What is User Experience (UX) Design?

The most attractive-looking ecommerce store on the internet is only worth the investment if it brings in a good traffic flow and a high visit to purchase ratio (conversion rate). The website needs strong SEO to get a high placing in the search results, and when visitors arrive their interest must be captured in those vital first seconds after the site opens. It must be clear to them from the start where they can find the extra information they seek, or how they can go straight to the product they want to buy. The steps required to buy items must then be presented in a straightforward way. In summary, their visit to your website needs to flow smoothly and intuitively. The mission of the user experience (UX) design expert is to work out how this positive customer online experience can be achieved and enhanced.

The UX designer’s job starts with learning all they can about the website or ecommerce store’s operations including the products they sell, the information they provide and current conversion rates. They investigate how well the website opens from laptops and mobile devices, the ease of navigation between pages, and the procedure for loading items onto the shopping cart or conversion path. Taking notes of comments received from customers, messages on social media and other information sources, the UX designer looks for site features that users find confusing or annoying. In addition, they examine similar websites and compare the user experiences. They draw up their plan for how the visitor experience can be improved and the site made more attractive. The revised design proposal needs to be tested and the results analysed before the changes are implemented.

The concepts of UX design and UI (user interface) design are closely connected so it is hardly surprising that they often get confused. UI design is a very important aspect of UX design, and every UI should be designed with giving a good user experience in mind. However, there could be cases of conflict. For example, suppose that the UI designer wants to use a stunningly beautiful graphic design that might not look so great on a small mobile screen, or could increase the time it takes to display the site. It will look great in the UI designer’s portfolio but what will it do for the ecommerce sales or website conversion rate? The UX designer needs to take on the role of customer advocate to ensure that the web store’s organisation and features are presented in a way most likely to please the customer.