Don’t miss out on the success gained from giving an unparalleled experience with a competitive UX Design process

By the end of this post, you are going to learn to boost sales, customer engagement and loyalty with stellar UX. All that and more through a powerful UX design process.

Quick Guide

1. Mobile friendly design: Best practices for UX & conversions
2. Five tips about ergonomy and usability in UX design
3. Plan your UX in the ideation phase to be successful
4. Never ever skip the Discover phase of the UX design process
5. Create something unique that no one has designed before?
6. Focus on the context in UX design for success
7. Prototyping for creating the best UX design that works for you
8. Choose the appropriate fidelity to achieve success through UX
9. Take this UX success pill before you launch your product

Introduction

Recently, an eMarketer report revealed that global e-commerce sales would reach $4.058 trillion in 2020. Close to a trillion dollars is estimated to be lost by businesses due to bad UX.

But the big question is: Will you invest in UX and grab the opportunity?

As per an industry analysis, you can increase your conversion rate by 35 percent with improved checkout flow and design. For every dollar you invest in UX design process, you can gain 100 dollars ROI.

Here are nine strategies to achieve success with a competitive UX design process:

1. Mobile friendly design: Best practices for UX & conversions

To achieve business goals, you need to boost engagement and conversions. That too across various platforms.

Here’s how to do it:

Focus on your user and what they need on mobile platforms. Integrate UX design thinking such that your user interaction benefits your business.

Oh, and a few final points before we move on:

• Research about the device preferred by potential users
• Develop easy-to-read content for mobile devices
• Create a concise website with a seamless experience

Success Tip: Think about possibilities with mobile-specific features for creating a UX design that converts.

2. Five tips about ergonomy and usability in UX design

1. Enhance the user experience on smartphones and tablet devices. Use mobile-specific capabilities such as GPS, voice commands, touch, etc.
2. Rich media should support devices of your target users.
3. Keep short interactions instead of long ones with a minimalistic style if possible.
4. Reduce download time for loading elements on the page.
5. Adaptive design can work better for presenting a table on mobile devices.

Success Tip:

“Think through all of the stages of a product or service – from initial intentions through final reflections, from the first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly.”

— Don Norman (invented the term “User Experience.”)

3. Plan your UX in the ideation phase to be successful

Can I be honest for a second? Here is a stage where you may have conflicts among team members if you do not plan it well.

Let’s begin with some tips for the ideation phase:

• Create a large pool of ideas
• Choose ideas that lead to newer, improved ideas
• Sort and narrow down into the best ideas that are the most innovative as well as achievable

In my experience, you can get many ideas when you brainstorm on solutions.

Take, for example, Storyboarding. It’s a non-linear brainstorming technique. Here you create a visual story for problem-solving in the UX design process.

Success Tip: Ideation helps you to can explore the UX problem and come up with possible solutions to successfully address it. Better solutions lead to better conversions.

4. Never ever skip the Discover phase of the UX design process

Let me tell you a little story.

Our client, Lizzy’s Coffee, faced several challenges due to an outdated website. The site had poor usability for customers.

In the Discover Phase, we did a complete review of the site from color schemes to font, design, and layout. Then, sent prototypes back and forth during the UX design process. The final look, as well as feel of the website, got approved.

Additionally, we wanted to transform the existing site into an intuitive mobile website. Custom development and extra functionality were necessary for delivering better personalization features.

An intuitive flow and a polished design led to 35% more page views. The site rankings improved. Conversions increased for Lizzy’s Coffee with the customization feature.

So, it was worth it. No question.

Success Tip: What’s the most important question to ask during the design process? How is this going to make money and what is the best way to create revenue?

Revenue and money is part of the design process and should never get separated.

5. Create something unique that no one has designed before?

So, how do we create something unique that no one has designed before?

• Gather tools to develop novel ideas
• Create a Workspace for expressing your ideas
• Free Your Mind

Now what? Create. Revise, Revise, Revise.

Want to know more about how to create great original design?

So get to work. Research and put all your research together. Research whatever inspires you. Gain inspiration from other artists.

If you’re struggling, get out of your comfort zone. Sketch and sketch again till you get what you are seeking. Execution and communication with relevant stakeholders are essential. Based on discussions, fine tune your work.

