Why Bother About UX?

What do you call a beautiful neighborhood with no signs or directions? A maze.

This may not be a very funny joke seeing as I made it up myself and I’m not known to be very funny, however, the point remains that no matter how great your building looks, if people can’t figure out how to find what they’re looking for in it, you may as well have built a statue.

A lot of people have that one café or restaurant they go to just because it looks great and the service is great; even though the cookies taste like wood. This is the same for most people; whether the place is virtual or physical. Looks influence choice. That’s why inner beauty doesn’t get a lot of suitors unless it is accompanied by outer beauty. You may be offering amazing services and your target audience will never know, because your website gives them stress aches.

Every website, app, landing page or blog is created for a purpose. Every one of these things is created to help people find something or do something. However, how the user feels as they make effort to find what they’re looking for determines whether they eventually use the information or stop halfway through looking for it.

Over the years, websites have been built with the business in mind; however, the business is for the user, and the best thing for the business is for the user to take a specific action. This then means that the websites and apps should be built with the user in mind. This is why User Experience is important.

User experience is concerned with feelings, because let’s face it, it’s the emotion that moves the wallet. We buy certain items because of how we feel; we buy from certain brands because of how we feel. Not so?

Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of the website or app, the user’s journey through it should leave the user feeling good. Sadly, so many product managers do not make provision for UX design on their teams, because “Why bother? The developers can build it.”

Here is the problem with that; developers develop. Developers are not concerned with colors that can make the user feel relaxed or words that get the user to take the right action without being pushy. Why? They’re builders. You can’t expect the constructor to paint and make street signs too. It’s not what they do. But I digress.

For several non-techie humans, finding specific information or taking specific action on the internet can be quite the hassle. However, with the right arrangement, this can be resolved, and you would have a nervous user become a relaxed buyer who is happy to leave a review.

Everyone likes ease. Everyone.

Frustrating error codes and complicated processes; these are just a couple of the things a UX designer and a UX writer can take out of the equation, making your website a comfortable place for your target audience to stay a while and have a look around.

This sounds so sinister, but this just means that good UX encourages the user to take the action you want. This won’t happen because you post call-to-actions everywhere on the website, it will happen because the CTAs are in the right place and are worded the right way.

Good UX enables you to upsell, because convincing a human to take an action is an art; convincing a human to take an action they did not plan to take is a gift only UX specialists possess.

Hiring a UX designer and/or writer may seem like added cost, but not hiring one is also added cost. Put the two points above together, and you have a user who buys and recommends that others do the same.

Also, including UX experts in your team will prevent the extra expenses that come with creating and maintaining a support system, because there is very little need for manual intervention. Good UX means the user does not have to click on “help”.

Too many businesses have undermined the contribution of user experience to business growth. Don’t be that guy. Fact: Happy people spend more. Aesthetics influence the decision of the user, and this is why you should give priority to the look and feel as much as you give to the content. Did you already know this or are you about to make some changes to your team?