UX or user experience is what you feel while using a product. When a product makes you feel good, you know it’s designed well; if not, it means the UX is either badly designed or not designed at all. Good UX helps a product in increasing conversions, reducing abandonment, & building customer loyalty. This doesn’t just happen by accident. Apart from basic principles of graphic and content design, UX design takes into account issues of sociology, anthropology as well as cognitive psychology.
Let’s understand it with some examples of good UX.
Booking flights was a hassle for a long time until Virgin America came up with their new design. It completely transformed the UX of flight booking by letting the user focus on one step at a time in a beautiful, unconventional interface. You start with their departure location and destination and then go to a page to determine the number of passengers followed by a page to select seat assignments. By reducing information overload and a clean, playful interface, Virgin America not only made bookings easy but also fun.
A few years ago, booking a train ticket in India was a nightmare. Because IRCTC had a terrible UX & Indian travellers didn’t have a choice but to deal with it. But then came the travel portals like MakeMyTrip & Cleartrip with great UX and changed the game.
Today these companies are growing exponentially. Conversely, IRCTC is losing ground because of its horrific user experience.
UX focused products are massively disrupting the industries worldwide. Like Uber is in transportation, Airbnb is in hospitality, and the list goes on. Look at how the good old cable or satellite TV is on the deathbed because brands like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime are offering users a much better experience. The bottom line is – if your UX is not providing enough value, you will lose your users to competition.
Think about how the word Disneyland makes you feel; one gets excited merely by hearing the brand name- because we know Disneyland’s user experience is beautifully crafted, paying attention to the very last detail. This is the value a good UX can bring to your brand; as you will always remember how a product made you feel.
When you care for your users, it shows. While designing your product, keep empathy in mind. It will help you create a product that will make your users truly happy, and in return, your users will love your brand. Good UX is an investment, which will start giving returns immediately.
