Some people, understandably, confuse User Experience (UX) design with User Interface (UI) design. They go hand-in-hand but User Experience covers a wider range of topics. In short, UX covers the entire experience of your customers — the purchase process, the communication, the packaging. It is about designing how they will feel when using your product. And the feel is evoked by many factors, including the interface, so it’s easy to get lost in all those design terms. But, even if you do get lost sometimes, always look out for those 5 signs that it’s time to hire UX designer:
1. Hire a UX Designer if Your Conversions Are Dropping
This is probably the most common problem UX can solve. If you’re experiencing a drop in sales or they are not going up even though you’ve increased your marketing budget, chances are a great UX designer could help you solve those issues. There are several possible reasons why your visitors are not converting. Your website may be overloaded with information, the checkout may be too complicated or people may be confused as to how the product itself works. In order to get to the bottom of this, a UX designer will conduct a detailed audit of your business, your website and your product to find any weak points. Based on the gathered data, your designer will form hypothesis that will later be tested. Once you find a great solution, the UX designer will help you implement it and then monitor the results to see if there’s room for improvement. Here’s a great example: A company named Basecamp increased their conversion by 102% after doing UX tests. And all they did was centre their landing page around a picture of a smiling woman.
2. Users Quickly Abandon Your Product
If you noticed that lots of people download your product or start using it but only few of of them stay, then you might have some problems to solve. Sure, some of users might just decide that it’s not for them, but if the number of people deleting your app is high, then you need to consider hiring a UX designer. People may be experiencing problems with the product itself, they don’t understand how to use it or just gett lost in all the functionalities. Here’s where UX design comes to the rescue. Testing your product and analyzing user behaviour will be a great source of valuable insights that you can implement to fight this issue. A UX designer can use various research methods like interviews, A/B testing, focus groups and more to get your users’ perspective and find any areas that need to be improved.
3. You Don’t Seem To Be Giving Your Users What They Want
You’re coming up with new features, more content or other great stuff and the users are still not excited? Here’s how a UX designer can solve this problem: through customer research. They will be able to create a detailed persona (or a few of them) and then look at your product through their eyes. This way, you will gain perspective on what your customers really want and need. Next time you’re wondering whether to add a feature or not — your UX designer will have the answer. One of the greatest advantages of having a UX designer on board (or working with an agency providing UX services) is getting to know your target audience and really understanding them. You need to know what they want in order to succeed. Horloges, an online store based in the Netherlands, did exactly that. They listened to their users and added a guarantee to their products. Guess what happened next. The store noticed a 41% increase in sales.
4. Your Users Get Lost And Confused
Whether they get lost when using the product, on your website or your landing page — it’s a problem. Your target audience can’t get confused when trying to purchase from you. And that’s another thing that a UX audit can help with. Based on target research, a UX designer will be able to tell what matters the most to them, what speaks to them and how to make them buy something. Then, the designer can go in and match the information structure of your product, website etc. to what your target audience expects to see there. Here’s a simple example: an airport parking company from Scotland, Flying Scot, researched what their users want and decluttered their contact form (the number of questions was off-putting for the users). The new design increased their conversions by 35%. Sometimes, business owners tend to forget about the user and just go with their gut, but, as you can see, working with a UX designer is a much better way of growing your business.
5. You Want To Add A New Feature Or Build A New Product But Have No Idea Where To Start
If you want to add a functionality to your existing product or are starting completely from scratch — you absolutely need a UX designer on board. The success of a product (or a success of a single feature, for that matter) depends on the User Experience. Think about it that way, sure, working with a UX agency or hiring a UX designer costs something but launching a product or releasing a feature that fails will cost you much more. And not only money — you might lose the trust of your customers and become less trustworthy for potential investors. That’s why, if you’re creating something new, a UX designer’s support is crucial. They will conduct proper research and work with your team to deliver a functional product or feature that users will love.
If you’re not convinced yet, you can contact our team who will be more than happy to tell you all about UX processes and how it works.
