Reducing the UX, or "User Experience", to a single definition would not be relevant and would hide some aspects of this field that is now present in all sectors, not only digital.
In our case, it is the UX of the digital world that will interest us, and therefore the experience that a user will live when he will be in interaction with a tool, a platform or any other thing of the digital universe.
A continuous evolution of UX
To understand where UX is today, it is important to be aware of what it was in the beginning. The term user experience was first used in Donald Norman's book "The Design of everyday things" in 1988. This innovative approach allows to talk about a design based on the real needs of the user rather than on aesthetic considerations.
Although it was published decades ago, "The Design of everyday things" remains one of the must-read books to better understand the discipline, and was completely reissued by its author in 2013.
The book has since become one of the classics of UX design, offering a clear overview of UX in the digital domain.
Today, several variants and strategies drawn from the user experience have seen the light of day, UI Design for User Interface, Design Thinking, Lean UX, Mapping Experience,... UX has changed the approach that designers have when building a platform and other digital tools.
A two-way process
The different evolutions of the digital world have also shaken the ways of proceeding. The elaboration of a website used to go through the elaboration stage with the choice of tools and technologies needed, and then came the reflexions around the design for the UX. Today, the UX comes before the importance of the technologies used, a website can be technologically of a radical simplicity and with a design thinking pushed to the maximum and an optimized UX, it will nevertheless be more effective than a website filled with new tools and technologies but not intuitive for the users.
It is therefore in this case that you have to think about the UX before the technical development, and this is directly linked with your marketing strategy as well. A simple example, if your target market is a middle class, you will have to favor an intuitive interface requiring little connection because the target households may not be equipped with fiber and broadband connection, and therefore limit the technical implementation to avoid slowdowns.
Don't forget that Internet users spend between 6 and 8 seconds on your website before deciding to stay or to come back on the search engine page.
Times have changed and so have the uses, the competition in the ecommerce world allows each user to have the choice, and more often, the navigation experience and therefore the UX and the design are the first decisive characteristics for the users. So, it is normal that today they are also the first ones when building websites.
UX & Marketing
User experience is no longer just an option or just a design for your website, it is now an integral part of your SEO. Search engines are now sensitive to this feature and some developers have understood it. Priority hint is the name of an experimental feature that allows website developers to prioritize the loading of certain resources in order to optimize page loading time. The feature will be tested until March 22, 2022 in Origin Trial, a platform powered by Google Chrome that allows developers to test and provide feedback on new tools.
The priority indications are just a hint, but they will guide the browser by indicating that a certain element is higher priority than others for the webmaster. So UX is not only about design, the hidden side of a website also plays a role in the user experience. And the UX is not only a subjective criterion varying from one user to another, it has become a criterion for the referencing of your website on search engines. It is therefore important to strongly implement UX in your marketing strategies.
Today, UX is not only for designers, marketers also have interests in this practice. With a bit of hindsight, we realize that UX and marketing have points in common, if only on the analysis method to develop strategies, psychology. Psychology plays a major role in both fields. Both marketing and user experience revolve around the idea of generating customers and increasing sales. While marketing focuses on attracting users to your product or service, UX focuses primarily on keeping visitors engaged so that they want to return to your website again and again.
Marketers use psychology to generate effective campaigns, while UX designers use psychology to develop products that best meet customer needs.
The combination of these two processes is the perfect recipe for a powerful brand image, a stunning UX design seduces your customers, who will turn into ambassadors of your product. For example, if your app's user interface is very attractive, users will promote your product by word of mouth.
If you consider your application or website as a marketing tool and invest time in developing the user interface, your customers will be satisfied and your product will be more marketable. So it's now obvious, UX takes a visitor one step further in the conversion process on your website.
The perspectives of UX
The digital world is constantly evolving, as well as its uses. We are in the middle of a turning point in the uses and possibilities of experiences for users, in the short term, tools such as augmented reality and virtual reality for the world of BtoB with virtual meeting platforms, browsing menus with voice commands, design out of the conventional codes, ... 2022 and what follows will not cease to surprise us.
Finally, UX has shown its importance in today's digital world and more particularly in the design of websites, the main questioning is no longer about what we will use but what the website should look like.
The UX is now an integral part of your strategy, without effort in this user experience, your site will not be better than those of your competitors in the eyes of internet users.
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