Alexis Kestler
UX design and marketing sometimes go hand in hand completely while other times it doesn't at all. When you do UX design you want to create the most convenient and consistent user experience possible. A UX designer not care about profits since that usually doesn't relate to UX.
On the other hand, marketing wants to maximise profit. It's all about increasing the conversion ratio and converting visitors into buyers. It isn't a stretch to say that a happy customer is more likely to buy something. Small changes have a huge impact on the conversion ratio.
What is Good UX Design?
UX stands for user experience, but you already know that. What is a “Good UX Design”? You might be able to notice this in your life right now.
There are so many services and products that you use simply because they are easy to access and you get an amazing user experience. Many of these companies are multi-billion dollar industries.
A lot of them have a few principles that they follow religiously. One of them is called the Nielsen Norman heuristics, authored by Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen.
The Importance of UX Design: A Statistical Insight
Firstly, it's essential to understand the fundamental significance of UX design in creating products and services that deliver meaningful user experiences. To illustrate this, let's look at some key data points and statistics:
- Investment Returns: Remarkably, every $1 invested in UX results in a $100 return, equating to an ROI of 9900% (source).
- Brand Credibility: A significant 48% of visitors deem a website's design as the pivotal factor in determining the brand's credibility (source).
- First Impressions: Design-related elements contribute to 94% of a website's first impressions (source).
- User Experience and Loyalty: No doubt, user experience matters. Indeed, 88% of online customers say they wouldn't return to a website after having a bad user experience (source).
- Brand Experience and Future Purchases: Customers who have a negative brand experience on mobile are 62% less likely to purchase from this brand in the future (source).
- Digital Influence on Buying Decisions: It's notable that 58% of customers claim that most digital experiences don't have an influence on their buying decisions (source).
- Executives’ Perception of UX: On the corporate level, 81% of executives recognize the value of UX, but only 59% of them claim that they can effectively measure it (source).
Additionally, these statistics demonstrate the significant impact that UX design can have on user satisfaction, brand credibility, customer retention, and overall business success. Investing in UX design can lead to increased customer loyalty, improved efficiency, differentiation from competitors, and cost savings in the long run (source).
The State of UX Design: A Fact-Based Overview
The global landscape of UX design is equally impressive. Here are some of the most prominent facts and statistics:
- Industry Value: In 2022, the global UX design industry was valued at $15.7 billion and is projected to reach $25.6 billion by 2028 (source).
- Product Abandonment: According to a 2021 survey, 27% of digital products and services will be abandoned after just one use if they don't meet a customer's needs (source).
- Repeat Business: More specifically, 89% of customers won’t do business with a company again after a poor customer experience (source).
- Page Load Time: The optimal page load time for retaining visitors is under 3 seconds. Even a 1-second delay could cause a 7% loss of conversions (source).
- Average Time on Site: Websites with a good UX design have an average time on site of 2:45 minutes, compared to 1:15 minutes on sites with poor UX (source).
- Median Salary: The median salary for UX designers in the US during 2021 was $92,000 per year (source).
Moreover, the most in-demand hard skills for UX designers are prototyping, user research, user flows, information architecture, and wireframing. Top UX design tools include Figma, Sketch, InVision, Adobe XD, and Balsamiq. Companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook employ some of the largest in-house UX design teams globally.
Lastly, UX/UI's importance can't be overstated, as 72% of businesses claim it is the most critical aspect of their online presence according to a BitTorrent survey (source).
In conclusion, UX design is a high-value skill set that assists companies in optimizing customer experience and satisfaction across digital interfaces and products. It's clear that the impact of UX design reaches far beyond aesthetic considerations—it plays a vital role in the success of digital products and the overall business.
10 Usability Heuristics
- Visibility of system status
Keep the user informed about the current system status through visible means within reasonable time. - Match between system and real world
Matching the information presented in the system with real world conventions. - User control and freedom
Give the user a way out in case something goes wrong whether intended or not. - Consistency and standards
Follow patterns across platforms making it easy for users to figure out the system. - Error prevention
Test the system intensively so it doesn't have any errors. Where the user seems to make error notify them. - Help users recover from errors
Explain the error in a human readable format and suggest solutions in overcoming those errors. - Flexibility and efficiency of use
Flexible processes can be carried out in many ways, so that people can pick the method that works for them the best. - Reduce the need to recall
Important settings and menus should be easy to access and shouldn't be hidden behind multiple options and labyrinths of UI elements. - Aesthetic and minimal design
Keep the screens and dialogues focused and minimal to maximise visibility and clarity. - Help and documentation
Help and documentation content should be easy to search and focused on the user's task. Keep it concise, and list concrete steps that need to be carried out.
If you read these principles you will notice a lot of overlap with whats considered good marketing principles.
Marketing, UX and metrics
As a marketer, you will know how important statistics and analytics are. Having as much data as possible on user behaviour can lead you towards the right path and help you convert the user.
Every time want to try something you will need a new landing page. You will test different landing pages and offers to see which one has the best outcome. This is where the UX part kicks in. Having knowledge of UX will help you building these landing pages and offers.
The information that you gather while you do analytics for marketing purposes can then be fed into UX. This creates a relationship which feeds off of each other.
As a marketer you would know which aspects of the campaign needs to be prioritised. This can be achieved easily during a design sprint which is intense 5 day process in which the entire team pitches in with all the knowledge and insight they have towards UX which can be qualified during the testing phase.
Good UX design maximises efficiency
Empathy and Diplomacy are the two key capabilities a good UX designer possess. As a marketer you may ignore these things because honestly it doesn't make much sense when you look at stats and analytics all day.
But just have a look around and you will see many cases where good marketing couldn't save a product or service because the users didn't feel like using it. Having a good UX reduces the overhead and increases the bottom line when its done right even though that's never the goal of UX to begin with.
