8 Secrets Of UI & UX For A Rockstar Customer Experience

User Interface and user experience are two crucial contributors to the customer experience. It’s the first experience a consumer gets that builds a brand’s reputation in their minds. A great user experience combined with equally better customer experience improves the brand image. This can result in a long-lasting relationship with the consumers eventually leading to increased customer loyalty.

A PWC study found that 17% of consumers will stop doing business after a single bad experience, and 60% will give up after a few. This clearly shows that optimizing all three aspects of a customer’s journey is important – UI, UX, and CX. But how can brands optimize UI and UX that eventually helps in providing a great overall customer experience?

Optimizing UI & UX For a Better CX

The most effective way of serving consumers is to ask them about their likes and dislikes. UI and UX testing is the process of testing the visual elements of an application or a website. The main aspects checked in UI testing include:

a. Visual Design

b. Functionality

c. Usability

d. Performance

These 4 aspects of UI and UX testing enables designers, product managers, and marketers to understand the overall value proposition of the product. A visually appealing interface that is easy to navigate and helps consumers in achieving their goals is a must-have in today’s competitive landscape. This can be done by website testing, application testing, and system usability test. 

Apart from this, customer experience can be improved by understanding the complete customer journey. It can unlock insights into the whole consumers’ feedback across all touchpoints. This helps them uncover any areas that need improvement.

Website Testing

Website evaluation test refers to the overall assessment of the website based on its design and functionality. A website that is easy to navigate and provides users with the right information to help them use features easily or find products with ease, is bound to increase usage and conversion and retain more users. A good design signature coupled with easy-to-understand actions is a must for a business to have an impactful impression among its target audience. 

In a website evaluation test, you can specify the target audience, explain the test that is needed and have users visit the website, and provide feedback on their experience. This test provides pointed feedback on how to improve usage and help customers be at ease on the site. 

How Does Website Testing Help? 

a. Evaluates the ease of use, trustworthiness, value, and visual appeal of your website.

b. Uncovers insights into users’ thought processes about a particular task within your website.

c. Reduces the risk of website failure.

d. Evaluates websites based on information accessibility, interaction, and intuitiveness.

e. Understand the emotions of users as they use the website.

App Testing

App testing evaluates the overall performance of your app based on certain criteria like design, user flow, and content are some of the parameters that are used for evaluation. Application testing research also compares your application against your competitors’ applications to highlight the areas that need improvement.

Once you specify the target and explain what needs to be tested, testers are recruited from over 2 million verified users. They then carry out the test and provide feedback on what difficulties they faced and confusions they had. 

How Does App Testing Help? 

a. Highlights areas with scopes for improvement.

b. Enables to explore better ways for showcasing products.

c. Enhances users’ experience.

d. Provides an unbiased examination of the product.

App Comparison

An application comparison test is carried out to highlight the improvements in your application that can provide your brand a competitive advantage. Design signatures, functionality parameters, content, and technological aspects- each factor is tested to highlight the potential issues which could be worked upon. Along with this, brands can utilize the elements that prove beneficial for them and drive a better conversion rate.

How Does App Comparison Help?

a. Identifies key lagging areas as compared to competitor apps.

b. Enables to explore better ways to showcase products.

c. Saves time for both brands as well as customers.

d. Enhances users’ experience.

System Usability Test

It is one of the most tried and tested ways of gathering statistically valid data and giving your product a clear and reasonably precise score. A set of users are asked 10 questions based on their recent experience with your product. Based on the answers, a score is generated which is representative of how usable your website is.

How Does System Usability Test Help?

a. Uncovers users’ perceptions about the product or design.

b. Highlights potential flaws.

c. Suggests better workflows through which users can get to a solution faster.

d. Measures the overall usability of the website or app.

Prototype Evaluation

The goal of conducting prototype evaluation is to extract meaningful information from the audience and provide valuable insights to stakeholders. This research design utilizes qualitative and quantitative research methods to gather relevant data about a product or action-based strategy. These methods include observation, tests, and surveys.

How Does Prototype Evaluation Help?

a. Validates design and functional aspects of the prototype before launch.

b. Identifies points of friction that can be improved.

c. Provides an overall score for the prototype usability.

d. Enables stakeholders to understand multiple dimensions of a process, and to determine strengths and weaknesses.

Concept Validation

Concept Validation is a powerful market research methodology that enables brands to check the acceptability of the product among consumers. It enables brands to gain tangible insights about the product and its features from the user’s perspective. The concept to be tested can be put forward as a document, video, image, or prototype URL. 

How Does Concept Validation Help?

a. Tests ideas and suggests the best ones for successful product development.

b. Provides a detailed breakdown of the product’s perceived strengths and pain points.

c. Prevents poor decision-making.

d. Reduces the risk of launching a bad product.

Product Adoption

Product adoption test describes the willingness of consumers to consider buying a product and become recurring users of it. Being one of the most important business goals, a higher product adoption rate significantly increases market share by establishing a customer base.

How Does Product Adoption Test Help?

a. Lowers cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

b. Enables to achieve higher marketing ROI.

c. Boosts higher customer lifetime value (CLV).

d. Indirectly decreases customer marketing and retention costs.

User Journey

User journey tests are incorporated while creating websites to identify the easiest and quickest ways to help users achieve their goals. Understanding the users’ journey allows brands to understand several important factors that shape the overall impression users would walk away with.

How Does User Journey Test Help?

a. Predicts and improves the customer journey.

b. Uncovers barriers to customer satisfaction.

c. Enables to reduce customer churn.

d. Provides insights that improve higher conversion rates.

Gathering data is one thing. Deriving insights from data that can drive value is another thing. An interesting way to analyze data is by analyzing the video and audio of consumers while they are using your website, app, or product. This unlocks their emotions about your product and highlights any pain points. 

But analyzing these audio and video for millions of survey respondents can be tedious for a limited number of marketers. Harnessing the power of AI to carry out these analyses in real-time can help marketers by leaps and bounds. AI can create emotion graphs by using NLP analysis to highlight the underlying emotions of consumers after using the product. 

This can help brands to build UI/UX components that appeal to users’ emotions and connect with them on a personal level. It can act as a brand differentiator and serve consumers with a delightful experience. 

Data-backed Approach For Better Customer Experience

An effective personalization strategy creates a positive customer experience thereby ensuring long-term loyalty. It’s a great tool for brands to push the envelope of customer satisfaction and create lifetime relationships with consumers. With AI at their disposal, organizations today can keep up with changing consumer perceptions and personalize at every step to provide an overall amazing experience.