Tech innovations have completely revolutionized shopping practices and purchase behaviors. The widespread popularity of online shopping leads to a dramatic surge in demand for ecommerce. From daily essentials to luxury goods, there’s nothing that you can’t get online. Some of the leading ecommerce ventures also offer a host of crucial products including life-saving drugs.

The unique possibilities and profitability of the ecommerce arena have been the prime reason for its popularity. Take a look around, and you will find numerous individuals venturing into the ecommerce arena.

It’s here that ecommerce owners need to take the initiative. Every potential buyer would wish for an exceptional and unsurpassed shopping experience and commerce owners should strive hard towards offering that. Here’s what you need to know in this context.

Following the best practices

Following and adopting the best approaches will help you attract huge traffic to your site. As an ingenious ecommerce owner, you should know the best UX practices thus captivating your potential audience. Catch a glimpse of these innovative UX practices for an exceptional User Experience.

1.      Responsive designs

Whether they browse sites from their mobiles or plan to use their tablets while shopping, responsive websites will ensure the best shopping experiences. If reliable market stats are anything to go by, a whopping 50% of ecommerce traffic comes from mobiles. That clearly reflects the paramount significance of mobile-friendly sites and mobile conversions.

If you are still without a responsive website, it’s high time to do something about it. Sites that aren’t mobile-friendly lose out on innumerable customers.

2.      Clean, clutter-free, and flat designs

Customers today are increasingly opting for simple, honest, and hassle-free browsing experiences. With some of the leading tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft minimizing the look and appearance of their Operating Systems, clutter-free and clean designs have become the need of the hour.

While clean designs offer ample space to the crucial elements of your website, focused site designs will help you present your products in the most efficient manner.

3.      Simple and easy navigation

Customers are likely to abandon a site that offers complex navigation. Quite naturally, ecommerce owners should ensure easy, simple, and uncomplicated navigation for users. Try including diverse shopping options thus making navigation easier than ever!

4.      Unmatched product photography and presentation

When you purchase products from a traditional brick-and-mortar store, you get clear and close views of your chosen products. Your ecommerce store should offer similar experiences. No matter what kind of product you sell, it is imperative to offer crystal clear views to your target buyers.

Unique presentation and product photography is something you should achieve. Offer multiple-angle views along with product presentation videos.

5.      Product details and Add-to-Cart buttons

Make sure the product details and add-to-cart buttons are designed in a unique manner. That will play a crucial role in captivating your potential buyers and offering them unmatched shopping experiences.

With these UX practices in mind, you will surely ensure unparalleled shopping experiences for your potential customers and enthusiastic buyers.

Tech innovations have completely revolutionized the business arena. From simple functions to critical operations, the entire business landscape has undergone massive transformations. Businesses today are highly scalable, dynamic, personalized, and contextual. Even the brand promotion strategies and campaigns are innovative. Business owners are striving hard to align their brand promotion goals with customer satisfaction and experience.

Quite naturally, UX is playing a highly significant role in the current business scenario. From product development stages to their launch in the market, UX is playing a remarkable part in the business arena.

Business environment and UX

There has been a steady rise in the popularity of User Experience. However, when it boils down to creating innovative UX designs; quite a few factors turn out to be important. Design experts should have crystal clear ideas of crucial factors.

Most importantly, they should put the best efforts to strike a balance between business approaches and technology. Let’s try to identify some of the crucial aspects in this regard.

• Channelizing human emotions: Customers will gain unsurpassed experiences only when they relate to a particular technology or product. Quite naturally, UX design involves human emotions, thoughts, and behaviors thus creating positive outcomes.
• The integral elements: UX design practitioners and experts need to take a different approach. While creating UX designs, they should keep specific design interplays in their minds. It’s here that we come across the most crucial elements including business strategy, insights, research, and branding.

Design experts will require understanding the specific goals and objectives of a particular business. All they need to do is align these objectives in the design process.

      I.          Emphasizing designs in the business context

Creating exceptional UX designs for businesses won’t be an easy task. The entire framework involves proper understanding, conceptualization, and perfect execution. UX design practitioners will need to set a background for their project designs. In most of the cases, the specific business goal or approach will serve as the background.

The bottom line is to create exceptional User Experience and optimum business value. While working on UX designs, designers should have these aspects in mind.

