User experience (UX) design has become an important part of many businesses' design and development process. This comes as no surprise since UX can increase conversion rates, sales, and brand loyalty. UX can also help save businesses a great deal of time and money.

By carefully considering whom the user is and how to organize tasks to meet their needs, UX improves the quality of a user interface (UI) design project and minimizes the risk of releasing an interface that will produce unfavorable results.

Many businesses make costly mistakes when they do not engage in user experience analysis. Whether a business takes the time to perform user experience analysis or not, they must keep in mind that user experience is always there. It isn't something you add to an interface. You can enhance it and improve it or just let it remain as it is, but either way, users will be interacting with your interface and forming opinions about it.

Even the worst interfaces offer a user experience and the difference between a poor user experience and a great one usually ends up being that amount of money that goes into a business's pocket.

What is UX?

UX is a process of enhancing user satisfaction, this is done by developing an understanding of who the end user of a system is and how they interact with that system. A great user experience should be the goal for any mobile app or website and to do this, it must be both useful and usable.

Usability is a critical component of successful mobile apps and websites as modern consumers have come to demand it. No longer are people willing to suffer through poor user experiences to find what they are looking for, as they are now well aware that with a little searching they can find someone that is willing to give them what they are looking for.

In efforts to increase user satisfaction, it is essential that an interface is created for the people who will use it. Understanding who the users of a system are and how they interact with that system is vital. One size does not fit all. Every business is different and so are their customers, successful user experiences are designed for a specific customer base.

Why UX?

While some businesses assume that performing user research costs too much, the fact of the matter is that the opposite is the case. The potential losses of creating a system without understanding a business's customers are huge. Both in terms of rework to fix usability issues and missed opportunities, the cost of not performing UX can be large.

When asking users how they feel about engaging with a mobile app or website, there are opportunities to discover problems you would never have known about. Additionally, users will give suggestions on how to solve usability issues that a current system has, these suggestions offer a way into the mind of the customer and are valuable information.

Personas

Personas benefit a project by helping to provide a shared vision of a business's typical customer. Once there is an understanding of who a business's customers are, the solutions can be created specifically for those users.

Personas should not be superficial, indicating just a job title or social role, they need to go deeper and provide a detailed description of what that person does and how they typically interact. The persona should include routines and backgrounds, which will let designers how the users like to do things.

Knowing how the typical user interacts with the current system is essential as well. This knowledge allows designers to prioritize what's essential in the mobile app or website. Items that are of secondary importance or complementary can be deprioritized to streamline the system.

Final thoughts

Integrating UX into your business plan as early as possible is ideal, but if you aren't doing it yet, there is no better time to start than right now. There is a tremendous value in learning about your users and how your mobile app or website is used. This information can give designers knowledge that creates a clearer vision of how to meet their needs.

Your business can integrate UX at any time and the design of your mobile app or website should not end when it is launched. Continuing to learn about users and their interaction with your system will provide you with tools and information to improve your system over time, which in turn, will help you grow and expand your business.