Why Does User Experience Matter?

Website User Experience (UE) can determine the eventual fate of any online business. Most website usability studies suggest that an improved user experience has direct impact on conversion and business growth.

While some companies argue that user experience is mostly a holistic concept, in realty, it is lot more than that. There are measurement metrics that can be applied to quantify your results and expectations. While there are plenty of UE/UX experts out there, it is not easy to find one that would work for you. Before you hire someone to do user experience and website usability work, here are some questions you should ask yourself.

• Why am I thinking about this to start with? Do I already know my problems?
• How do I know that this will improve my current website?
• Have my business model or needs changed significantly since the website original design?
• Do I need quantitative data to substantiate design decisions?
• Which segment of my customers will benefit most from this effort? Is Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) needed?
• Have I done competition analysis to see how my website compares to my leading competitors?

Obviously this list is not exhaustive but it should provide enough information to get you started.

How Can Amplimark Help?

Amplimark has made significant investment in acquiring skills and technologies to help improve overall user experience and website usability. We have access to industry data that is gathered from hundreds of websites with millions of site visitors. It is absolutely critical to the success of your business that you focus on the website user experience, determine where it is good and where it needs improvement, and take action to make those improvements. We can help your business by improving following component of your user experience:

• User Focused Design

  Very few web design companies really understand this piece of user experience puzzle and even fewer actually care. At times, a web design company or developer is driven by their own aspirations in web design rather than actual customer needs. This results in a product that servers as a portfolio showcase for their own businesses while ignoring the day-to-day operation of the customer website. One of the most common examples of this is a website designed with excessive use of flash. End product may look good but it is not going to address critical needs that a customer may have had.

  An effective web site doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles. For example, Craigslist.org doesn't have any attractive or jaw-dropping design elements but it does what it is designed to do and it does it exceptionally well. In summary, every web design project should keep the focus on the user experience and website usability. More and more web designers are embracing user-centered design because of its success in delivering a practical and usable product.

  At Amplimark, we understand user-centered design and we have a laser sharp focus on the end goal of delivering a product that serves its intended end users and not its designers.



• Online Usability Research

  This component of web usability is refined and mastered with time. Good web designers do not considered a project complete when it is implemented. They go a step further and review website traffic data to understand how well a user interface is performing. It is a learning process and small tweaks here and there can have big impact on the overall user experience. For example, a checkout process with multiple steps and asking for irrelevant information during checkout can have very negative user experience. Checkout process should be focused on the customer and not on the business owner who may very well use additional information in a positive way. If your business have to collect this information, you must find other ways rather being invasive and disruptive in the checkout process. At Amplimark, we understand conversion.



• Competition Analysis and Research

  Every website has good and and bad design elements. A good web designer must spend time to review at least a few competitors' websites to truly understand the scope and needs. Most clients are not tech savvy so they rely on the web designers to take care of these aspects and make suggestions. At Amplimark, it is our job to document the competition and then review this information with our clients to develop an implementation strategy. While this step adds to the overall budget of the project, it pays off big time when your business starts competing online.



• Develop and Build a Brand

  Brand development should be one of the top priorities for any business owner. You should review your business model to figure out the intrinsic value of your business and its branding. A website without a brand recognition can easily be replaced by another one with more money and resources. For example, look at Google. From its early days, Google's business model was focused on developing a brand for internet search alone. Today the word "Google" is synonym to online Search and it is almost impossible to challenge Google's brand recognition in internet search market space. Once a brand is established, it is far more easier to branch out in other areas and compete with ease.

Do you have user experience & website usability needs? Call us toll free at (800) 379-6214.