    II.          Improving communication skills

Creating exceptional design principles will be a hard nut to crack without in-depth knowledge of the business jargon. If you are creating UX designs, you should engage in effective communications with your partners.

Knowing the business terminologies and specific communication skills will help, as you will develop crystal clear understanding of their specific requirements. That will help you translate abstract ideas into effective concepts.

   III.          Importance of customer’s perspective

It’s highly imperative to align your design goals with customers’ perspectives. Effective UX designing is not just about creating simple designs. While doing so, you will have to make crucial considerations of customer’s desires, behaviors, thoughts, and expectations.

It is this approach that separates a company from the rest of its competitors. By catering to specific consumer demands, businesses can stay ahead of the growth curve and carve a distinctive niche in the market.

Parting thoughts

While creating UX designs, design practitioners will require taking a crucial factor into consideration. Their efforts should be channelized towards combining creative thinking and innovative thinking, thus developing engaging designs.

Of late, mobile apps have created quite a buzz across the entire business landscape, thanks to the widespread adoption by users globally. Highly interactive and stunning mobile applications can optimize your business ROIs, by bringing your brand closer to your target customers.

Interactive and feature-rich mobile applications have resulted in increased revenue generation. Case in point – A whopping 42% of cumulative sales generated by pioneering merchants were through mobile applications. Quite naturally, you too would want to embrace responsive web apps as a potential sales driver for your business with a bit of professional expertise.

The design aspects

Once you make up your mind to build highly interactive apps, there will be two crucial aspects worth considering. While UI or User Interface happens to be one of them, UX or User Experience will be the other part.

Since UI and UX determine your app’s credibility, it will be highly essential to develop a crystal clear understanding of these concepts. Begin by comprehending your target audience and market, thus creating splendid UI designs. Try not to forget that exceptionally beautiful User Interface designs happen to be the key to unmatched User Experience.

If you wish to get an idea of the most effective UI aspects, here’s a guide.

1.     Responsive designs

While designing UI for your enterprise mobile applications, you must put emphasis on responsiveness. From tweaking media queries to the CSS or JavaScript, you must take special care to incorporate responsive designs.

Display issues will affect your app’s credibility, thus inflicting fatal blows on User Experience.

2.     Iteration of UI designs

Performing design iterations will turn out to be quite beneficial. You will achieve highly scalable, attractive, stunning, and engaging apps capable of retaining customer attention. Most importantly, these iterations will teach you a lesson, thus making the next UI design project easier than ever.

3.     ‘Simple’ is good

Although a majority of UI designers misinterpret ‘simple’ as minimalistic, that’s not what it should be. While designing your app’s UI, the focus should always be on creating clutter-free designs, and that should be considered as the true connotation of ‘simple.’

In a nutshell, your enterprise apps should offer easy navigation and uncomplicated operability to users.

4.     Seeking multiple references

A good UI designer will work hard to create a splendid User Interface design. However, a great designer will develop innumerable designs and perform critical evaluations as well.

Highly proficient, skilled, and great designers will seek real references from multiple users. They will do this at the initial stages of app development, thus working on the inputs and reducing operational glitches.

5.     Adhere to OS guidelines

The OS or Operating System happens to be an integral aspect of UI designing. While creating the designs, UI experts must comply with the guidelines laid down by the specific Operating system.

Final word

With these five significant aspects in mind, UI designers will successfully create unique UI designs. As the consequence, you will get the opportunity to elevate the User Experience of your target audience up by a notch.

Irrespective of the time and era, indelible customer satisfaction and elevated user experience has always been the prime requisite for businesses. Whether it’s a brick-and-mortar store or an ecommerce site, customers are of paramount significance for all of them.

Since highly contented customers are incredibly valuable resources for businesses, entrepreneurs are always trying their best to ensure unique experiences for them. It is here that User Experience or UX emerges as a viable customer satisfaction accelerant. And it’s pretty much crucial for companies aiming to achieve highly satisfied customers.

Let’s get down to the basics and understand the significance of UX for your dream venture.

Having crystal clear objectives             

Before we dive deep into discussing the true value of UX, try answering this question. What it is that your business, your friend’s startup venture, and a colossal establishment share in common?

Now, that’s a simple no-brainer.

