Month: June 2020

As an experience design studio, we practice improving the user experience and creating design systems for a wide range of digital assets. We work with industry leaders using not-so-up-to-date intranet systems, affecting hundreds of their workers, which in turn results in the loss of huge sums of revenue. We see big travel companies with flawed booking flows that lose thousands in a single day, every day. We come across confusing information architectures that users cannot even know where exactly they are on a website, yet navigate through it. The reasons for the betterment of user experience or a complete redesign of the user interfaces are endless. But before allocating valuable resources for such big projects, do you really know what you need? Let’s start by defining some common yet mixed-up terms such as user experience design (UX design) and user interface design (UI design).

User experience design vs User interface design

Though the terms “user experience design” and “user interface design” are often used interchangeably, it can be said that they are some kind of umbrella terms for a wide variety of methodologies. As Interaction Design Foundation states;

“User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.”

It is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving usability and accessibility by putting the users at the center of every design decision. (see: human-centered design). If done well, human-centered design opens the doors for better digital products in which users can reach their goals easily, sometimes with joy—ultimately resulting in engagement and growth. 

While user experience design focuses on easing the life of the users, user interface design is more focused on how “it” looks:

“User interface (UI) design is the process designers use to build interfaces in software or computerized devices, focusing on looks or style. Designers aim to create interfaces that users find easy to use and pleasurable. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms—e.g., voice-controlled interfaces.”

It is the visual component of the process, including grids, layouts, colour palettes, typography, and branding. It’s a good analogy to use the metaphor of a movie vs making a movie to understand the difference thoroughly: A movie is an end product you interact with, and it is designed in a way to make you feel in a certain way with moving pictures, music and dialogue. Whereas making a movie involves so many components such as art-direction, CGI effects, storyboards, casting, cinematography, etc. all these things collectively contribute and form the end product in a long time. It may take more than a year to produce just a 1-2 hour-long piece. 

Just like that, user experience (UX) design describes a collection of activities and methodologies in order to create experiences for the target audience. Everything from user research, user stories, system flows, content architecture, information architecture, wireframing, and prototyping falls under the umbrella of user experience (UX) design.

Most common reasons for a design project

In light of these definitions, let’s name a few common reasons why companies invest in user experience (UX) design and/or user interface design:

• Websites that are tough to navigate 
• Difficult-to-use applications
• Repeating pages or actions in a flow resulting in frustration
• Asking users too much and unnecessary information
• Not giving clear directives
• Old-fashioned or untrustworthy looks
• Websites only designed for desktop
• Poorly written content 
• High bounce rates
• Low sales and market share
• Readability and accessibility issues 

First off, keep in mind that 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. So, if you ask “OK, but where do I start?”, whatever your reason is, every meaningful design endeavour starts with the same: Listening and empathizing with your audience. Without gathering feedback from your audience, you should not define the nature of your project, whether it’s a redesign or optimization.

First, conduct your research and know your audience. Start by running user interviews, sending out online surveys, or at least tracking down your users’ clicks and taps to understand their intentions to see how big the issues are you need to deal with. In parallel, collect benchmark data and invest in marketing research. Understand how your competitors are moving in the market.

Components of a successful user experience design

Despite its importance, understanding the users is just the first step of this process, because influencing and affecting people’s emotions through design is no easy task. That is why we use below methodologies (and many more) in our process for a carefully thought out, well-crafted experiences:

• User stories
  • The key to writing a User Story is avoiding details in the beginning stages of the project; creating a working environment where details can be added to the project in a timely manner and as needed.
    
• User flows
  • A UX artefact that maps out all the actions users can take to achieve a goal in your product or service.
    
• Content production
  • Text-based content or content in any form in a broader sense means the creation of qualified content for indirect marketing.
    
• Information architecture
  • “Information architecture is about helping people understand their surroundings and find what they’re looking for, in the real world as well as online.”

“Site redesigns often require a tremendous amount of coordination and resources. Sometimes, a redesign project can be a purely visual reskinning of the entire site, with new styles, layouts, and treatments. Other times, serious taxonomy, information architecture, content, or usability issues are being addressed. Either way, make sure that your redesign project is based on user data and has clear goals and measures of success.”

NN Group (nngroup.com)

Redesigning the user experience of your digital assets involves thorough user research of the needs, challenges, and goals of your target audience. If you think there are problems to be addressed in the domain of user experience in this manner; the more you wait, the more customers you’re gonna lose and it’ll be harder to reach business goals. But if it’s done right, and early the return on investment can be tremendous. Also, bear in mind that you may not need a complete overhaul of your product. Tweaking a few features and toiling over the macro conversion journey might get you back on track. And save you a lot.

“Welcome to the new normal.”

We hear that often these days, right?

In a similar vein, here is another thing that is always in circulation.

“Future is mobile.”

Eagerly catapulted, yet both statements lack arguments to create actionable game plans. Personally, I don’t agree with the latter anymore. Cause, mobile is actually happening now. More disruptive than ever. Similarly, the things that have been labeled as “new” today, had been there, affecting our way of doing things substantially for quite some time.

So, here we’ll take a look at what mobile means, today, and how one should take any action not to miss the boat?

First, let’s start with a simple explanation. What does “mobile” mean?

Here, Chris Goward explains it:

“Mobile differs in many ways, primarily the context. By definition, mobile implies the user is “out and about,” which means they have a greater distraction, less attention available, and different location-based needs.”

