The importance of thinking UX

The User Experience (or UX), long considered a fad or a trend, is an essential element in your digital strategy. It means refocusing on the needs and expectations of web users. When designing a product or interface, it's vital to remember that you are not your users. So you cannot prejudge what they are looking for or what they need.

UX vs UI, what's the difference?

UX consists of focusing essentially on the emotional and psychological aspects of the user experience, whereas UI is based more on all the ergonomic and practical elements used to create the interface. From this, we understand that UI must be complemented by the UX approach in order to think about and design an interface that is fully centred on users.

A website where the design is predominantly developed (the UI) will be pleasing to visitors, provided it is of high quality and gives them the confidence to stay, but it will not necessarily keep them coming back. On the other hand, if the functional part of the site is optimised (the UX), they are more likely to return. It is therefore preferable to focus more on the UX than the UI, without neglecting the latter.

To put it simply, the user returns more easily to a fluid site than to a beautiful one.

Why thinking UX ?

More than 7 out of 10 Internet users will not return to a website if their first experience of it was a bad one.

We could almost stop there as this figure speaks for itself... but let's develop it a little all the same ;)

To provide a relevant interface

For your information, after accessing a home page :

• 86% of B2B users want to consult information on products and services,
• 62% are interested in contact information,
• 52% are looking for the ‘About us’ section.

(source: komarketing - B2B Web Usability Report)

The site must be designed according to how the user navigates and what they are looking for. This means :

• Ranked content: your visitors need to understand instantly what they can expect when they browse your website (2.6 seconds is the time it takes a web user to scan a whole page and form an opinion about the website concerned, according to the website optimisation guide published by Quicksprout).
• Fluid and intuitive navigation: the ergonomics of the site must be thought through beforehand so that users can quickly access the part of the site that interests them and easily find the information they are looking for.
• A responsive design (92% of Internet users access the web from their mobile device, according to the report on digital in 2021 by Hootsuite and the agency We Are Social).
• Optimised loading time: 53% of visits to mobile sites are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load (according to Google's Speed Matters report, the speed at which web pages load is considered to be the highest expectation in the UX hierarchy).

To build user loyalty

UX aims to improve the functionality of the site so that the visitor's experience is maximised and their first visit makes them want to return. Poorly optimised navigation (too long a path to specific content, too many opportunities to click, etc.) is one of the main reasons why visitors leave a website, never to return.

In terms of bounce rate (percentage of users leaving a mobile website after the first page viewed), speed is the factor with the greatest impact.

To gain visibility

It's important to know that Google chooses to rank websites in the search results that correspond most closely to the user's searches and that offer an optimised UX, and there are many criteria for this:

• number of clicks required to reach a page,
• ease of navigation,
• mobile compatibility,
• speed of content display,
• interactivity,
• visual stability....

To boost traffic

The better your site is placed in the search results, the more visible it will be and the more people will visit it. That's it!

To increase conversions

Building a website with users in mind means creating an intuitive interface and simple, fluid navigation, thus avoiding frustration and increasing the time spent on the site by each user. In short, you want to offer the best possible experience to your customers and/or prospects, in other words, complete satisfaction. And, let's face it, a satisfied user is a user who converts.

Intentional and strategic user experience has the potential to increase conversion rates by up to 400%. (source: Forbes)

To spend less

40% of development time is spent developing and correcting superfluous functionalities. Reflecting on and analysing user needs upstream means that only the essentials are developed, thereby saving on development costs.

Solving a problem in development costs 10 times more than solving it in design, and 100 times more if you try to solve the problem in a product that has already been released (source: UX planet).

For the record, Amazon increased its sales by $300 million after changing the text on its button from ‘save’ to ‘continue’. (source: uie)