Irrespective of the differences in their sizes and nature, each of these brands or companies shares a similar objective. And that’s all about ensuring unparalleled customer satisfaction. Making your users enjoy and yearn for your services and products will prove to be the key to running a successful business.

A simple choice or crucial necessity

With customer satisfaction as their primary objective, entrepreneurs are investing time, efforts, and financial resources into UX designing and development. Therefore, UX happens to be a highly significant need for businesses and not just a choice.

While understanding the business value of UX, you will require taking note of two crucial factors. They are:

• Emotional response: The concept refers to a customer’s reaction while viewing a product or service for the first time.
• Intellectual Response: Intellectual response refers to customers’ reactions on the functioning of the product.

As a passionate business owner, you will have to take care of both these responses. You will have to make sure that your products fulfill customer expectations both by their appearances and performances.

Decoding ‘X’ in UX

If you break the term into two halves, you will get two highly crucial concepts. User Experience is all about the User and Experience. If you are successful in providing your users with unmatched experiences, they will also generate huge revenues and profits for your dream venture.

Gain a statistical insight, and you will see that businesses offering unsurpassed user experiences have achieved a 37% hike in their revenues. If your target customers face critical issues while navigating your site, it won’t take them long to abandon it. The same thing applies for complex and non-functional apps.

Turn to statistics again, and you will see a whopping 86% of apps getting uninstalled because of their inhibited functionality.

The reality         

With these statistical evidence mentioned above, it’s not just enough to develop a highly attractive website or application. Complex navigations and restricted functionality will take your website or application nowhere. And it’s here that UX enters into the picture.

Signing off

While it’s highly essential to design unique products for your customers, it’s also imperative to create experiences too. A great User Experience will make them believe that you care for them, thus fostering the spirit of collaborative development.

If you belong to the digital space and have also launched a brand out there, User Experience or UX won’t be a new term to you. For present-day website owners, UX will prove to be the ultimate necessity. It is here that we come across the most crucial question.

What is User Experience and why is it the buzzword in the tech arena?

Let’s begin with an appropriate definition.

Defining User Experience

The term UX or User Experience refers to the concept of UX design, which happens to be the parameter for customizing and tailoring your business website. In simple words, user experience relates to the practice of comprehending an individual’s relation with technology. It is a way of ensuring unmatched web experiences for customers.

UX encompasses quite a few critical aspects. Since it involves both human behavior and technology, User Experience amalgamates domain-specific knowledge, behavioral science, and web development features.

It’s the key to ensuring great customer experiences, which inevitably makes it an important aspect of website development.

Statistical insights

Get into the skin of your target consumers and try answering this question. How would you feel to visit a site that offers poor browsing experience? Although your reply is assumable in this context, let’s take a statistical reference.

According to market statistics, almost 88% of online customers will refuse to return to your website, if it offers a poor first-time experience. Therefore, the first impression is highly crucial in this context.

When it comes to leaving an indelible impression on customers’ minds, there’s nothing like including the best UX designs. Reliable market statistics state that almost 94% of users consider UX designs while developing ideas about your website.

That brings us to a point, where we know what the best UX designs can do for your website. On that note, it is imperative to gain a crystal clear idea about its significance.

Why is User Experience important?

Even if you happen to be the owner of a highly functional business app, it would be of no use, if your target consumers are completely unaware of its use. An app or website with scalable and unique UX designs will enhance its comprehensibility, thus helping consumers use it in the perfect manner. Some of the other aspects that make UX important include:

        I.            Digital resource development

When it boils down to developing exceptional digital resources such as websites and apps, UX plays a highly crucial role.  A business website with attractive UX designs will inevitably fetch more customers.

      II.            Improving experiences

Well-thought and deeply-researched UX designs are the prime factor for improving user experiences. UX determines the appearance and navigation of your website. Websites without clutter-free UX designs will be chaotic, and untidy, thus offering poor navigation.

    III.            Critical for startups

A new brand certainly won’t have a strong reputation to depend on upon. Therefore, it is the web experience offered by them that creates the entire buzz around their services and products. That way, it’s a critical success factor for startups.

Concluding note

UX designs or User Experience is not just an integral part of web development. Rather, it is a unique way of enhancing the credibility, appeal, desirability, value, and usability of your brand.

User Experience happens to be one of the buzz words in digital marketing. All your marketing efforts will fall flat on their faces if they fail to offer unsurpassed User Experience. Turn to statistical data, and you will find that nearly 79% of users will leave your website, and search for another if you are unable to offer the desired experience.

