In the field of design, you not only need technical skills to succeed, but also business prowess. As the number of people using the Internet increases, the value of UX designers increases. Multiple companies are seeking UX designers to help them gain a competitive edge in their market.
There is a reason you are not familiar with many -maybe not even one- of Airbnb’s competitors. The renting/booking marketplace “giant” has thrived in the global market for a decade and still hasn’t found anyone that can stand up to him.
User-friendly Experience + Simplified Buying Journey = More Sales
Online businesses in 2020 are forced to compete with large online and big box retailers, including Amazon, Wayfair, and brick-and-mortar stores like Walmart and Best Buy. In order to compete, e-commerce websites need to have a great user-experience (UX) and a streamlined buying process. Complicated checkout systems, over-cluttered product pages, and a lack of mobile optimization can severely inhibit a retailer from competing with large companies that have large, dedicated user-experience teams.
User-centered design isn’t just about creating a great experience for customers—it’s also a smart business move.
The Most Important Rule in Product Design, and Possibly Life Management
There is one principle of organization that every human should adhere to, particularly people who design products. Day after day, I see companies break this rule, and it is 100% of the time to their detriment.
User experience is all about making your website both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly for visitors. It’s about more than just a great design – it’s about functionality and how easily the user can navigate the site to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Card Sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the Information Architecture (IA) of a system. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online card-sorting software tools.
Brainstorming is one of the oldest known methods for generating group creativity. A group of people come together and focus on a problem or proposal. There are two phases of the activity. The first phase generates ideas, the second phase evaluates them.
In order to improve the user experience, you have to start by observing customers interacting with your product.
The first step to improving your own UX (and reaping the business benefits) is to conduct a usability assessment of your product, software or website. This process uncovers the most common problems. Often, usage analytics indicate UX issues with your product. Usability testing explains these issues.
At Situated Research, we help our clients to conduct competitive website assessments so our clients can stay ahead of their industry. A Competitive Website Assessment makes it easy to spy on your competition. You’ll be able to see things like how many indexed pages, inbound links, and social media followers they have, and how your traffic rank compares to theirs.