Especially in this time, most sellers need new and proven mobile conversion optimization strategies when the low touch economy makes itself felt day by day and the consumption of digital media is increasing. So, we are right here to make that moment of “Aha!”.

In this article, you’ll learn 7 simple and effective ways to increase mobile conversion rates of your website.

1. Optimize your mobile page speed

Painfully slow loading speeds of websites can frustrate any user, it’s obvious. A study shows that 40% of people abandon sites that take more than 3 seconds to load. However, the same study also found the 3 out of 4 mobile sites have load times of over 10 seconds.

So, first of all, try free tools brought by Google to understand how you can optimize your mobile page speed. If not convinced, learn more about how your page speed affects your revenue first, and then delve into optimization.

2. Focus on action buttons

Mobile users don’t surf the web on their phones as they do on desktop devices.

When people are on their mobile devices, they rarely have the time or need to view the entire content. They’re usually “busy”. In other words, they have no time like desktop users, so to speak. Therefore, you should think about this before making adjustments to optimize your mobile conversion rate.

If mobile users are directly visiting your product page: it’s an indication that they might have specific intentions.  In an optimal scenario, they first take a look at your page and then scroll down to learn more about your product via comments or other details.

At this point, one thing to do is not distract them with all the details of your product. Users are fond of progressive disclosure, even though they are not familiar with the definition. You need to show sufficient information at the right time, each time. That’s progressive disclosure, and you need to design your detail pages while keeping this method in mind.

Following a well-written product description, users generally spend time on reading reviews if there are any. And finally, if they’re convinced, they will add your product to their cart. Right?

But wait? Is your button at the right place to take advantage of intent-rich moments?

If you don’t make your action buttons easily accessible for mobile users, you may simply lose revenue. Thus, as a rule of thumb, make your buttons visible throughout your product pages and let users add or remove products from carts with ease.

Once you have buttons in place, do not forget to polish the labels to spur actions. Use action and power words to drive conversion.

3. Use behavior analytics tools to understand the “Why?”

Here is a fact: Mobile users don’t have a lot of time. 

So, in order to increase the add-to-cart rate of any product page, you should put all the information on a product to its page. And, in order to create well-written product page content, you just need to uncover what your users are after while they’re shopping.

The best way to uncover user expectations is to use qualitative and quantitative data sets together to make sense of your users’ needs and wants. Any analytics tools, including Google Analytics with a combination of behavior analytics tools, such as Hotjar or Fullstory, could come in handy following your users and what sort of clues they are leaving after once they check out your products.

Heatmaps, session recordings, and on-web page polls are great tools to look at how your visitors interact with web page elements and browse through your website or product pages in particular.  It’s also good to ask for direct feedback from your visitors on how they feel about the overall experience to get a sense of their perception of your products.

Thanks to the responses obtained through polls or surveys you can set up on any page, you can easily detect any problems or usability issues that your users are having a hard time before finalizing their purchases.

These sorts of analytic tools are the best for e-commerce stores for increasing mobile conversion rates of both versions of a website, desktop, and mobile.

4. Let your users type less with autocomplete

Yes, AI is already here. In the context of usability, it’s been here for a long time.

Simply put, if you can understand what your users want, then they’re much more likely to convert.

So, one useful approach is to use autocomplete features as a part of onsite search functionality, just like how Google works. As users type, they see likely alternatives and might quickly pick out one, reducing the time it takes to locate objects.

This is one of my favorite user experience actions that I come across regularly on e-commerce sites that are at the top of their class. Also, it’s a relatively quick hack for mobile conversion rate, considering how it shortens the path to find a product.

5. Do your best on product pages

You’ll find yourself optimizing your product pages a lot. I mean a lot.

When your mobile visitors come to your website to buy your products, then the mission is simple, right? You just need to make an excellent case for convincing them to buy an item from you and no longer from a competitor.

So, here are some hints for building high converting product pages to increase mobile conversion rates of e-commerce websites. 

• Show your excellence in the product title
• Add images to galleries from different aspects of the use
• Put your security badges and other trust signals that you own
• Include a detailed product description
• Add shipping and product return processes information
• Include different ways to pay

6. Improve your navigation

If your mobile website isn’t always smooth navigable, it could negatively affect your mobile conversion rates, period. You need to show all the options and exits to your users in any funnels to make them comfortable while searching for their needs. 

Mobile users have no time to explore your flows. And sorry, but, lack of options directly affects their enjoyment and would motivate them to leave your website in the blink of an eye.

However, if you can provide a better navigation flow and overall user experience design, it results in much higher mobile conversion rates for mobile devices.

Here’s an instance from Beauty Bridge, a beauty brand. 

You can see how smooth their navigation menu looks on the mobile web site and gives a clear message to users about where they are and what their options look like.

7. Test, test, test!

Statistics and theories can help you formulate the future changes to make on your website, however, only proper testing will let you inform if those changes are valid or not.

Running optimization tests to decide whether or not any changes you make results in measurable impact is the only way to improve your conversion performance. A/B tests allow you to see if your target market approves any decision you made on a design or when any upgrades should be rolled back.

Every detail you change must be tested before implemented. You can easily and freely utilize some of A/B testing tools in the market in order to run tests and make informed decisions. 

One of my favorite case studies is already here if you’d like to check out how we managed to increase the mobile conversion rates of a retail website with a simple change. See our story of success as the first Turkish partner of Optimizely in UX design in Zingat.com project.

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To conclude, improving the mobile conversion rate is the key point for many e-commerce websites in today’s digital world. With these smart actions, you can return to the game more powerful. And don’t forget the use your data to know your customers better.