A few years ago, there was no concept of user-friendly digital resources. The company website was seen as an electronic business card. Only then everything changed, and a real arms race began. Or rather, the race for user attention. In this competition, all methods of influencing the consciousness of an ordinary person are used, from appearance with correctly selected colors and typography to usability.
When digital products and online sales became a part of companies’ commercial activity, such services as UX consulting appeared. It is an audit of a project or its modules by external specialists to determine the effectiveness of the interface. As far as the user is comfortable to solve his problem with a particular product.
Suppose you decide to go on a trip and need to get from city A to city B. To begin with, you choose a way to accomplish this by car, bus, train, or on foot. You decide to go by car, then determine that it will be a blue SUV or a gray station wagon. So going by car is UX design, what the user exploits to achieve their goals. The appearance of the vehicle is UI design. As you understand, it all starts with the interaction of the user with the product. No matter how successful the design, may be if the potential client will not find the “Buy” button on your website, even the most popular font won’t increase the conversion rate. This is the task for UX consulting.
Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today
UX consulting involves adapting a product to consumer needs. To do this, research is done not only on the user experience, but also on the business and technology. Such an integrated approach helps to give an objective estimation and help to solve the company owner’s request.
As a rule, UX consulting is applied in the following situations:
- To scale the business. Greater coverage of users requires a high degree of readiness of the resource to accept the flow of visitors or an increase in the number of products sold, the expansion of geographic parameters. All this involves a review of existing sales channels. And a competent consultant will make recommendations, assess the weaknesses in the interaction with the interface.
- At the initial stage of the project development. This will help to avoid negative results during prototype testing and detrimental feedback. This way you will accelerate monetization and ensure commercial success. Let’s take a hotel booking application. The main objective is to get a hotel room. The user wants to do it quickly and pay immediately. In this case, you should focus on an understandable system of filters, to select the necessary option in a short time and connect the ability to pay by various methods. In the end, the client gets a great room with an ocean view, and you get a satisfied user.
- To take the load off the sales department and support service. Let’s look at the example of the banking application. With easy and clear access to information on accounts, deposits, banking operations, services, with a virtual assistant the user eliminates the need to contact support. The same happens in the sales department. With the right attitude to the company’s digital resources, it is possible to reduce the time of communication between the client and the manager and increase the speed of closing the deal. The potential customer receives comprehensive information about the product or service and goes to the sales department already prepared. You get a warm audience for further interaction.
- Brand awareness. In this case, business wants not only to increase sales, but also to improve user loyalty and the number of repeat customers. Also, UX consulting helps to develop the company and open new opportunities for scaling.
UX consulting as the best assistant for business growth
Let us not forget that often business owners, concentrating on their idea, forget about the fact that their product should bring benefit or solve a consumer’s problem. An external UX consulting specialist from outside the company will be able to objectively conduct a usability analysis, identify weaknesses and provide recommendations on how to fix them. As a result, you can:
- help expand your business.
- increase sales, both quantitatively and by raising the average check, nomenclature group
- get rid of erroneous hypotheses in the development and promotion of the product
- minimize risks at the start
- to increase user loyalty
And of course this way business reduces the cost of attracting users, support service, and maintenance of the product. All released funds you can spend on scaling.
Myths and legends of UX consulting
Just like in ancient times, when people believed in the gods of water, lightning, sun, all delusions arise from a lack of information and understanding of the processes. So also new services and concepts get surrounded by unconfirmed myths.
UX consulting is an optional service, an in-house designer can handle it. To begin with, to determine the usability and utility of a project you need not only knowledge, but also experience. You need to look at the product from the user’s point of view and from the perspective of achieving business goals. Many full-time employees are fixated on the external component, burning with the idea along with the management. The company has to be client-oriented and at every stage ask: “Is it convenient for the user to solve his problem in this way? Will he be able to find the information he needs?”
And that’s where another myth comes out. UX consulting is cheap or expensive. This service cannot be equal to 2 hours of work of a novice specialist. Because you bring in a competent team, usually consisting of 3 or more developers, who have years of experience in creating interfaces for different niches, testing and deciphering the results. Sometimes executives find that user experience research and testing is very expensive. Because you have to put together a focus group and test, collect the results, analyze them, and draw conclusions. But an experienced team has a set of working techniques. The types of research are divided into quantitative and qualitative. In most cases, even a group of 5 users can detect up to 75% of problems and bugs in a product. So it is important not to chase a low price and not to think that your business does not need UX consulting because of the high price. The golden mean exists.
Turn to professionals to develop a product with a sufficient level of user-friendliness from the very beginning.
Every dollar invested in the design brings from $2 to $80 profit. The more responsible you are in developing and maintaining the usability of the project, the more marketable product you’ll get. If these figures are not enough, then add. Websites with a high level of usability and utility and quality design increases the effectiveness of the resource by 220%.