UX (user experience) design is a popular buzzword in many startup industries right now — but what does it really mean? And why does it matter to your product? If you’re looking to create a product, app, or just have a business idea you want to explore, get started by learning more about the creative process that goes into designing great user experiences.
What is UX design?
User experience (UX) design is a holistic approach to creating a new product or service. UX design focuses on how products are used rather than just how they look. UX design designs products from beginning to end, and focuses on the customer journey across each and every possible touchpoint of the app.
Good UX design keeps the user on the page longer and helps them accomplish their goal faster. Renowned tech companies like Apple drive a UX-forward approach. Apple has famously user-friendly devices and operating systems that adapt each year to real-time data of how their customers interact with their products.
At the center of good product design is the user. Your user shouldn’t have to adapt to your product, your product should adapt to your user.
What is product design?
A product, in its most pure form, is a thing or a service that can be commodified, marketed, and sold. Nowadays, the definition of product has expanded far beyond traditional ideas of physical objects. A product can also just be a digital tool or experience that is updated continuously while still in use.
Product design, at its core, is problem solving. A product should address a problem and find an easy and efficient way to solve that problem for its users.
For example, if your problem is not knowing the directions to a destination, your product solution might be an app like Google Maps or any Maps app. These geographical and directional products make it as easy as possible for its users to navigate directions from point A to point B.
Product design is what designers build out. This is the actual idea and problem solving of the product. However, UX design is how these experiences are built out and how your user might interact with the product.
So why does UX matter more than product
Your product is only as good as your user’s experience and interaction on the product. The faster, more efficient, and easier you can make solving the customer’s problem, the better your product.
If you’re exploring a business idea or looking to build an app, make sure you’re putting your user first. Whether you choose to build an app yourself with no-code software, lean into a no-code agency to bring you a high-quality project on a short timeline, or you’re looking for traditional development, never forget to prioritize the user experience. Your number 1 focus at all stages of your build should be your users who will be on the platform every day.
Let’s walk through a few reasons why UX design matter more than anything in your product design process:
1. Investing in UX early can significantly reduce your costs down the line
UX design proves to be one of the most efficient processes to invest in for your product ROI. According to UX Planet, the general rule of thumb is that with good UX design and consistent improvement, every dollar returns $10-$100. The more work you do up front to perfect the experience for your future users, the less you’ll have to invest in big changes down the line.
Approximately 20% of all bugs within a program are directly related to the technical product; the other 80% of bugs are user interface-related that limit your users’ ability to navigate your product.
Investing early in the user experience limits your bugs from the outset, which is much less expensive than fixing them down the line along with other bugs.
Furthermore, with no code UX design, your UX changes can adapt with much more flexibility than with traditional code frameworks. No code allows product teams to prototype and test products and UX with a set of users within weeks, proving to be a valuable investment for good ROI.
In order to get UX design right, you have to work in an iterative manner. Your product should be constantly changing to new experiences, new users, and new data that you track as more users join your product. Unfortunately, with traditional programming, iterative design processes can become costly and time-consuming. With no-code development, iterations for the UX design are cheaper, faster, and easier to implement.
Investing in good UX design from the start of your product can save money in the long term and help you build a product that is more readily set up for success, growth, and conversions.
2. Better UX will increase your ROI by driving more conversions in-app
Good UX design serves one major purpose: get your users to solve their problem or accomplish their goal in as few steps as possible. The better your UX design, the faster they will make their way down the funnel. You want a product with as little friction as possible. At the end of the day, you want to help your customers to accomplish the goal that made them join your product in the first place.
A recent Forrester report found that better UX design could increase conversion rates by up to 400%. According to justuno, 93% of consumers consider visual appearance to be the key deciding factor in a purchasing decision.
Your product is as good as useless without an easy path to conversion for your customers. If you’re looking to build a product, app, or launch your MVP, make sure you invest early in a development team that prioritizes UI/UX design.
3. Good UX design can increase your brand loyalty and customer lifetime value
If your customer has a good experience on your app and accomplishes their goals, they’ll come back. Good UX can even turn your customers into loyal promoters. Getting new customers is only half of the battle; retaining them is just as important to your product success.
Consider Apple: they have perfected the art of good UX design. Some of their users are avid Apple fans, with a full set of products under their belt. These avid Apple customers are often vocal about their loyalty to Apple products.
Apple constantly changes the way their products interact with their user base, staying at the cutting-edge of UX design. A good user experience goes a long way for your business, even further than your actual product idea.
4. You can iterate and refine your UX over time, your product itself isn’t as flexible
Your product idea can change roughly over time and expand to cover similar services as your product-market-fit changes. However, your general product idea is the foundation of your product that can’t change much.
Your UX design, however, needs to change over time. If your product idea can’t change or adapt as flexibly, you can rely on UX design changes to satisfy the needs of your customers ever-changing demands.
For example, a company like Uber can expand its umbrella of services to Uber Eats, Uber Pet, and more. But at the end of the day, Uber is a rideshare marketplace. If customer demands change quickly based on external factors (laws, social changes, technology, environment, etc), your user interface (UI) can help address how your users interact with the product against these changing factors.
5. Good UX can improve your SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a form of marketing that helps Google and other search engines present your website on the search engine results page (SERP) . Good SEO helps users find your product organically. The higher up you are on that search page, the more traffic and conversions your product will see.
In fact, studies have shown that 75% of Google searchers won’t look past the first results page, so showing up higher on that page is more essential than ever for business owners.
User experience actually plays a huge part in the Google ranking algorithm that determines where your product will show on the results page. At the end of the day, Google is a business. Their goal is to help users find what they’re looking for. If a user finds your page on their search engine, looks through your website, and then uses your product to accomplish what they’re trying to solve, then Google has done its job. Google will therefore rank you higher if your user experience is efficient and proven to drive conversions.
Poor UX design can actually hurt your SEO ranking. The sooner you invest in a UX design-forward product, the faster and higher you will rank on the Google search engine results page.
Why no code solutions might be the best way design the perfect user experience
No code is a way of developing products using visual graphical interfaces rather than traditional code frameworks. It is designed to expedite the often technical and lengthy process of developing an app.
With no code, you can nail your UX design early in the process. No-code agencies like Creme put the user first in all development processes. Due to its visual graphical nature, no code frameworks allows the best user journey for the product to be determined pre-launch, which is pretty tough to do with the costly process of traditional development.
No code development directly impacts 4 major aspects of UX design
- Speed: How quickly you can build and test different designs to a user group
- Flexibility: How quickly you can iterate on user data results
- Ongoing improvements: How quickly you can rebuild and maintain the winning user experience as tested in 1 and 2
- Cost: How you can test different prototypes and user interfaces at 1/10th of the cost of traditional development when using no-code development
No-code development might be the best path for you to perfect and launch the perfect user experience for your product or app idea at 1/10th the cost of traditional development.
Looking to build a product?
At Creme, we use the power of low-code and no-code to design unmatched user experiences. We can build an app for you in under two months at 1/10th of the cost of traditional development. We're the all-in-one solution for startups, upscales and corporations looking to rapidly design, develop, and then launch with our support.
Ready to get started? Get in touch with us here.