The statistical insight is enough to explain the paramount importance of User Experience. And it becomes a crucial success factor for self-service websites.

Every self-service site has a single-point agenda. And that is to help and guide users find an appropriate answer to their queries. The approach should be to help customers find ways of helping themselves. That will prove to be highly beneficial for customers and business alike.

Knowing self-service

The idea behind self-service bears resemblance with the term itself. When users require assistance while updating account information, it is then that these self-service sites come in action.

User-friendly self-service websites offer direct answers to critical questions. On the other end, poorly-developed sites will lead to confusion and disturbance amongst users. User Experience can solve the issue to a great extent.

And that is quite evident from the instance of the GDS or UK Government Digital Services group. Take a look.

The introduction of UX in self-service

The year 2013 witnessed a great revolution for self-service sites, as the GDS team brought User Experience into the picture. Quite like them, other self-service websites need to understand that customers seek useful assistance, and not chunks of unnecessary information. So, how does UX promote self-service?

      I.          Begin with serving users

Try answering this question first. Do your users need to know about the nuances of your business to receive the assistance they want? Perhaps no, you will just need to provide them the information they want, and they will take it from there.

Emphasize on user interests, needs, and requirements. Steer clear of educating them, since that doesn’t matter.

    II.          Say ‘S’ for simple

Every user is different from the other. You simply cannot expect them to talk or write in similar fashions. Quite inevitably, they will phrase their sentences in unique ways. As the UX designer, you will have to bear the brunt of hard work.

What you need to do is perform usability tests, assess user personas, and language studies to identify their sentence phrasing patterns. You will get a hang of the phrases and words that users frequently refer to while looking for your product.

   III.          The need for iteration

Even if your self-service site enjoys unsurpassed popularity amongst users, you must never stop iterating it. Perform the iterations based on user feedbacks. Use data analytics or other tracking tools to find out what users wish for.

These constant audits will help you improve your site, thus ensuring great User Experience.

Final thoughts

Other than the UX tips mentioned above, there’s a lot more you can do for improving your self-service website. Getting the correct approaches in place is half the battle won. Proper implementation of UX strategies and plans is what you will be left to do.

“Experience” has been the buzzword in the web development industry for a couple of years now, but of late, it significance has been growing among users and customers. This must be a good think and in 2015, all forward thinking companies focused on delivering a lingering “experience” through their online platforms. In 2016, it can be comfortably predicted that the term “User Experience” or UX would rise in importance for all stakeholders – the developers, the businesses and the audience.

“UX is all about how we live, about everything that we do and about everything that surrounds us.”

Here are the top 5 predictions for the UX design industry in 2016:

1.     Testers liberated

The increasing significance of UX has led to companies invest more in testing to nullify all possible errors. Testing is a means to improve the quality of the website and prepare it for the real world. Adobe’s Digital Optimization Survey states that only about 44% of global businesses invest around 5% in website/app optimization. In 2016, things are going to change when testing will become a standard practice before anything is deployed for the masses. To ensure a greater degree of credibility, testers would also be helped out by in-app usability testing platforms and other automatic testing tools.

2.     The merge of digital and physical experience

We talk of all the modern conveniences but there’s still more joy in a family shopping experience – when several people go out and have a say on a product they are eyeing for someone. Well, today internet of things makes this possible even when you are on a digital shopping spree. Flipkart has recently launched a social shopping platform called “Ping” where a large group of people can have a say on a singular buy. If your group is searching something for a birthday boy, this collaborative experience makes the “buying” more fun. UX like this would be rewarded in 2016.

3.     Automation and AI take front seat

Artificial Intelligence would have a greater say in the designing of online platform and apps. Businesses are already starting to take a lot of user input to analyze the right type of content, color scheme, imagery, typography and design layout for web projects. Automation would similarly help designers come out with preferences defined by analytics and put them into the final work.

4.     Integrated wearable

Till now it was Apple and Google take the front seat when it came to wearable devices. In 2016, brands like Sony, Polo and Nike too would become a player in this industry. Wearable devices have just not entered the market but have become the means to the trendiest technologies that the human race has seen. This development also gives a chance to UX designers to create more magic and push the envelope!

