Let’s find out why UX matters. In fact, it’s easy: the more hospitably you treat your guests, the better they treat you in response, and the better things they say about you. To paraphrase an old rule — the more user-friendly your product is for your customers, the more eager they will be to buy your products and services, and the better the reputation they will create for your brand.
Our website development services company has previously published tips to improve UX in general and usability tips for eCommerce websites in particular. Also, our checklist for website usability testing will be useful to define what improvements to user experience your site requires, exactly.
But why should you actually do usability testing and improve user experience? What are the reasons you should try to make your web product user-friendly? Why does UX matter? In this article, we’ll reveal what the benefits of user experience are and what perks you’ll get for your company and business through it.
Reasons why user experience matters
Positive UX increases ROI and revenue
Every business is aimed at earning money. Actually, profitability is a measure of its successfulness. Investing in a well-thought-out user experience can give you a considerable return on investment (ROI). Just look at the following vivid example.
One big eCommerce website made a one button change that resulted in $300 million of annual revenue. Originally, it was a “Register” button that required users to create unwanted and obligatory accounts to checkout. It was replaced with a “Continue” button. This way, users were given the ability to buy products on this online store without registration, and were given a non-compulsory option to register if they wanted to simplify their future purchases.
This slight change improved user experience greatly and demonstrated why UX matters. As a result, the shopping cart abandon rate dropped down and sales increased by 45%, bringing in $15 million in revenue during the first month. For the first year, that totaled $300 million.
Positive UX provides positive reputation for your brand
While great UX may be taken for granted, be sure that poor UX won’t be unnoticed. Research shows that consumers are much more likely to tell their friends about a negative experience than about a positive one. So bad UX causes you to lose potential users along with disappointed existing ones.
Think about famous reputable websites you know like Google, Amazon, etc. They all have one thing in common — they are easy to use, even for a child. When your website or app is user-friendly, this establish your reputation as a company that cares about its clients. This motivates users to become your brand advocates. Moreover, it’s not just your target audience, but your colleagues in industry who starts buzzing if they are impressed with the user experience of your web product.
Positive feedback will be shared across review sites, forums and social media, so you can monitor your online reputation to get more insights.
Positive UX helps you win the competition
As famous marketer Kate Zabriskie said, “Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will.” So if you don’t want your competitors to take away your customers, make your customers prefer your website or application by providing a positive user experience for them.
When it’s challenging for users to quickly figure out how to use your website, they are more likely to leave it and go to your competitor’s site than make efforts on yours, especially if your niche market isn’t unique. The more competition exists in your industry, the more user experience matters for your business and the harder you should try to provide it. Convenient UX design, intuitively understandable navigation, fast loading speeds and other components of user experience should be a priority for you, if you want to stand out from the competition.
Positive UX increases customer loyalty
Great user experiences increases customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers are likely to become repeat users, loyal to your brand. Those who remember their positive emotions during the interaction with the site are encouraged to return again and again to it to encounter the same positive user experience, which makes the procedure of buying goods and services more pleasant.
According to the findings of the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. Another statistics show that there is up to a 70% likelihood of selling to an existing consumer, while there is only a 20% chance of selling to a prospective customer. As loyal customers are more valuable to businesses than newcomers, earning and keeping them is important, and a positive UX helps here.
Positive UX keeps users on your website longer
Modern Internet users are very impatient. Their attention span is less than a goldfish — under 9 seconds. The very first 3 seconds spent on a new web resource are the most critical, as this time is enough for users to judge whether your website is good or bad and determine whether it is worth staying here for longer or not. User experience is one of the influential, decisive factors here. Your website design should clearly communicate your message to visitors within seconds, and be user-friendly enough to keep the attention of the audience. Otherwise, you risk losing your potential customers forever.
Positive UX increases conversion and sales
When users see that they have to go through a complicated procedure or do things they don’t want to do like registration, then they simply leave your website without completing a purchase or taking any other actions. That’s why a negative user experience can cause a high bounce rate and high shopping cart abandon rate.
And vice versa, if your site visitors enjoy your user experience, they will stay longer on your website, exploring it and browsing from page to page. The longer they interact with your web resource, the more likely it is that they will convert.
Now that you know why UX matters, think about yours. Use our website usability services and web design services to ensure user-friendliness for your web resource. Also contact us to help you define what UX improvements you need.