What Business Problems Does UX Design Solve?
UX, or User Experience, is how a user feels when they interact with a website or an application. UX design is a process where the business defines how they want the user to feel as they interact with the brand. UX design allows the business to tailor user experiences and is quite evidently an important step in building a product, whether it’s a website or an app.
UX design also helps companies solve certain specific business problems which if left unresolved have a negative impact on customers. In this article, we explore four such problems that UX design solves.
The 4 business problems that UX design solves
#1 Prevents ambiguity in brand messaging
A website or application needs to give users two key details clearly: What is the product/service and where do they go next. Take a look at the homepage of this website:
You can neither tell what their USP is nor can you tell where to go next. The lack of clarity in messaging and the cluttered flow completely repels users.
Ambiguity in a website or app does not just make it difficult to use; it also makes the brand difficult to trust. There’s a reason for this, and it’s called the ambiguity effect. The ambiguity effect is a cognitive bias that results in people avoiding options that they consider to be ambiguous or to be missing information because it creates uncertainty, and uncertainty triggers mistrust.
How does UX help solve brand ambiguity? By focusing on answering the what and the where. The purpose of UX designing is to define what message to deliver on a screen and the CTAs to provide in order to define the user’s next destination. Here’s an example of an app with great UX:
The positioning of content, icons, and CTAs, and the user flow (which is split into three steps) make the app extremely easy to use and there is absolutely no difficulty in understanding what the user can achieve using this app.
#2 Helps define vital data collection points
Businesses can choose to collect standard analytics data like page views and clicks but in truth, a business can draw more actionable insights from data that is collected from strategic points that are specific to the app or website.
Here’s the UX design for the meditation app Calm’s welcome page:
Tracking standard data would involve tracking which pages of the app the user visited, the time they spent on each page, where they bounced off from, and so on. Of course, this data is important.
But if the business could also track data specific to the app, for example, which buttons were selected and then deselected, it would help create a more holistic view of the user’s intentions and interests (selecting and then deselecting shows hesitation — the user is probably interested but not ready).
And this is where UX design helps. The skeletal prototype gives data analysts the visuals they need to define data collection points so tracking measures can be put in place before the product goes live.
#3 Creates space for personalization
Personalization can give a business a revenue lift of 10 to 15 percent. Most businesses plan for personalization after a website or app is launched and the reason, again, is because business heads do not have the visuals needed to define areas that can be personalized.
When decision-makers have access to the UX (the screens on the left), they can decide what content will be personalized (screens on the right) before the product moves to development.
#4 Allows brands to influence the user’s journey
A great website or application is easy to navigate, with proper CTAs and menu links. While this makes life easy for the user, it takes away all control from the brand. The user can move around the site freely and brands have no control over the user’s path.
UX design, however, gives brands some power to influence the user’s journey. When designing the UX, you decide where each interactive element is placed. There are certain sections of a page that get more attention than the rest. For example, an article by CXL stated that a majority of users spend 80% of their time viewing the left half of the page and only 20% viewing the right half. It also mentioned that the top-left corner gets attention first.
Placing elements that you want users to interact with, like product links or promotions, within these sections of the page that get the most attention allows you to at least influence (if not direct) how the user’s journey will unfold.
Conclusion
UX design is more than a design process; it is a problem-solving process. Good UX creates trust between the user and the brand and helps them find solutions to their pain points. You get one shot at designing impactful UX, so get in touch with a reputable UX design studio when you decide to do so.
