Understanding Mobile User Experience and How to Get it Right

Understanding Mobile User Experience and How to Get it Right

A bad mobile user experience can hurt engagement and eventually the business.

With an overwhelming increase in the number of mobile users in recent years, businesses are paying significant attention to optimizing their eCommerce store for mobile. Streamlining the mobile user experience app or website has shown to have a huge impact on the conversion rates and customer-engagement. Mobile user experience (UX) takes center stage,as smartphones become the primary device for access to information, eCommerce and several other services & activities for most users.

The average US adult spends 3 hours, 10 minutes per day on their smartphone.

What is Mobile User Experience and why does UX design matter?

User experience (UX) design in iOS and Android, is a crucial part of the app-building process. It involves in-depth UX research as well as planning to know the demands and behavior of your potential users and customers and subsequently embed them in the design process. Here are a few key reasons why your mobile app UX needs to stand out.

1. Builds value for your business Investing in good UX design can lead to happy customers with lesser complaints, higher benefits, and more sales. If your customers are satisfied, they are willing to upgrade faster and try new features. Your product development team is likely to spend less time on old product versions and more time developing new solutions for users. This leads to more innovation, reliability, and stronger relationships with users by adding value to the brand.

2. Builds customer loyalty Needless to say, experience is a huge part of the shopping process, and many users vouch for online stores and brands that offer them a seamless shopping

experience. The simplicity of user experience can reflect at multiple levels right from easy browsing to a quick cart page and checkout section. If the user experience is smooth, customers are inclined to return to your store more often and prefer your website over others for the efficiency and convenience it offers.

Customers not just want to shop for products but also want to be able to buy them conveniently.

3. Saves time and money If the UX designing is done right from the start, you can create an everlasting impact on your customers and avoid wasting your time and money on reworking and mending it later.

When organizations invest in UX during a project’s concept phase, they reduce product development cycles by 33 to 50 percent. Nevertheless, UX mobile design should also be continuously tested so that it caters to the expectation of the everevolving user and brings out the desired outcome for your business.

4. Enhances customer satisfaction and ROI User experience contributes highly to a business’s success in today’s time. Hence, investing in offering a smooth user experience can make your customers happy and, in turn, lead to an increased Return on Investment(ROI). Even the slightest changes that help the customers navigate easily and faster can make a huge difference in their perception of your brand. The more you focus on your customer’s needs and listen to their feedback, the better the experience you will deliver.

How to improve mobile user experience?

Mobile user experience design is complicated – working on one involves several factors such as customer interaction, growing number of users and their expectations, and most importantly the pleasurable experience that all of them seek.

Mobile designers should pay attention to the following key factors that contribute to a good UX design for mobile apps:

1. Follow the guidelines When designing a mobile app for iOS and Android, the operating system (OS) is an integral part of the UI/UX design. You should always refer to these recommendations:



UI experts must comply with the guidelines given by the specific operating system.



Prioritize, and present main features that are relevant to the business and easy to access



Provide

appropriate

functionality,

such

mobile-only as

barcode

scanning and image recognition 

Add phone numbers to click-to-call, so that store locators can locate the device

2. Focus on the target audience The target audiences’ interest is of utmost importance when building a good mobile user experience. It is essential to design an app that ensures they get an excellent first impression. If the product has no value for your audience, they wouldn’t be willing to pay or spend their time on it. To attract your target audience through a good mobile UX, here’s what you can do: 

Locate your customer base



Look for user personas including their backgrounds, needs, and goals



Check competitive analysis, user stories, flows, and mapping



Wireframes and prototyping tests for feature validity and market viability



Coordinate with developers for a minimum viable product (MVP)

3. Create clear, simple, and good content Content plays a key role in every web page, on both desktop and mobile sites. While it is important to give necessary information about your business and to keep the customers updated, too much of it can be repelling. Make sure your content is clear and simple – a good rule of thumb is to use no more than 30–40 characters per line for mobile. Crowding a space with excess content makes it difficult for users to understand.

Font size: Do not include big letters, or use more than three font sizes to your responsive site. This ensures a good impression on your customers when they perceive your content.

