User experience is considered how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system, or service. This includes a person’s perception of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Bad UX can be like:

Some examples you may be familiar with are poor website navigation, missing or invalid links, broken search bar, etc. Take the error messages below for example:

How many times have you clicked on a link and received the 404 error? While we love some creativity, ultimately if you can’t find what you want, you’ll find yourself clicking the back button to continue browsing competitor websites. Running into the famous 404 error, coming across removed links, or finding broken buttons can be quite frustrating for the end-user.

Recently, I visited a website, looking for information on a specific service. The service was promoted at the top of the home page. There were four different links provided to “learn more” about the service offered. Unfortunately, each link I clicked led me to an error. I was on the site for about a total of thirty seconds. 

Why does this matter? Poor user experience negatively impacts the user, which in return impacts the client and business. The customer is unable to reach their end goal for visiting the website and is most likely ending up on a competitor’s site.

From a business point of view, this results in: 

• poor customer retention - ability to build customer loyalty & gain repeat buyers

• low conversion rate - percentage of users completing a desired action on the website 

• high bounce rate - percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing only one page

• poor SEO - the amount of website traffic from search engines

So, how can you make sure you’re providing a good user experience? 

For starters:

• conduct user research

• easy and consistent navigation

• clean and simple layout

• keeping links up-to-date

• minimal website hierarchy 

• make common elements easy to find

While these are just a handful of components to focus on, there’s a lot that goes into developing a good UX. For an in depth guide on how to develop a high quality user experience, stay tuned for our upcoming Four Part Series on UX/UI.

PK Information is a FileMaker-certified development agency serving the Tampa Bay and Knoxville regions. We believe that great software can change everything. Would your database benefit from a process review? Contact us today!

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