How Can Good UX Help a Business? Date:   Monday , October 31, 2016 Headquartered in Delhi, this user experience design entity effectively solves interactive design (UI/UX) problems. This creatively driven and technologically reinforced design solution provider helps companies of all sizes. We are living in an empowered era. An era where each one of us has a device, if not more, that is connected to the internet, and makes a potential of information, learning, conversations and product offerings available to us. We are interacting with hoards of websites, applications and other digital innovations like VR on everyday basis. A new term related to these internet-enabled devices has hit the market recently. They call it UX! Though UX is a relatively new concept, user-friendly design has been part of our lives for ages. UX or the term ‘user experience’ was coined in the mid 1990’s by a cognitive science researcher by the name of Dr. Donald Norman. He was the first to describe the notion that design decisions should be based on the needs and wants of users Great businesses of the empowered era are not just about solving common problems. They are about solving them in the most pleasant way, by creating an experience around their solutions. Let’s take an example of Paytm. Keeping money in our wallet was not an uncommon behaviour. Paytm took inspiration, created an exciting experience around our habit from the real-life world and transformed that into a digital necessity. Don’t have spare change to pay while you pool a ride? You know the digital answer now! UX is part art and part science that can easily help a business in user acquisition and retention. If there’s an app that solves my need and is easier to use, I’d want to use it and continue using it. There is a good chance that I will advocate the usage and get my friends to use it too. User experience has an underline purpose,?to make something more usable, or increase the usability. Increased usability in a product makes them your best friend! You talk to them, every time you have a problem and it solves your need almost instantly. Just as people close to you, a product with good usability might even know a bit about your choices and will be able to offer you shortlisted options. Every time I fire the Uber app while I’m at home, it tries to suggest ‘work’ as a destination. There’s an absolutely fair chance that I fired the app to go to work only. It saves me a good amount of effort and time. That’s what best friends do, isn’t it? According to studies, businesses that invest in UX see a lower cost of customer acquisition, lower support cost, increased customer retention and increased market share. Jeff Bezos is known to invest heavily on optimising Amazon’s website user experience. In the original Airbnb product, users could ‘star’ properties to add them to a wish list?—?a basic feature. A simple change from a star to a heart increased engagement by over 30 percent. AirBnB’s CEO, Joe Gebbia credits UX with taking the company to $10 billion. Whether business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B?or product-or service-focused, there is a high user expectation of consistent and high-value in-person and digital experiences. Creating a fantastic UX may be difficult. It may require complex, multifunction approach from various departments in a business. It might require one to relook at their business approach or change strategies. Either way, a user-cantered design approach is imperative. As per studies, 85percentof UX problems can be resolved by testing with as low as 5 users. Good UX can reduce user errors, increase ease of use, satisfaction and impart trust, increasing traffic and returning users. This increase is a clear transformation into higher transactions and sales. An e-Commerce platform where the product pages were UX optimised for mobile, saw 30percent increase in sales and 70 percent increase in the quantity of products sold. As a business, it’s no more an option to take a pro-UX approach to strategy and execution. It’s time to design your differentiation through User Experience Design and be the best friend your users are waiting for!