Though there is much that goes on behind the scenes of a successful business, the element that makes everything they do possible is their customer base. If you aren’t focused on the needs and interests of your target audience, then you are not running a sustainable business. To experience growth and have success well into the future, you must continually meet your customers’ demands.
In this digital age, that means not only providing services and products to meet your customers’ needs but having an optimal UX strategy as well. Every element of your company that your customers interact with needs to have a user-centric design. Having an excellent product or service won’t matter if you don’t provide your customers with a user-friendly way to access it.
Good UX is all about accessibility, sustainability, and simplicity. An optimal strategy for UX is defined by both the systematic approach you take and your design philosophy. Basically, there is a strict and formal framework of systems and code that your web developers will follow while also considering the front-facing, meaningful design that users will interact with.
ACCESSIBLE UX DESIGN
The basics of an accessible UX design are elements and information that are useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible. This means your content and site needs to:
- Fulfill a need
- Be easy to use
- Be aesthetically pleasing
- Be easy to navigate
- Be accessible to everyone (including those with disabilities)
- Be honest and trustworthy
These are the core elements that should drive your UX design strategy. They are what will make the experience meaningful for your customers and enable your brand to have a positive impact. If your customers don’t feel that you care about them and their needs, you will lose their business.
Furthermore, an accessible UX design doesn’t only benefit your customers, but it benefits your business as well. Having a design that is accessible will protect you from legal recourse, encourage innovation, help you acquire and retain loyal customers, and set your company apart as a leader in the industry.
SUSTAINABLE UX DESIGN
Companies all across the globe are making changes to run a more sustainable business. From their internal operations to their front-facing products and designs, everything is “going green” where possible. And UX design is no exception.
According to ClimateCare, “The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet, and the systems supporting them accounts for 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions.” Consumers are making more conscious decisions about which brands they choose, and companies too must make changes to mitigate the impact of the internet with more sustainable UX designs.
Sustainable UX design means creating a layout that runs as efficiently as possible to reduce load times and the number of clicks it takes for users to find what they need. This means using features and elements that require less data and a design that is easy to navigate so users can find what they need fast. The longer a user spends on your site and the longer things take to load, the more work the servers have to do, which means more energy is used up.
SIMPLE UX DESIGN
Many consider simplicity as the fundamental principle of UX design. The key to an enjoyable user experience is a beautiful yet minimal design without any fuss and bother. You want your customers to feel something special when they see your site. And they need to be able to easily navigate to what they need without distractions.
A simple UX design is clean and intuitive. It gets users to what they are looking for in the most straightforward way possible. However, while creating something simple might seem simple, it is not. An efficient, accessible, and simple design often looks easy on a front-facing level but is built on complex code and systems, such as integrated software, big data, and the IoT.
A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE REQUIRES RESEARCH
It doesn’t help only to implement an accessible, sustainable, and simple UX design. You must also conduct research and collect data to continually improve your design and efforts. These days, e-commerce and the technology that supports it grows and changes fast, as do what consumers want. You must stay on top of trends and use data collection to find what is working and what isn’t to continually grow and improve your business.
Knowing what a quality UX design is isn’t enough; you must also know how to measure it. If you don’t understand how your customers see, feel, and experience your design, then what is the point of UX? The only way to measure these things is to conduct UX research and utilize data analytics.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you want to build a sustainable business that will last, you must implement UX best practices into your design strategy. Keep it simple, make it accessible and easy to navigate, reduce load times, and most of all – be authentic. Customers don’t just want something useful; they want brands that are credible and relatable as well. You should always operate with integrity when implementing an optimal UX design.