Image sizes: The right images in the proper sizes make your app look neater.

Choose images that match your mobile app UX design or theme.

Speed: When it comes to smooth mobile user experience, a good speed is inevitable. Most mobile users want fast results, and a slow site can be a put-off. It’s important to ensure that the pages load smoothly and quickly to avoid a high bounce rate.

Mobile User Experience Best Practices As mentioned earlier, good design involves the inclusion of many factors, especially from the user’s perspective – convenience, ease of use, speed, and so on. Here are a few mobile app UX best practices to help achieve just that.

1. Navigation The navigation of the app is the user’s direct contact with the design. If users face navigational problems while using it, then it is structurally flawed. A great UX design helps users easily identify how to move around the page and explore further sections. Some of the commonly used design practices are the hamburger menus and home icons that are also easily relatable along with chat bubbles for quick help through messages.

2. Personalization Personalization is at the center of today’s customer experience efforts. For users, it offers what’s relevant to them or what they could be potentially interested in – keeping the unrelated content away. User experience personalization has shown to have a positive impact on the sales of businesses across sectors, and it’s always advantageous to know what your user is looking for.

3. Usability Ease of usability is a result of a clean webpage. Having too many elements on the page can complicate things for users, confuse them and eventually keep them away from the page. Keeping what is absolutely necessary and removing the extra can make a huge difference in the way a page looks. A good idea or a pro tip is to offer one key action per screen and design everything else around it.

4. Layout Proper alignment of visuals and appropriate spacing between the interactive elements makes an app layout look well organized and allows users to scroll through important information easily. Equally important is the thumb zone (area on the device that can be accessed with the thumb when the phone is held with one hand) on mobile devices that should have most of the call to actions and other interactive elements for an easy page movement for the user.

5. Data Requirements One of the main reasons for cart and checkout page abandonment is the compulsion to either fill a form or finish a registration before proceeding. Having to enter data at the end of the shopping process can be a huge deterrent for buyers, especially on the mobile. An ideal user interface would minimize such authorization requirements by allowing access via their social media accounts or even letting them proceed without registration.

Examples of Good Mobile UX Design Businesses are increasingly focusing on ensuring that their mobile user experience is a delightful one. Here’s a look at the top five UX apps that have succeeded in getting the mobile user experience design principles right.

1. Booking.com For a portal like Booking.com, which requires to feed the user with maximum information about the product, this site does a great job with the layout and design.

It offers multiple options/filters to ease the search process and also keeps it detailed. With maps, ratings, reviews, and many such features strategically placed, booking on the site is a breeze even for a new user.

2. Facebook Facebook allows users to pick the content that they like most. Users can even prioritize posts that they want to see first, which posts they want to share or hide, turn on/off notifications for pages, posts, or people. This helps in increasing personalization among users and draws back the customers to the app.

3. Domino’s Pizza Placing an order on DOmino’s through mobile is super simple and straightforward – credit their call to actions that are bright and prominent. Additionally, the process of choosing the item, and processing the order is very quick and hassle-free. Not to forget the mobile ordering bot, Dom that helps you place your order is a unique experience.

4. Apple Apple strives for perfection, and its user experience on mobile doesn’t disappoint.

The large white spaces and margins retain the user’s focus on products and content. Their simple design and layout of their pages with a header, sub-header, and image make navigation extremely convenient.

5. Evernote The Evernote application lets you store not just notes but also images and articles from the internet that can be accessed on various devices, including the mobile.

The app offers a simple and neat experience and guides the users through its various screens and functionalities with almost no distractions. Their on-boarding flow might seem long, but it is quite informative and has a great flow.

Conclusion Design plays an important role in determining the interaction, response and engagement of the user with your mobile site. Therefore, a robust mobile user experience should be the fundamental aspect when building a mobile app. The implementation of the above mentioned strategies and best practices can help your customers shop with ease and convinience – a must-have in today’s world of user centric approach.

Source - https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/7-reasons-to-customize-mobile-user-experience-forios-and-android/