Creating designs that focus on the user experience (UX) has become increasingly important in order to lessen any annoyance and difficulty users may experience when they access your website. In the past, UX (User Experience) work mostly concentrated on website and page loading times. However, as time has gone by, this has expanded to encompass many aspects – now, businesses require complete UX plans to amplify the result of their content, foster activity efficiency, and make sure audiences keep returning.
Let’s look into how the concept of UX strategy is changing, why this is important, and explore a few examples of successful strategies.
What is UX Strategy?
The more pleasant and efficient the experience for those using your product or website, the higher your probability will be of captivating your audience and increasing sales. The challenge? Attempting to construct user experience that pleases all involved, considering the scope and vastness of all potential problems with a website as well as managing the preferences of multiple users with various priority levels, often leads to disparate outcomes.
UX strategy assists in resolving this quandary by ascertaining the components that have the most remarkable consequence on the general user experience, noticing which activities must be enhanced the most, and how the present technology and available resources would influence both of these requirements.
In application, the strategy that focuses on user experience merges your company’s aim with the technical proficiency of your IT workforce and the main user needs to make sure that the right matters are being taken care of promptly with the right resources.
Let’s take a look at the elements that make for a successful UX plan.
UX Strategy Components
Long-Term Vision
Start by determining your ultimate objective before designing your plan of action. The final and crucial thing to consider is understanding your intended customer and what you can offer them.
Creating a platform that is user-friendly and accessible to web developers to educate and build connections.
Innovation
The UX strategy should be constantly updated in accordance with the latest advances in technology and changes in customer desires. Put an emphasis on inventive thinking inside your organization and never accept the status quo.
Customer Research
As with any product, everything starts with your customers. UX strategy has the advantage of allowing you to get immediate responses through the utilization of a help desk. By examining the difficulties frequently brought to light by your patrons, you can remain up-to-date with customers’ difficulties.
Design
This should be self-explanatory. Your design should be useful to the customer, have an aesthetically pleasing look, and match the product. We have some great examples for you below.
Why does UX strategy matter?
It is often said that if webpages take more than three seconds to load, customers are likely to go to a different website. Although page speed is still important to consider — Google now takes page speed into consideration when determining a website’s ranking — speed on its own is not enough to create a great user experience.
A recent survey has shown that the primary complaint about websites among users is slow load times, which accounted for 20% of user opinions. Additionally, 24% expressed that pages were generally unreliable, with various elements either not displaying or randomly moving, plus 404 errors and broken links. Approximately 15% said that they found pop-up ads to interfere with their experience, while around 13% indicated that advertisements were detrimental to the experience.
It is obvious to business owners that it helps to have a fast loading website, but this is not enough to keep people’s attention. If the webpages are not loading appropriately, it can be difficult to navigate through the site, or if there are too many advertisements, any positive perceptions created from the fast loading times will quickly disappear.
As people move toward primarily using mobile devices as well as wanting to have a consistent experience with customer service on various platforms, how a site looks, operates, and responds to customers becomes the determining element in how successful it is.
UX Strategy Examples
So what does a good UX strategy look like? Let’s break down a few examples.
1. Google
The Google search page is an aesthetically pleasing example of user experience. The reason for this is that the thing is straightforward and accomplishes what would be expected. There are choices for accessing Gmail, Google Images, or your Google Account, however, the majority of the page is composed of blank space.
We enjoy the uncomplicated layout of this design since the significant search bar is given the spotlight, leaving no uncertainty for visitors about how the search tool works.
2. LinkedIn
UX is of great assistance in the LinkedIn training procedure to assist users in attaining an improved experience. Newbies utilizing LinkedIn are given certain actions to complete as a means of making the most out of their account. Each of these steps are broken apart into easy-to-follow sections that all start with a single click.
The look of this simple interactive design is appealing, keeping users entertained and educated with the advantages of the service provided through LinkedIn.
3. Rover
Rover’s pet care service offers an outstanding user experience right from the time people get to the home page. Visitors can fill out a basic form that includes information about the kind of care they are looking for (boarding, home sitting, dog walking, etc.), the area where they need the service, and the size of their cat/dog.
Utilizing this intel, Rover can quickly develop pertinent search results that decrease the amount of time users have to scrutinize care information not relevant to their situation.
What appeals to us: As opposed to our past two examples, Rover is meticulous in its UX in order to determine precisely what is necessary to achieve the ideal results for their patrons.
Provisional personas based on assumptions
Do we really have anything to add to the concept of personas, given their widespread use in the product industry? If you gather some helpful knowledge from Jaime Levy, it can be very beneficial. She explains the process of obtaining information and displaying it in a manner that is most effective, so that you obtain the greatest value from your hypothetical personas.
It might surprise you how minimalistic these personas are. Generally, three pieces of data are adequate: details, conduct, and aspirations and objectives. You don’t need to include lengthy amounts of information on any topic; all you need to do is mention the most pertinent facts. Focus on how the information is relevant rather than on the specifics.
