Why You Should Care About UX Optimization

Designing for the user experience entails more than just creating a usable product. A good design is pleasurable, thoughtfully crafted, makes you happy, and gets you immersed. Some things to consider when diving into the UX of your site and/or product is:

• Choices don’t always lead to higher user satisfaction
• You are NOT your users
• Test and monitoring performance is extremely important to stay current
• And, Consistency of marketing messages is key in developing trust

My Site Is Good. Why Should I Care?

So, why should you care about optimization? More specifically, why should you care about UX optimization?

Well, for one: your users are your customers! They are the money banks. They are your income and what keeps the lights on. For some of you, you are probably thinking at this point “no duh — my site works, fits my needs and I’m generating leads—why do I need a change?”

To that we counter with: How do you define good?

Times are changing. The web is evolving and quite honestly, as designers, it can be difficult to keep up with the influx of new ways, best practices, and cool, neat discoveries able to transform a website from stale to compelling. So, again we ask, is your site really working well? Are you getting the most conversions out of your users or settling for a mediocre amount of leads.

A study from Forrester Research concluded that a well-designed user interface could raise a website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.

Good UX Means Better Business

Circling back to our original question, why should you care about UX optimization? Here are the other reasons why:

1. To retain users and maintain conversions: 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience
2. To ensure the usability of your site: 73% of consumers access websites on their mobile devices
3. To direct users to the appropriate end-goal: 47% of websites have a clear call-to-action button that takes users 3 seconds or less to see

As humans, we all run off gut reactions. Although mom always said, “don’t judge a book by its cover” we tend to do so when it comes to visual things. Case in point that, 94% of user’s first impressions are design-related.

By investing in UX optimization, you can positively address this first touchpoint and gain more trust, brand recognition, and ultimately more loyalty from users.  Now more than ever before, initial business-customer engagements are happening online and it’s critical to create a seamless user experience. Consequently, UX is no longer a “nice-to-have” feature, but a requirement of any company’s online presence.

A Somewhat Pitchy Conclusion

The bottom line? If you do not continually monitor your user experience you’re setting your website up to fail. The design should be treated no differently than other key factors and drivers of your business, such as revenue growth and customer satisfaction. The return on investment of your site might be decent now but we all need to think long term as both web design and our customers continue to evolve.

If this is a lot to wrap your head around, that’s ok! That’s why you have us, Gravitate. We are a website design and SEO optimization agency. Our team makes sure your UX strategies and implementations focus on business goals with the user in mind. Let us assist you in auditing your current state and enhancing the UX to keep your business on the up-and-up. The wave of better UX isn’t going anywhere, and it is predicted within the next year or so that 73% of companies currently NOT conducting user experience testing will be doing so. So, be the first one to the party.