Welcome to Beginning UX, a series dealing with the importance of crafting a strong user experience – and why, no matter how amazing your product is, it’s worth learning the techniques necessary to take your website from the most basic level of user friendly design all the way to incorporation of social media and more.

What Is UX?

User experience, also known as UX, is the art of creating a website that makes your customers want to come back. It’s that simple. Although misunderstood today, the old adage “the customer is always right” was the brick-and-mortar equivalent of good user experience – in that by creating an atmosphere wherein the customer felt like they were in control, they would return to your business. The customer felt empowered, you got paid, and it all worked out fine for everyone, since you had the best products on the market anyway, whether you ran a restaurant, a hotel or a general store.

Enter the internet; and with it, the world of eCommerce.

Benefits of a Well-Crafted User Experience

What kind of subtle changes could you make to your product/website/application/service/business that would discretely help your customers succeed, thereby feeling better about themselves, and in turn, your brand?
- Alex Rainert (everyday UX)

There are many benefits to a well crafted user experience:

• Easier site navigation
• Viral marketing potential
• Happier customers

These are all key points, especially when you remember that, while eCommerce is a wonderful thing, it has an essential problem that brick-and-mortar stores don’t have – double blind anonymity. When you sell things online, you will meet almost none of your customers, and will get only the barest glimpse of those who contact you through email and such. This is a far cry from the days where you could know the name of your local butcher, baker, and curio seller, and while the novelty of being able to shop 24/7 was enough to sustain eCommerce in the early days, the market has become so flooded that customers can choose to shop where ever they want.

Why is UX Important?

This is where UX comes in. After all, if the customer is looking for something that sets your product above the rest, a website that makes them feel like they’re buying from more than an anonymous person on the internet can help a great deal. In particular, those who have managed to work the principles of social media into their websites are doing rather well, by allowing their customers to create an online word of mouth through Facebook and Google. A well crafted UX can turn your website (and by extension, your ad campaign, all of your hard SEO work, etc) from the traveling salesman hawking his wares on the street corner, into that village shop that all of a person’s friends like, and they just haven’t gotten around to visiting yet.

Except your store is open all day, every day – so the odds are much greater they’re going to make it in eventually.

“But,” you may wonder, “I already have a good product. Better than anyone else’s on the market in fact. Why do I need to worry about UX? Won’t a good product sell itself?”

And you’re absolutely right. Good products do sell themselves, but being the logical businessperson you are, can you deny the free advertising that comes with winning something like The FWA, or having millions of fans on Facebook? If you already have a good product, isn’t it worth the effort of putting in that time to make sure the website selling it looks as good as the product works? First impressions can be important, especially with the double edged sword that is the internet. All the metrics and web analytics in the world won’t save a website that is hard to navigate – especially if you make it hard for customers to buy your products.

But most importantly, keep this in mind as you ponder redesigning that website you made ten years ago: The internet is in constant evolution. A decade ago there was no Facebook, no YouTube, no Myspace. File sharing was in its infancy, and download rates measured in MBPs were astonishing to contemplate, much less hard drive space in terabytes. The world of computers simply moves faster than the world of brick-and-mortar, and businesses that fall too far behind are in danger of dropping out of the race. Even slow and steady progress is still progress – and remember, the hare didn’t lose because he moved too fast, he lost because he fell asleep. So ask yourself: Is your business’s website moving forward with the times? Or are you napping by the side of the information highway, letting all of those UX wielding tortoises pass you by.

Either way, it never hurts to learn a few ways to improve your website – which is why you should tune in next time for “Beginning UX (Part 2): Crafting Your User Experience” where we’ll explore improving your UX. See you then!