75% of people judge a website’s credibility by its design. How does your credibility stack up? 

Your website is a digital portfolio that tells the consumer (B2C or B2B) about your business, your company’s values, overall initiatives, and the products or services you offer. That’s why UX and UI design is so important. They work in tandem to ensure your website is driving your business goals.

So, what is UX and UI?

UX stands for User Experience. It’s how a user interacts with, and experiences a product system or service. Similar to a blueprint of a new home, it plans how people get in and out, and go from one room to the next.

UI stands for User Interface. It’s the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. Best analogy to follow suit with the blueprint of your home? UI design is the interior design, paint colors, and decor that characterize the vibe and style of your home.

Together, UX and UI are complementary and wildly important aspects of web design. One would be incomplete without the other, however it’s important to understand their separate roles. While UX is more data-driven on how the consumer is expected to feel when using your website, UI takes the design patterns, details and brand into consideration. In the most simplest terms; UX is how the user feels, their overall experience, while UI is what the user sees and finds comfort in.

With UX design in mind, the top 3 goals are:

  • Ensure a stellar user experience

UX design is all about anticipating your users needs and wants, helping them move through your website with ease toward their end goal. Good UX design encourages interaction with your website with next steps, call-to-actions and newsletter signups, or subscription prompts. Knowing your users’ goals and mapping out your information architecture will help the overall flow of your website leading to a more engaged user.

  • Decrease Bounce Rate

First, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. An increasing bounce rate suggests your website experience or message is not what the user intended to find when it landed there. When your website has a successful UX design there is a clear path of information for the user. This makes visitors more likely to stick around on your site, which leads to a lower bounce rate. The goal is to create a positive outcome. A good UX strategy might mean having to let go of certain superfluous design elements to accommodate ease, speed, and simplicity. This approach also takes the audience into consideration. To create this positive outcome, your focus should be on easier decision-making and faster navigation. 

  • Improve ranking signals

With Google absolutely “judging” mobile-friendly design and page load speeds it’s important to incorporate user experience in your search engine optimization (SEO) and business growth strategies. SEO ranks based on security and accessibility, page speed, mobile friendliness, safety of links, optimized content, and of course user experience. There’s more to it than that however if any of these areas are a question mark to you, it’s worthy of a conversation within your organization.

While UX creates a home for your content, UI is all about the decorating and your style. User interface design builds on the plan you laid out in the user experience by making the home aesthetically pleasing, and more enjoyable for your guest. . 

Top 3 reasons why UI design is important: 

  • Build a brand identity

UI design is the choice of color, typography and imagery. Your website’s UI should convey your company’s brand standards, tone, culture, unique services and more. It’s important to have brand identity guidelines to create consistent designs. Often when we ask for a company’s brand standards and mandatories, it’s not something anyone has on-hand. Having everyone on the same page with expectations and direction makes a website kick-off all the more successful.

  • Convert visitors into customers 

UI sets the tone, so bad UI can prevent conversions. Brands with welcoming and engaging UI design help resonate with visitors and see higher conversions. The average attention span of users is 8 seconds. Therefore, the majority of website content is scanned, not read. Simplistic design elements, including but not limited to intuitive scrolling vs clicking, clear headlines, and well-defined call-to-actions will guide your visitor to their end point, which for your sake is a conversion. 

PS: A conversion is when someone interacts with your website by clicking further, submitting a contact form and/or takes an overall action that you’ve designed with your message or callisting (ex: clicks a call to action button, or views of a video), As Red Thinking assesses our clients SEO and ever evolving websites, we work with you to very clearly identify what a conversion is to each individual business, such as an online purchase or a call to your business from a mobile phone.

  • Increase customer retention

You not only want to attract customers to a website but also retain them. A good user interface uses page elements to evoke a positive emotional reaction, which leads to repeat visits. For any website, returning visitors are important because they tell how successful your marketing campaigns are, who your loyal customers are, and how powerful your brand is. We use Google Analytics to help define returning visitor rate as this provides us the number of users who have visited a website before, using the same device, and within the last 2 years

The primary goal of any business is to increase its sales and increase the growth of the business. We understand that, and push to ensure exceptional UX/UI Design plays an essential role in achieving our clients goals. With users having lots of choices for the products and/ or services you are offering them, the time to get their attention becomes less and less as we continue to scan vs. read, and quite simply, we want what we want when we want it. Say that 3x fast!