovation.

Designing your business around a better user experience does two critical things in regard to efficiency.

Satisfied customers are more likely to become brand ambassadors. These people go out of their way to sing your praises and bring in new business. There’s a quote often attributed to Henry Ford that says, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” A good user experience not only gives customers what they want, but it delivers it in a way that seems perfectly natural and intuitive, so issues or inconveniences won’t even occur to them. A satisfied customer won’t know the hard work that created a satisfying experience, but they will appreciate the result.

A project manager’s job isn’t to deliver a website or a storefront for you; it’s to provide an efficient website or storefront that works for customers. Make sure your project managers keep user experience in mind on every new project. When it’s overlooked in the design, construction, or sales phase, it’s hard to retrofit a good UX into something that already exists.

Remember what Marcus says. “In any business, you can’t be complacent. If you do, you’re going to go backwards.”

What the heck does that mean? Simply put, it’s how easy your store or website is to navigate for every kind of user. When your interface design is good, customers won’t even notice it. It will just feel natural and easy. When it’s bad, you’ve got a world of hurt coming your way. Negative impressions last a lot longer than good ones. Creating a simple space to navigate, where it’s easy to find answers and is unchallenging for all users, is the recipe for success. For example, you can spend thousands of dollars and countless working hours building a great website, but have you thought about how it loads differently on Android cell phones vs. iPhones? Laptops vs. desktops? Good interface design is about making sure every customer positively experiences your company.

When thinking about the ideal user experience, don’t forget about your employees. If you have people working remotely (almost a given considering the Covid-19 pandemic), then spend a little time considering how they communicate with one another.

Focus on what’s essential to put in front of clients right now. Suppose someone logs onto your website looking to buy a $3 item. In that case, they shouldn’t have to slog through your company history before finding the product page, no matter how impressive your company’s history is (and we’re sure it is). Tuning into your customer needs is crucial for building a good user experience. Your goal is to create an easily browsable store that is tailor-made for your specific clients. You should put the right information in front of the right customers at the right time.

Don’t stop listening to your customers. Many companies can run diagnostics on your business to give you the insight to design a better product. Whether customers know it or not, they’re leaving a trail of breadcrumbs every time they shop with you. Online, they leave information like how long they waited to click the purchase button. In-store, their in-and-out time can tell you how well-designed your sales floor is. If you aren’t analyzing that information, then you might not know when you have a problem on your hands. As the old saying goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

From your in-store display designs to your website’s color palette, keep all of your branding consistent. Your company and its brand should be easy to find and recognize, even after making little design tweaks. Unless something is catastrophically wrong, try not to redesign your brand completely.

To create a great user experience, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Ask yourself what their goals are, what problems they have that you can solve, what are they interested in, what they believe, and what inspires them to purchase. For example, take Uber, the ridesharing app. Uber saw a problem. Calling for cabs was a hassle. Sometimes they wouldn’t show, or they’d show up late. You didn’t know who was driving. And, bad reviews for rude drivers didn’t add up to much change.

A small tweak to any part of your UX will make ripples in your customer pool. By examining those ripples and figuring out how it changed user behavior, you can figure out where to focus your attention. A customer needs motivation, ability, and a trigger to make a purchase. If they come to your site or store, they already have motivation. If they aren’t there, focus on how to bring them in. If a customer picks up an item or adds it to their online cart, but then they choose to leave, figure out why. Do you need to lower your prices or offer discounts? Or, did they find your payment page confusing? Finally, customers need a trigger to make a purchase. Are your calls to action strong and clear? Do your clients feel comfortable waiting for a better deal? To provide a good user experience, your company has to explore user behavior.

Building better user experiences is crucial because it makes your customers happy. It’s as simple as that. How it makes them happy and why it makes them happy is a bit more complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s an entrepreneur’s job to cater to their clients. Create a brand that pleases, products that wow, and tools that don’t distract from their enjoyment. You can do that by listening to their feedback and tracking the way they shop with you. In the end, it’s all data and numbers. And, as Marcus says, “If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.”