UX & UI Design 101
|Why Your Online Business Depends on It
Your website needs to tick all the boxes to generate the most traffic and the highest sales. With the increase of online businesses on the market, the number of those boxes is also rising.
The two most important factors are functionality and aesthetic appeal, and today, you must deliver both to succeed.
These two aspects create the UI/UX Web Design field that makes or breaks online businesses. However, many online business owners aren’t familiar with these terms, nor with the ways to optimize them. We are here today to change that.
The Definitions
Before we go on to explain why you need to focus on these two crucial abbreviations, let’s take a look at the definitions.
User Interface Design
UI or User Interface is similar to graphic design. It uses strong visuals to guide your visitors through the website. Visual presentation matters for hooking the visitor, making them curious and turning them into a customer.
User Experience Design
UX, or User Experience, has a goal of ensuring the customer is satisfied as possible while interacting with the website. This design makes the site straightforward and gratifying every step of the way.
This field is a bit less researched than UI. However, new prototypes, tests, and analyses are popping up daily and making it more and more efficient.
UI and UX Cooperation
These two aspects are vital to one another. If your website looks fantastic, but it’s challenging to navigate, it won’t generate traffic. The same goes for the reverse situation. If your site is reliable in both fields, achieving the results will become much more manageable.
Benefits of Focusing on UX/UI
It may seem obvious already, but here is a list of advantages you will see once you start focusing more on UI and UX.
- Optimized UI and UX are crucial to SEO, driving more traffic to the site.
- Users will spend more time on the site.
- Your message will be more evident to the audience.
- Good experiences on your website generate customer loyalty, thus increasing the sales as well.
How to Optimize
Brain Box Labs, an UI/UX design company, makes an excellent point with saying that these designs should be simple, but that doesn’t make them easy to achieve. On the contrary, it asks for attention to detail and a deep understanding of user behavior.
Although these fields are still developing, there’s already a clear set of guidelines for every designer and business leader to follow when creating their website.
Focus on the User
Remember, it’s ‘User Interface’ and ‘User Experience.’ These fields center around the user – so, all design decisions made should keep the user needs in mind.
Stay Up to Date With the Trends
Web design is an ever-changing industry. It seems that a new trend pops up every other week, and you as a designer or an owner should stay updated. That’s how you avoid your website becoming obscure and rudimentary.
Choose Your Tools
Designers nowadays have dozens of tools at their disposal. However, you don’t need to master the entire toolbar.
Instead, pick a bunch and play with them, while only focusing on mastering a few. That way, not only will your design be of higher quality, but the users will know what to expect, too.
The Bottom Line
Finally, you must remember one thing. UX/UI design is not an entirely new notion you need to master. It was a part of your website since the day you created it. It only grew in importance with the development of online user research and optimization tools.
In essence, UI tackles the form and UX the function of your website.
By optimizing those, you create a better user experience and make people want to stay and even refer friends to you. We hope this short guide made you feel more at ease with these terms and that you will start taking advantage of them as soon as possible.