Investing in a consistent user experience (UX)
by Scott Agass Director
Posted on December 15, 2011
If you are a business and you feel your digital presence doesn't fully reflect the quality of service you're providing or just looks out of date and you are considering updating it. One extremely important element to consider during the planning stage is a consistent user experience (UX) across your new site.
UX is a term used to describe the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a website or application. It is extremely easy to create a website design but if consistent UX is ignored, the results can be very bad indeed. Well structured, thought out design can improve your digital engagement and success, depending upon your chosen site goals. At NXT Digital Solutions, we feel that planning and researching users and their goals for a site is paramount to its success. Investment into UX design will require time and budget but successfully created, can demonstrate dramatic returns on investment.
A key message for UX we regularly discuss with clients is consistency, both in terms of design and content. Users don’t want to spend forever finding what they are looking for. A consistent site should offer users a predictable and therefore learnable experience, helping them complete their goals effortlessly.
An extremely important area for consistency is design. This sounds obvious but it’s not always practised. Users remember the details whether consciously or not; for example, they may associate a certain colour with a link and others with body copy. We come across all sorts of faux pas, such as multiple typefaces in one area of sites, which is confusing. Please don’t get us wrong, we are all up for experimentation but keep it consistent and clear.
In terms of content, it should be coherent in tone, quality and quantity and should reflect the design surrounding it. If you have floral elements in your design and are selling cupcakes, you shouldn't use business language and formal terminology. Seems obvious, but it does happen. If you are regularly updating your content then this should also be reflected too. Finally, each user will interact differently with the site but the way your website responds should be identical in its output each time. For example opening of links or displaying pictures.
Your visitors should feel that the site has been designed and arranged so they can navigate to logical information quickly and then they are more likely to return again, maximising your ROI on re-development.
Should you need any help looking at your website design, speak to us here at NXT Digital Solutions.
About the Author
Scott leads the team of NXT designers and is responsible for all pixels and margins that NXT send to clients. With a keen interest in all the emerging web design trends, Scott loves a great examples of responsive sites and great typography. If he's not waiting for Photoshop to open he can be found with his family in Fareham including the latest edition Teddy the Cockapoo or trying not to get injured playing Squash.