1. Here are 5 steps to creating a great original design
2. Observe your surroundings. Visit places for inspiration to come up with compelling designs.
3. Think. Research. Discuss. Repeat. Think again and Select the best idea that inspires you.
4. Look for inspiration from books, architecture, cultural elements, internet, photography, etc.
5. Create something based on your research and intuition.
6. Collect ideas, talk to people and make a plan.

Success Tip: You can make your UX design competitive by employing original ideas. These ideas will give you an edge over your competition, and the uniqueness will attract more users to your site.

6. Focus on the context in UX design for success

Why are you designing a product and for whom? Is it viable? Find the limitations and opportunities of your design.

Defining the context will ensure that your design team comes up with a practical design. At the same time stays innovative too. This approach will keep all stakeholders happy in the UX design process.

Now, I am going to share one of my favorites: a UX Research cheat sheet by Nielsen Norman Group. This sheet shows survey findings of the research methods used by UX professionals.

Success Tip: Conduct UX research using various methods to understand the context and come up with UX design that is purposeful to your target users. If it is useful, it will convert.

7. Prototyping for creating the best UX design that works for you

What is a Prototype?

In a UX design process, prototypes are more like a simulation of your website or mobile app. You test it, improve it and then, develop it.

So, how should you prepare a prototype?

A useful prototype is not a sketch, a mockup or wireframe. It is an almost functional model of your design which has the potential to become a final product.

Here’s how to do it: As per your problem, you can use interactive prototypes, HTML prototypes, or other methods.

Prototyping for applications

Let me be a bit more specific:

• Develop hi-fidelity mockups until you’ve got a clear app architecture,
• It’s an iterative design process. To save time, you can use fast prototyping tools.

Success Tip: Why do we need to prototype? Here’s one thing I’ve learned from prototyping, it helps to Empathize, Define, Ideate, and Test. An extensively tested product has a higher chance of being successful in the market.

8. Choose the appropriate fidelity to achieve success through UX

Choose the appropriate fidelity from the following:

• Visual fidelity
  Increase visual fidelity as required. Introduce elements of style, color, branding, and graphics.
• Functional fidelity
  Well, you can build interactive prototypes here.
  The problem with clickable prototypes? These aren’t realistic enough. And that’s why we create a “sketch in CSS” or “sketch in the browser.” It is a hyper-realistic, and functional mock of the site. Its design enables our clients to make better decisions.
• Content fidelity
  Using lorem ipsum for content. This approach can be a HUGE mistake.

Our agency believes in designing content first. Why? Real content will give you immediate insights for enhancements in your UX design.

You might be wondering: What if the real content isn’t ready?

Use content from your existing content if it’s a website redesign. That’s all that matters. You can also use reference content.

Which leads me to my next tip: Select from competitor content for prototyping. If you do not have your unique content, use alternatives. Later, change/rewrite it as required.

Success Tip: Choose a fidelity level that allows you to make the most improvements as early as possible.

9. Take this UX success pill before you launch your product

Launch your products after making necessary enhancements. Improve as per user feedback for various UX/UI parameters and insights from UX/UI audit reports.

Here’s the big secret:

Build a product such as an app that your user desires. Develop features enabling them to use the product.

Perform user testing and usability testing to find out whether you have built a product the user wants and can use with ease.

Take a look at this picture to understand the difference between user testing and usability testing:

In my experience, here are a few things to remember:

• Involve all stakeholders in the design process right from the start.
• Discuss the app architecture with your developers before the design gets finalized.
• Pay attention to the details which will increase user engagement. These details will lead to revenue generation.
• Prepare style guides and brand books for structured workflow.

Success Tip: Your design should be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional to be effective. Involve stakeholders and tweak your UX design as per user feedback before launching the product.

Also, remember that you need to draw inspiration from various resources. It helps to come up with original, innovative design concepts.

Train your eye for good design by reading design articles every day. You can also copy artists to study their work. To conclude, your user engagement can lead to incredible ROI with a good UX design process in place.

Putting it together, you can achieve business success by giving a stellar user experience. For a competitive UX design process use the following tips and strategies presented in this post:

1. Mobile friendly design: Best practices for UX & conversions
2. Five tips about ergonomy and usability in UX design
3. Plan your UX in the ideation phase to be successful
4. Never ever skip the Discover phase of the UX design process
5. Create something unique that no one has designed before?
6. Focus on the context in UX design for success
7. Prototyping for creating the best UX design that works for you
8. Choose the appropriate fidelity to achieve success through UX
9. Take this UX success pill before you launch your product