So, digital experience and user experience are trending buzzwords right now. But what does it mean? And how can it benefit you? In this article, we are going to explore what user experience and digital experience are, and what the difference between them is. Simply put, user experience is how someone feels while interacting with a system. It includes any sort of device interaction. And digital experience means going beyond digitizing paper processes to create services that are only possible because of technologies. But what’s the difference between both? Stick around and continue reading to learn more!
Key takeaways – digital experience vs. user experience
So, you can view a digital experience as an umbrella that covers user experience. Or in other words, the digital experience is the core element of an overall user experience.
A great user experience means meeting the user’s expectations during all the interactions with your brand. And likewise, digital experience includes how users view their interaction with digital channels like emails, apps, and websites.
So, we can say that neither can exist without the other. However, the difference is vital to know. But the thing to know is that there is no great user experience without an excellent digital experience.
What is user experience
In simple words, user experience is any interaction users have with products and services (specifically digital) to gain a purpose or goal. It’s a broad field that ties to the other vital aspects of digital experience. Shortly, in UX best practices, you improve the user’s perception of your product and any services related to it.
Factors affecting UX
Factors that influence UX are as mentioned below.
- Useful: Your content must fulfill the user’s need for positive user experience.
- Findable: The content must be able to navigate and locate both on- and off-site.
- Usable: Your website should have an easy user interface.
- Accessible: The content needs to be accessible to users with disabilities.
- Desirable: Overall design of the product should be in accordance to evoke user experience.
- Credible: It is important that users must trust what you tell them.
Why is UX design important?
For a great user experience, UX design is vital as it tries to meet user expectations. The goal is to make users stay loyal to the brand or product by providing positive experiences. Also, with a meaningful user experience, you can create systems of service that are favorable to business success.
What makes for a great user experience?
Well, UX is different for everyone. But, the main thing to keep in mind is to fulfill your user needs. So, you need to consider all these points while designing a product.
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Project management
With this, you can plan and organize a project and its resources. It works in managing and identifying the project team, user-centered design process, and efficiently guiding the team at each step of the project.
It focuses on understanding the user’s needs, motivations, expectations, and behaviors with some observant task analysis, techniques, and feedback.
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User interface and visual design
This principle user interface focuses on foreseeing what users might need to do. It also makes sure that the interface is user-friendly and easy to access. And likewise, visual designs focus on providing a visually pleasing interface that reflects the brand goals.
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Content strategy
The focus of this principle is to generate, curate, and ensure the creation, governance, and delivery of useful content.
Challenges of user experience
UX designers face many challenges in designing a great user experience. However, there are solutions for everything. There is a need to recognize the challenges as early as possible to avoid the obstacles in providing an excellent user experience. So, let’s look at some common user experience design challenges!
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Design and development
It is useless to have a design without development, and it is equally worthless to have development without a design. So, to provide a good user experience, the two must work together. And if the designers and developers have no compatibility, then both the process and product can suffer.
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Budget and time restrictions
During the development cycle, time and budget play prominent roles in not only design but also the entire process. It is related to both of them. Design is all about connections, and even color layers serve different purposes. In this way, the designers need to spend more time and money on even minor changes.
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Lack of understanding about your role
To provide a good user experience, designers face a lack of understanding of their roles. And there is sometimes a misconception about UX’s holistic nature. Plus, there is a most common misconception about UX design that it’s all about making things look good. But it’s not true, and at the same time, it is possible to neglect the value of the user experience from a business standpoint as well. So, if you are a UX designer or developer and unaware of your role, it’s a challenge for you to provide a good user experience.
What is digital experience?
So, digital technologies facilitate interaction between a user and a company through digital technologies. E-commerce sites, websites, social media, and smart devices provide a digital experience to the users, employees, and partners that interact with the company.
Factors affecting digital experience
Some of the factors that affect user experience include the following.
- Availability: It involves all the concerns regarding the availability of the touch point and when the users want to use it.
- Usability: In the digital experience, usability has great value. It works around to find functions easily and make them frictionless.
- Performance: It includes the module to give seamless and fast interaction.
- User flow: Is the user able to accomplish what they want? Did their operation go well?
- Errors: Does the touch point contain any errors or broken components slowing a user interaction?
Also, digital experiences has the advantage of being able to monitor and potentially improve the user experience over physical interactions.
Why is digital experience important?
So, the customers are growing by adapting to the market trends and digital technologies. In that way, they explore and embrace such things not just to satisfy their needs but also for fear of missing.
We can take internet commerce as a very good example of digital experience. Likewise, nowadays, most people prefer online shopping to in-store shopping. And with the rise of e-commerce and mobile apps, you can shop anywhere without ever leaving your home.
So, it is vital to think of digital experience as a valuable part of the overall customer experience and user experience. Also, your business can be more proactive about satisfying current customers and enhancing employee satisfaction when you understand the digital experience.
What makes a great digital experience?
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Enhance excellent digital user interactions
Before providing a seamless digital interaction, first, you need to understand the needs and expectations of the user and then map their journey. Also, it is vital to identify the central moments of users’ journeys where they form brand loyalty and perception. After that, you can optimize those moments to provide the best digital experience.
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Make it convenient & easy for users
So, the features like live chat and chatbots are gaining popularity for many reasons. And your role is to provide easy and intuitive features to users. Plus, a great digital experience plan focuses on the ease of use and simplicity of the product. In that regard, it is vital to design user-friendly interfaces that users can quickly navigate.
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Give the users a never-ending experience
It is notable to consider what happens after a user becomes a customer when creating a digital customer experience strategy. It also ensures that even after the sale, the brand will continue to create never-ending experiences for customers. And here, we can take Amazon as an excellent example that provides a memorable digital experience to its customers.
Challenges of digital experience monitoring
The following are the three basic challenges in digital experience monitoring.
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Complexity
It is possible to have a micro services architecture running on a multi-cloud behind the single touch point the user interacts with. And using those technologies/environments, a company can develop more features quickly and efficiently. However, they also add exponential complexity. In that regard, User experiences can and do go wrong.
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Causation
In order to improve a digital experience, you need to determine the root cause, but that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. It is difficult for team members to identify problems with application delivery chains in distributed multi-cloud environments, especially if they distribute the deployment across multiple clouds.
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Context
Another critical aspect to take into account is the context users are in. Plus, various factors such as location, device, carrier, and others can have a profound impact. So, when monitoring the quality of a user’s digital experience, you must be aware of the context.
Conclusion
To sum up, I would say that digital experience and user experience are closely related. It is vital to have a good understanding of digital experience to provide a good user experience. So, if you want to complement user experience with your digital efforts, you need to focus on how you can make the customer journey feels seamless across the channel.
Also, consistency across channels is another aspect of a seamless experience. And lastly, when creating an excellent digital experience, you must focus on collecting, and analyzing the customer feedback, so it will help you design a better product.
