Considering customer experience in your UX design process

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Do you know you can provide a steady foundation for your brand or business and increase return on investment by adopting practices that elevate customer experience? In the past, companies relied totally on their product’s quality to get new business or more sales. They were successful, but now it’s not that easy because major brands have become user-centric and marketing machines. So, if you want to compete with them, you need to consider customer experience in the UX design process.

Now the question is, why should you do this? A simple answer is users’ habits and preferences are changing and evolving for the services or products they use. For example, according to a Deloitte report, almost 50% of the customers search products online before they visit a store. The main reason is modern users have access to all the information and resources they need. Therefore, companies need to make extra efforts to get data about customer experience and use insights in the UX design process.

So, without any further ado, let’s find out why you need to consider customer experience in your UX design process.

What is customer experience?

It’s a combination of feelings, beliefs, and perceptions that your brand is created for customers. It’s a process where you value your buyer throughout their journey. Customer experience is all about how customers view your brand based on their interaction with the people and your products.

Remember, nowadays; customers have higher expectations from your products and services than ever before. It allows customers to shout about your company. It can be either positive or negative based on their experience with your product and customer support.

How can great customer experience help businesses grow?

If we talk about a new generation of businesses that were merely startups a few years ago, they are now billion-dollar darlings. Do you know how they become billion-dollar companies? The main reason behind their success is their focus on customer experience in both business models and product/service design. More importantly, they didn’t just rely on sales strategy and marketing. The success of these startups is encouraging brands to rethink their approach.

By focusing on customer experience and the UX design process, customers can differentiate you from other brands. It was predicted in the past that customer experience would take over price in 2020, and we are witnessing it now.

The relationship between customer experience and the UX design process

The most important thing to note is the importance of factoring customer experience into your UX design process. The two go hand-in-hand, so moving forward with one piece missing is detrimental to your business. But how do we make sure that UX design takes customer experience into consideration. Let’s discuss 10 key UX design principles to consider that will help keep customer experience in focus.

10 UX design principles that businesses shouldn’t ignore

When you design a product without considering user needs and expectations, it will not bring sales. Therefore, considering customer experience in the UX design process is the key to success. Consequently, we have decided to share UX design principles that businesses can’t ignore.

• Put the user in control

When UX designers set high standards and try to produce their best designs, these designs can be complex for the users. Users will find it challenging to navigate and interact. Therefore, it’s essential to make the UX design process user-centric. Designers should focus on users’ empathy instead of their own opinions. More importantly, the design should focus on customers’ pain points rather than the personal preferences of designers.

Remember that the user’s needs, wants, pain points and expectations are crucial. Therefore, companies invest heavily during the initial stages of the project to get an idea of user expectations. For example, you can create a design that is easy to interact with and navigate.

• Keep accessibility in mind

As the name indicates, the designer design product for a larger audience, and there will be people with disabilities as well. Therefore, it’s essential to accommodate all sections of people when designing the product. It’s the responsibility of the product designers to ensure that there are no obstacles for any group of audience.

Nowadays, there is strictness about accessibility. If your product or service is not easily accessible to blind or people with other disabilities, they can file a case against your company. So, consider the following things to make your service accessible to disabled persons.

• Use bigger texts for vision, autism, and dyslexia
• For physically disabled people, there should be bigger CTAs
• Detailed FAQs and customer administration chat for deaf and autistic people

Doing these little things in the UX design process can help you target a wide range of audience.

• Information architecture should be well-organized 

In simple words, IA is a method for labeling and organizing websites and software. The main goal is to make them easy to use and find so that users can easily locate information and perform tasks. If you don’t want to make significant changes in your website design later to save time and effort, ensure that your website’s information architecture is well-organized.

You can embed the following 4 components of information architecture in the UX design process.

• Organizing structure

As the name indicates, it defines the way you organize, structure, and categorize information.

• Website labeling

It’s the art of presenting information in a most simplified manner.

• Easy navigation

A person can access the intended information easily.

• Improved search systems 

Instead of scrolling all pages, users can seek the required information by using the search system.

• Have a clear hierarchy

Some designers take hierarchy for granted, but they don’t understand that it can ensure smooth navigation throughout the design. Here you need to follow two hierarchical principles.

• Content should be aligned with the design
• Visual hierarchy

Both these principles can make your Website or App easy to navigate, and users can find the required information in no time.

• Maintain consistency

For example, if users have already used your products in the past, they would want a similar experience. When the users are familiar with the product, they can interact with the product in a better way. By maintaining consistency, the designers can save time because there is no need to redesign or modify each element of the user interface. Yes, trying something new is good, but maintaining consistency is also crucial in the UX design process. 

• Understanding context is the key to success 

No design principle can be influential without context. Spend time to understand user needs, and understanding user context can help you find out the challenge they face. Consider the following contextual factors in the design process.

• Emotional state and requirements of users
• The device they use and their time availability
• Whether the user on the go can use this product or a person sitting at the desk

When you understand the user’s behavior, you can blend all these factors to maximize the user experience.

• Use simple language 

As you know, it’s not easy to retain users in the ever-growing digital space. Moreover, there are various products and services similar to yours. They do different other tasks when they scan your website or mobile apps. So, the best practice is to use words closer to your users’ thoughts. Avoid using technical terms and keep the language simple.

It will not only provide a better customer experience, but it’s also easy to understand. The best practice is to follow the 3 Cs: consistent, clear, and concise words throughout the design. It will reduce ambiguity.

• Typography as a key principle 

Nowadays, designers have unlimited fonts they can use them to create a visually interesting user interface. Typography impacts UX design copywriting significantly. You can improve or suppress your message through typography. Therefore, you can use it to make UX user-friendly and accessible. As mentioned earlier, use a typography hierarchy. So, typography should be part of a checklist for UX design principles.

• Personalize your designs

Nowadays, users find it challenging to connect with lifeless designs, codes, and designs. So, you can personalize the design by keeping the person’s needs in mind. In this way, you can target a larger audience. Personalizing helps you add a human touch to your products. Be clear about what type of audience your website or app serves.

• Leverage confirmation and feedback 

The last principle of the UX design process is to leverage confirmation and feedback. For example, when a user finishes a task or navigates through your website, they should receive completion feedback. If your application is about payments, and the feedback form or popup doesn’t appear after the transaction, it can confuse your user. More importantly, you can use this feedback to make changes and improve your products and services.

Final words on customer experience and the UX design process

Customer experience can make or break your business. Therefore, it’s essential to consider it in your UX design process. If you don’t do that, you can’t survive in this competitive world. As mentioned earlier, customers have unlimited options to choose from; why should they choose yours? If you want them to use your products or services, you need to make extra efforts and add customer experience to the UX design process so that you can fulfill their needs and expectations.