Your company launched its app a few years ago. You were very proud of it at the time. But lately, it just hasn’t been producing the business metrics that you had anticipated. Maybe the app was great in the beginning, but your results have fallen off as of late. Or maybe your results were never what you’d hoped. Either way, you do not necessarily need to rebuild your customer experience from the ground up, in fact with modern coding practices there’s a good chance that a basic UX design refresh can turn your metrics around. Here are some signs to help you tell whether your app’s UX design needs a refresh.
1. You’re losing money
Customers spent over $430 billion online last year in the U.S. alone, and that number is only growing. But your website revenue is flat or sinking. More than likely your behind the times when it comes to e-commerce trends. The UX should make it as quick and simple as possible for users to give you their money and help turn casual browsers into paying customers wherever possible. So if sales are falling off, it could be that your app is standing in the way of transactions, rather than facilitating them.
There are a number of possible ways this could be happening. Too many clicks is the primary culprit. It might be difficult for users to navigate the app and find the product they want. The shopping cart may be difficult to find or to use. There could be too many steps between selecting a product and purchasing it, causing potential customers to bail before they reach the end. In examining your UX design, you should make sure that the process of making a purchase is both an easy and pleasant one for the customer.
2. You’re losing customers
Money itself isn’t the only indicator that something’s wrong. When your return visitors are dropping and your app is being uninstalled you have a retention problem that can be solved by analyzing how you are presenting the value of your website to your users. Users come to your site or app for a specific reason, if you are not recognizing where your users spend their time then you are not optimizing their experience to keep them happy and coming back.
When fewer people are downloading your app or signing up for your website you need to quickly identify the most engaging parts of your website or app experience and bring them forward. You also need to ask which experiences you are forcing them to experience that have little to no engagement and remove them. The right balance between serious content and creative fluff is critical. Remember that UX stands for User Experience. What are users experiencing when they use your app? How does it compare with the experience that they’re looking for?
3. You’re getting complaints
This is where you find the low-hanging fruit: your users are actively telling you what they don’t like about your app or website. Maybe, they don’t know where to find what they’re looking for or want a particular feature that isn’t available or easy to find. A feature you do have doesn’t actually work the way it’s supposed to. Whatever the problems are, they’re making your app frustrating instead of friendly.
What you need to do if these problems sound familiar to you is perform an evaluation called a heuristic evaluation. Determine how the site’s design principles compare with its functionality and user experience in practice.
Once you’ve determined what the problems are in your app, bring in a UX expert to help you figure out solutions and redesign the user experience to be a more effective tool for your customers and ultimately your business. With a little bit of effort and research, you can create a user experience that brings more people in and helps them spend their money, rather than driving them away.
Don’t have a UX Expert readily available? Consider staff augmentation, which allows a company to add specialized talent to their team without the overhead of a full-time employee. Catalyte is the industry leader in staff augmentation and has the talent you need to finish your project on time and within budget.