5.     Storytelling

Everyone is eager to hear a good story. UX designers in 2016 can use storytelling through their design to capture the attention of the executive and the investor. Further, user-driven storytelling will promote concepts as if they are a reality already. Easily digestible, short and out-of-the-box, these will be the tools of next generation pitches.

The award-winning UX Design Studio at GoodWorkLabs kickstarted the internship program in 2015, where in we take few bright and innovative design students to take up interesting projects, solve real life problems and build beautiful & usable products. Megha Chawra, a B.Des student from MIT, Pune, successfully completed her internship of 5 months.

Our HR team asked about her experience working with our team and how useful was her stint here at GoodWorkLabs. Let’s read her experience penned down and shared by her.

“Goodworklabs is one of the fast UIUX growing company in Bangalore. I was a UI/UX intern for 5 months and in these months I had the great experience in learning the whole system of a Mobile and web applications from research to development and testing process.

The company follows a structured process of User experience called Lean UX. Starting from understanding the needs of the client’s product, we nail down towards research module particularly in user personas, comparing other similar apps etc. Coming up with the key priorities, we start developing the information architecture and wireframes keeping the end user in the mind. Then, while doing the visual design I learnt to explore in color schemes, layout and interaction styles, right usage of fonts.

Once the designs are done, the very most important technicalities which I learnt was to understand the requirements, challenges and work structure at the development side of the app i.e asset creation, spec infos, device and resolution sizes of both iOS and Android which we generally tend to ignore while making the visuals.

Overall, It’s a great place to learn and improvise the skills. Have developed the capability of patiently managing the needs of the clients and the developers. People over here are very friendly, supportive and fun to work with. Working here have built my confidence in digital designs.” – Megha Chawra, B. Des final year student, MIT Pune, India.

To apply for internship program at GoodWorkLabs, send in your application along with your profile and work to contact@goodworklabs.com

Gone are the days of traditional software development designs. The present times herald the need of for a change, and it is lean UX that is leading from the front on this endeavor. What this particular concept does is brings out the best possibilities in a designer’s toolkit and combines them in a unique manner. And this is where it establishes relevance with the existing trends.

The practice of UX development and design is perhaps impossible, without functional knowledge on the topic. Look around and you will find many designers working on it, but without knowing the nuances of the topic. As the most undesired outcome, they are belting out nothing but poor designs. There is a need of knowing the nitty-gritty of lean UX for using it to the advantage of startups.

Read on and discover the benefits offered by this unique concept.

Collaboration and coordination

Lean UX promotes collaboration and cross-functionality to the tee. As a result, software designers no longer have the liberty or luxury of working separately. In the first place, the process demands perfect communication and coordination within the entire production team. Regular team engagement is required on a daily basis. If you are one of those passionate product designers, lean UX will not let you keep your team members waiting for your assistance, each time there is a need of figuring things out.

Stripping away heavy deliverables

Another significant benefit of Lean UX is that it allows the stripping away of heavy deliverables. Improved techniques are adopted, which give designers the opportunity of building shared understanding with teammates. Other than that, lean UX completely transforms the perceptions of designers. Earlier, it was only about the design features and the documents. But, after the emergence of Lean User Experience, Designers think about the workability and functionality of those features.

Reframing according to market feedback

Additionally, designers have perfect access to market feedback. Quite inevitably, it proves to be highly beneficial for them. Market feedbacks render useful assistance by helping designers reframe existing design conversations. Moreover, they can perform this reframing, in complaisance with the objective goals of business. What lean UX ensures is a great way of thinking about software management. And it is easily understandable by designers, which is a major benefit for startups.

The book

Of late,“UX for Lean Startups” by Laura Klein is stirring up great excitement amongst potential UX designers and developers. Some of the major benefits of referring to this book are:

• Say, for instance, you are a first-time designer and wish to breeze through the pages of a book on Lean UX. Quite inevitably; an excessive amount of technical jargon will make the entire process quite difficult for you. Well, this is where, the book mentioned above stands apart from its contemporaries. Its comprehendible language makes sure that you understand every bit of it.
• The book also speaks about certain useful methodologies, perfectly usable in the software testing process. These methods happen to be cost-effective as well as quicker compared to the ones that are currently prevalent.

So, if you lack a formal training on User Experience and wish to do your startup alone, this book will prove to be your best investment.