What use is a mobile app that is not usable, engaging or interactive? If the mobile app doesn’t take the persona of a human, and does not act as the face of the business, then it will not be able to communicate with and convert the users. In fact, the mobile app should take over the human salesperson in the online or offline store, and should make up for all the sales needs posed by your user.
To make your business competitive in the app market, or while creating an app, you ought to enhance the user’s experience. Your potential business solution should be in sync with not just the users requirements, but also the features and functionality you want to showcase. A simple yet dynamic app is what your users are looking for and something that you ought to give them.
Designing the interface along with the experience will help you create opportunities for your business, and increase the interest of the users. However, most businesses don’t see any reason why they should invest in user experience design. We have a million, one of them being reduced cart abandonment rates. If the user’s experience is such that they find the app both useful and usable, and cannot stop using it, then you will see an increased engagement in the app solution. This will, in turn lead to increased app users and enriched app experiences.
However, when designing app experience, a lot of app designers make a lot of mistakes, which includes not taking into account the business requirements, and actual solution. Here, we will take you through the different UX mistakes designers make, which can limit app development and lead to reduced conversions.
1. Not Considering the User
The most important mistake that every UX designer makes is not considering the user or their needs when designing the mobile app solution. not asking the right questions can lead to this issue.
- Why does the user use a mobile app and how do they engage with an app solution?
- How often do they use an app in your niche, and what makes them use it?
- How do they use a mobile app?
- What is important for them in a mobile app?
When you ask these questions, you will be able to understand the user, and the experience needs, which will boost your mobile app development methods and techniques.
Prioritizing the user’s requirements and developing a user-centric mobile app for them is central to devising a brilliant solution. As a designer, you need to separate yourself and your needs from the user’s requirements and their engagement needs. you need to keep their experience requirements separate from how you use the mobile app solution. when you approach the user experience from the user’s perspective, you will be able to add more elements to the design and help them navigate intuitively.
2. Not Giving Importance to Functionality
We have observed that a lot of user experience designers tend to give priority to app aesthetics as against the app functionality. As a result, they lose out on major conversions, as people see more of beauty than actual app functions. The idea is to balance out creativity and functionality and incorporate the personalized requirements of the user while tending to your website needs.
- Which functions and features are important to the user of your mobile app?
- How important is aesthetics, and what aspects of aesthetics you need to focus upon?
- Why do you require to keep the user’s usage area in mind when defining the functionality?
- How would you synchronize between usable area and defined area for the mobile app?
These questions will help understand what app features and functionality need to be focused upon in a particular screen, and how you want to define the app experience per screen.
It would be a good idea to avoid clutter, and have one focus function per screen. For instance, if it is the sign up screen, then you should just include sign up functionality and nothing else.
3. Not Viewing UX as a Team
We all believe that UX design is a single person’s effort, and we tend to put all the load on the team handling user experience. Well that is the mistake, and they won’t be able to pull off a UX design that matches the goal as well as the business objectives stated by your organization.
UX design is a team effort. You need to involve the UX designer team, as well as the UI designer team, the developers, the strategists, the marketing team as well as the planners and the client side into designing the UX. You will need to ask a few questions before you begin designing the UX.
- What are the objectives that your company and what do you aim to achieve from the mobile app you are planning?
- What is the definition of mobile app for every single stakeholder and how do they identify themselves with the mobile app?
With these questions answered, you will also need to brainstorm on the project goals as well as the ideas and concepts that will help develop the final product. Once you are through, you will get a defined and goal-oriented user experience that is user-centric.
4. Overcomplicating the App Design
As a designer or an app developer, we tend to be enticed by the designs created by multiple people. We want to add everything that we possibly can to the mobile app screen. However, it can complicate the design and overcomplicate the structure of the mobile app.
We believe that content makes up for the user’s interest and engagement, and that’s precisely why we tend to add too many things. However, what we forget is that content can ruin experiences too.
Before designing the app experience, and taking a calculated user-centric approach, here are a few questions that you may want to ask yourself about the user and the mobile app.
- Does my app really solve a problem? If yes, will the design I plan upon using solve the usage and usability issues faced by the customer?
- How will my app relate to the experience needs of the user?
- How does content or image connect with my user?
- How does app user view design approaches and what kind of design do they connect with most?
These questions will help understand the user, and will give you an intrinsic understanding of the design needs posed by the user.
5. Giving Least Importance to Feedback
When you release the first look of the mobile app, you are trying to understand how users use the mobile app solution you have devised. However, most often you tend to think of the user experience of your own, and don’t include the user’s thoughts. This complicates your idea of experience, and you design more for the company and the app than for the user.
Some app designers don’t even include the feedback given by the user regarding the fonts being used and other aspects, which is seen in how the app is later developed.
When designing the experience of the mobile app, make sure you incorporate the feedback and suggestions given by the users. This will give you a chance to understand the user and create the app for them.
Summing Up
User interface design is different from experience design. Experience is more about usage, usability and the interaction the users have with the app. It has more to do with how easy it is for them to use the app, and how ably they can move around the app. Engagement thrives on the user experience. When devising the experience design, make sure you have a team of experience strategists as well as marketers and business heads to understand what matters most to the customer. If you don’t design with the end user in mind, even before you get started, your app is likely to fail.