What is UX? The role of UX in sales process

In order to successfully conduct sales activities in the modern market of digital products and services, the user experience should be the first priority. Their impressions while interacting with systems, websites, stores, or applications have a real impact on the subsequent assessment of the company, and this translates into sales results. However, many enterprises still lack awareness of what UX is and how important it is (not only in e-commerce!).

Read on to find out:

• What is UX?
• Customer Experience Management. Why is it worth it?
• UX and UI — what are differences?
• User experience and software development
• Create UX compatible software

What is UX?

In general, UX (user experience) is an approach focused on the needs of future users (clients). Its main goal is to get to know and understand the target audience and then design the experience of the audience who will use the target products or services. It is about the overall impressions that will accompany them while using the website, system or application: will these inspire their trust? Will they encourage further exploration or take advantage of the offer? Will they answer the needs and questions asked? UX has it all in the spotlight, also taking into account the more technical part, such as the intuitiveness and ease of use of a given solution.

UX also includes all marketing, analytical and technological tools designed to get to know and better understand the expectations of Internet users. By introducing effective user experience-focused strategies into your business, you collect more valuable information about your customers. As a result, your chances of implementing the right solutions that meet your specific requirements increase. Thanks to UX, you get to know the desires of your recipients and start responding to them more effectively.

Designing solutions in line with UX helps to create:

• Intuitive-to-use and trustworthy trading systems;
• Well converting online stores;
• Engaging social media;
• Reliable information and scientific portals;
• Popular mobile applications;
• Thoughtful digital products;
• Simple company systems that simplify and speed up your daily duties.

That is why it is so important to develop awareness among employees about what UX is and why it plays a key role in the process of creating digital products and services. Slowly, the whole world begins to understand that we live in the time of the consumer — acquiring a customer is becoming more and more difficult, especially since he can choose practically any offers he wants. Your digital offer must be really well-designed if you want to catch their attention and make them stay permanently.

[su_service title=”Find out more!” icon=”icon: star-o” icon_color=”#bbe2ef”]UX and product discovery are intertwined — both processes focus on customer needs. If you want to consciously create digital solutions, also read our article: Bringing a new product to the market with the Product Discovery Process.[/su_service]

Customer Experience Management. Why is it worth it?

In modern business, there is an entire field that deals exclusively with customer experience management. It is about the practical use of knowledge about the experience of users when shopping or even using digital services. Companies are trying to check whether the website, application, payment process, social media and other things have a positive effect on building trust among recipients.

However, just examining expectations is not enough. Modern customer experience management also focuses on designing the best solutions that will interest a potential customer. Because once you know the key issues, you can solve them with the tools available. Most often, this leads to the improvement of interactivity, transparency and speed of the website, system or application, which has a real impact on user satisfaction.

UX benefits for your company are as follows:

• extensive knowledge about customers expectations;
• the opportunity to increase financial profits by making the right changes;
• easier creating an expert image among people;
• effective reaching target group of users;
• acquisition of new customers.

Of course, these are not all the profits you can achieve with UX, but the above issues are some of the most important. The implementation of tools and the involvement of specialists helping to discover customer needs, and then effectively respond to them, will improve the efficiency of your company in key aspects. Without learning user experience, it is difficult to run a successful business on the Internet.

UX and UI — what are differences?

Nowadays, there is also a term called UI. UX design is about analyzing collected data and planning the right actions. The person who works as a UX specialist has to find out the best solutions leading to get customers interested in the product. That means when you launch the UX strategy, you try to elaborate on appropriate steps to build the client’s trust. During that process, you can use cognitive psychology as the supporting tool.

The most important UX goals include:

• discovering the expectations of the target group;
• analyzing the activities of competitors;
• development of seller-customer communication;
• creating prototypes of ideas;
• testing and repeating proven methods.

In turn, the UI expert implements the changes in accordance with the developed UX tactic. It means, for instance, proper user interface programming to make the website more friendly, which encourages purchases. Thus, it can be said that UI is the practical stage of UX. Finally, after completion of both phases, you should achieve your goals.

UI management means primarily:

• testing visual impressions in the target group;
• graphic design and branding;
• improving website interactivity;
• adaptation of webpage functions to client’s requirements;
• implementation of the developed solutions with UX specialist.

[su_service title=”Check also:” icon=”icon: star-o” icon_color=”#bbe2ef”]UX is an important element of the MVP strategy. You can read more about it in the article: MVP. What does it mean and what are the benefits? [/su_service]

User experience and software development

Software development is a complicated process that requires the cooperation of many people with very different competencies. Not only programmers, analysts and developers, but also managers, graphic designers and UX specialists. If a program or application is to meet business needs, the experience of future users is extremely important: no one will want to use a poorly designed system. And the point is for the emerging software to be positively received. For this, domain or programming alone knowledge is not enough — you need people who will look at the created solution with a bit of empathy. After all, they have to empathize with the role of the future user, understand their expectations and predict their behavior.

Of course, UX is not only about soft skills. It is equally important to research, test, data analyze, creating mockups or test models. The idea is to avoid serious mistakes practically in the final stages of software development. The whole idea and execution can be at a high level. But if at the stage of designing solutions something will go wrong, as result users will become discouraged by your product before they even convince you of its true value.