What is UX? And, does your small business need it?
User Experience (UX) Design and Research is a fairly new field, so you might not be familiar with it. So let's start at the beginning.
What is User Experience (UX)?
UX = User Experience. When someone says "UX" they are usually referring to user-focused design or user research. User-focused design is a philosophy that puts the user at the center of the design process. Through user research, the designer is focused on creating a product that is functional, meets the user's needs, is easy to use and enjoyable.
Here's a great video with a fairly in-depth explanation in under 10 minutes:
Does Your Business Need UX?
The thing about UX is that almost every business's customer is having a user experience of some kind. Whether it's a web-based product or a physical one, someone is using it and they usually have an opinion about it. Ensuring your customers are having a good experience on your website, with your products or while using your app is crucial to retaining customers or hooking in new ones.
So how can UX help a business, specifically? This guy can tell you!
Designing, Better
I'm a bit of a generalist designer (meaning I design a variety of things from websites to print materials to social media content), but UX design thinking has greatly impacted my work and become a foundational part of my approach. When I design a social media post, I don't just design for that one post. I design for the whole user experience, from beginning to end. So I'm thinking:
When will they be reading this post?
When they click through the link, what webpage will they land on?
On that webpage, will they have convenient access to the product they were just reading about on social media?
What other information will they want or expect there?
Designing with this sort of holistic context in mind creates a smoother user experience, involving fewer clicks and obstacles for the user. Which means they find their way to check out faster, which also means you lose fewer customers on the way to the payment form or sign up.
I hope this helps you have a better idea about what UX Design is and why it's important for small businesses! If you have any questions or you'd like to set up a free consultation to learn more about how my services could help your business, contact me.
