Don't Skip UX: How To Design An Effective User Experience
User experience (or UX for short) considers anything and everything that affects a user's interaction with a product or service. In far simpler terms, UX is just what its name implies: the user's experience. At Rhythm, we follow a User-Centered Design process that puts the user's needs, goals and experience level into focus. This ultimately helps us build websites and applications that are beneficial and easy to use, instead of ones that people find confusing or frustrating.
Why UX?
A bad user experience isn't just frustrating for the user, it's bad for business. We've all visited a website or mobile app that's missed the mark because it's non-responsive, unorganized, jargon filled, or feature packed (and the list goes on). Whatever the reason, a website or app that fails to meet the user's needs will be quickly abandoned. And that's a big problem.
So how does this happen?
Contrary to popular belief, most UX missteps aren't simply the result of bad design – they're failures in strategy. Many organizations go through the entire process of designing, developing and maintaining a website without actually considering the goal behind it (and having a website because you need to have a website isn't a goal). More often than not, this leads to a situation in which content gets thrown into a website without even considering whether the end user will find that content valuable. For instance, if most users go to a website to learn about pool supplies, then why continue adding content about bowling balls?
It begs repeating: neglecting to consider or understand how users access and interact with a site's content is a recipe for failure.
What UX Success Looks Like
Rhythm's UX team tackles the challenge of creating new websites (or restructuring poorly-performing websites) by identifying the sweet spot where business goals and user needs overlap. We're then able to design and develop sites that visitors find useful. This leads to a number of beneficial results including increased traffic, increased number of retained/attracted visitors, increased sales/leads, increased customer retention, improved brand credibility, and increased return on investment.
And while we know that a strong user experience improves customer satisfaction, reduces development costs, and increases conversion rates, we also understand that launching a website is just the beginning. Since business and user needs often change, we always continue to refine our websites to keep them navigable and relevant.
Does your company need UX guidance? LET’S TALK.
Rhythm provides a comprehensive list of UX consultancy services including UX design, prototyping, wireframes, and usability testing.