You do not need to explore details that are irrelevant to your intended consumer base, like geographic area if the product is available globally, or economic and family class if the product is strictly intended for professional objectives. It is the same with gender or age – only include them if they are pertinent. Rather, concentrate on the issues of customers that you intend to correct.
Jaime’s UX Strategy Framework provides the suggestion to include visuals such as images in personas. She recommends using a few images instead of one. It’s simple to be misled by one depiction of a persona as being a precise representation, but this is not always the case. Basically, we are referring to groups of people rather than specific individuals.
Problem statement
Make sure you do not overlook the essential component of research, which is the problem statement, prior to verifying your personas. This is a concise summary of the issue a customer is having that assists in keeping the objective of the venture in mind. When crafting the issue statement, avoid implying the answer in advance. You want to stay as unbiased as possible.
Customer discovery: interview
The opening line of the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2019 is rather impressive: just one out of every twelve startups turns out to be a successful venture. There are a multitude of explanations for why startups fail, but many lead back to the same crux: manufacturing items and services that there is no commercial demand for. 35% of startups cease to exist because there is simply no need for what they produce, as found in the data of CB Insights. Doesn’t the majority of the stated explanations originate from the fact that prospective customers did not purchase this startup’s item? Turning this reality into terms used in UX strategy, the value provided by the unsuccessful startup had not been verified. What does that mean exactly?
View the product creation process as if it were a set of experiments. In order to determine the nature of your product, you should carry out trials that let you gain a deeper understanding of your target market (temporary profiles).
By verifying some of your expectations, you are confirming the attributes of your target demographic, their wants, and how your offer benefits them. When you realize that assumptions are not factual, you make them invalid.
The most effective method to confirm your personas and estimate if they really have the issue that you anticipate them to have is to conduct customer interviews. Those can be 15–20-minute structured interviews that consist of three parts:
- Introduction: state who you are, why you want to talk, how much time will it take, incentives (it is crucial – and ethical – to pay participants for the time they spend on your study!), etc.
- Screener: making sure the person you are interviewing is actually within your customer segment (one to two questions). Do not ask about the problem statement yet!
- Interview: validating assumptions from your provisional persona. You can follow the formula of one question for each assumption. If you see that your group is having the problem you are after, try asking how they solve it today.
The interview can finish with value proposition validation, e.g. Would you make use of an app that did this and this if one existed? While some may respond favorably to this hypothetical, one should bear in mind that such responses should not be taken too seriously. Many individuals often lack knowledge of their particular desires and have difficulty predicting their behaviors with precision. A clear lack of requirement from the market is the cause of downfall in 35% of startups, reported by findings from CB Insights. Yet, isn’t it true that the majority of the stated explanations are essentially linked to the fact that prospective clients did not invest in the startup’s offering? Converting this data into the terms used for user experience strategy, the value offered by the unsuccessful startup did not go through proper testing. What does that mean exactly?
Consider the development of a product as a succession of trials. In order to discover the concept of your product, experiments must be done to gain a more thorough understanding of your customers and make provisional personas.
Competitive research
Jaime advocates consuming a great deal of energy to research the competition thoroughly in order to design a UX strategy — “Why has no one been able to make this work yet? … I’m reluctant to suggest that everything has already been created, but almost anything and everything has been explored.” It has been longer than 25 years since people and businesses have been manufacturing items to be published and used on the web!
It is advisable to examine the environment of competitors, both direct and indirect, during the formation of a business plan and user experience plan.
A firm product strategy necessitates three components to stand on—the business objectives of the corporation, the potentialities of the organization, and structured market research.
Jaime Levy has provided access to The UX Strategy Toolkit via her website, which can be employed as a useful tool to compare competitors and identify their weaknesses and strengths. It takes time to begin, but by learning from competitor’s mistakes, it is possible to save both time and money.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether the product is applicable in the present market environment. You have to complete all the necessary steps to make your product beneficial, necessary, and successful in its area of the market. The results of your rivalry analysis could also suggest altering the product idea or business strategy. This will also assist you in figuring out how to gain an edge over your competitors.
Storyboards
Storyboarding is a useful method that ensures everybody comprehends and values the product being constructed. This is not meant to be an exact replica of the product, but rather a guiding light for the team, demonstrating the benefits and main characteristics.
Key features of your value innovation
The essential components of your product are what make customers choose it over any of its competitors. This is where you can capitalize on your unique value creation and gain an edge over your rivals. Having a solid comprehension of your target market and rival businesses is key to developing successful features.
It is possible to mash up the highest-quality elements from rival solutions, selecting a couple from a larger one in order to refine the concept, combining characteristics from multiple solutions in one product, or adopting a workspace wherein different types of users can collaborate.
No matter what method you utilize, creating a recreation of a current product will definitely fail, even if the initial item is a great success. Rather, rebuild and provide more value to potential users.
