Last week we starting discussing how taking on a customer centric approach should include reviewing your user experience and what that means for your e-commerce growth going into the 2020 and beyond. When a customer centric approach is taken in user experience, you will be able to see an improvement in understanding your user behaviors, increased opportunities to innovate because of user interactions and a return on your user experience investment. By following user centric design, you can better create user personas, site maps and customer journeys to start to craft your ideal user experience. Now we understand that precisely mapping out key user tasks, understanding the core processes and watching actual user behavior fulfills one piece to the user experience puzzle, but what’s next? This week, we are discussing how wireframes, prototypes and design concepts play and important part in the user experience.
Understanding User Experience Wireframes & Prototypes
Wireframes are “blue prints” of page-level information design. They are used to represent the content, features & functionality, and intended interaction on any individual page template. Prototypes demonstrate particular interactions within the experience, ensuring business sponsors understand critical user flows. Wireframes are built in Sketch, Prototypes are built in InVision.
When working towards creating your wireframes and prototypes you should:
- -Analyze all materials and experiences
- -Move towards Wireframe & Annotation Creation
- -Analyze & Assess
- -Create Wireframes for Mobile & Web
By vetting out functions and flows that will best support both business operations and individual needs, you will then be able to improve digital engagement.
Understanding Design Concepts
A successful brand visually communicates your business to your customers without over-burdening your message. By understanding your business and the needs it provides, you are then able to materialize your vision. In some cases, it’s as much as cascading a brand and staying on point. In other cases, it is a full service branding effort through a user experience agency- from providing various identity and marketing assets. A comprehensive style guide and creative brief should always be the baseline, which details how to use your brand on the web, in apps, and any communications materials.
Ultimately, user experience needs to be personalized to meet the needs of the buyer, seller, company, channel and all the various support roles involved in the buying cycle in this day and age. This draws to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a finished product because needs are continually changing. So instead, continual, dynamic improvements must be made to evolve with your users needs. By successfully utilizing customer data and partnering with the right user experience agency you can remove the complexity, break down barriers, align your internal teams and continually create new customer centric experiences that keep them coming back. What appears to be even a small lift in conversion rate can have significant impact on your revenue.
If your user experience isn’t meeting these expectations it could mean it's time for a review.
