As a business owner, keeping your website clean, modern, and up-to-date is key to bringing in business. Through thoughtful implementation of UI/UX design, you can easily improve the usability of your website. When your site is easier to navigate, you’re more likely to attract and retain new business. In this blog, we’ll dive into what exactly UI/UX design is, and the benefits it brings to your business.
What is UI/UX Design?
Before we get into the benefits of UI/UX, let’s break down what these design types actually are.
UX
Before UI design can begin, UX research is crucial. UX design, or user experience design, is the study of the potential ways a customer will interact with (and actually use) a website or product. UX designers will develop buyer personas and build user journey maps of how the customer will navigate through a website based on their particular needs, pain points, and goals. UX designers also develop the wireframes (or structure) of what a web page will look like, without all the bells and whistles.
UI
UI design, or user interface design, is the overall visual structure and design of your site, particularly the visual elements the customer will interact with. This includes but is not limited to, forms, CTAs, scrolling elements, toggles, radio buttons, and more.
How they interact
In a nutshell, UI design is the visual expression of the UX designer’s research and wireframes, using clean, branded, and easy-to-navigate visual design. UX designers build the foundation for the customer experience, and the UI designer creates a more dynamic visual encounter for the consumer. Together, they create a holistic and seamless user experience.
Benefits of Using UI/UX Design
Thoughtful UI/UX design is crucial to getting the most out of your web design and development project. While there are many drag-and-drop, user-friendly web builders out there that make it easy for anyone to design a website, here are a few reasons why working with a UI/UX strategist and designer makes a huge impact on your customers.
Make your website easy to navigate
When you’re cooking, you need to make sure you’re seasoning your food throughout the entire culinary process to make sure it tastes just right. The same goes when designing a website: when the user’s pain points, needs, and goals are considered throughout the entirety of the project, you’re better able to strategize, streamline, and simplify your site to create a better experience for your customers.
Have you ever tried to find a specific page on a website you’ve seen before, but give up when you can’t remember how to get there? That’s exactly what you don’t want to happen. By considering and creating a clear route for your customers to take, the more likely you are to keep your visitors on your site for longer.
Boost your brand
Of course, using well-designed and carefully created UI assets in brand colors, and adding on-brand fonts and images to the website will create a cohesive brand look. After all, part of a UI designer’s role is to consider your brand kit and develop your web assets based on this.
A secondary (and arguably more effective) way that thoughtful UI/UX design boosts your brand is the experience itself. After all, you consider your company or product to be customer-first, useful, and user-friendly, right? When your website gives the same experience as your brand’s intentions, you more firmly establish your identity and boost your customer’s faith in your product or service.
Improve conversion rates
If you’re reading this, we’re assuming you’re familiar with the strategy and science of inbound marketing. When you’re looking to attract, engage, and delight your customers and convert them into clients, you can turn to good UI/UX design to lead the way. With the focus of UX design being human-centric, and being strategically used to direct users through a predetermined pathway towards a sale, you can count on your users to be delighted by their positive experience. Bad UX = bad experience, and a drop off the inbound flywheel before they even convert.
When it comes to your UI, there are simple yet effective tricks that your designers can strategically determine in order to create a better experience for your customer. For example, keeping CTAs and action-seeking content high on a page can increase engagement dramatically, with a study showing 66% of users drop off due to content “below the fold”. The longer the user has to scroll, the more likely they’re going to leave the page.
Additionally, using correct font hierarchy, UX-backed content writing with a focus on conversion, and strategically-placed links and CTAs will keep your user engaged and with a higher chance of staying on your site, thus converting into a paying customer.
Set yourself apart as an industry leader with UI/UX design
When your website creates an incredible experience for your consumers and successfully converts users into customers again and again, all while emphasizing and complementing your brand through stunning and navigable visuals, you can easily set yourself apart from the pack as an industry leader. What can UI/UX design do for you that sets you apart from the competition? If your competitors aren’t making it easy for your user to learn more about their product, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be looking for a company that can. And when you’ve worked with a UI/UX designer (or design team) to build an incredibly simple-to-use, human-centric website, that company they’re looking for might be you!
Create a Stunning and User-friendly Website with UMW
Now that you know how a website built with user experience in mind can highly benefit your company, you may need some UI/UX and web design help. The Uncommon team is on your side–schedule a free 30-minute strategy call today, and let us show you how a new web design can grow your business.
