Why we say everything is user experience
User experience (UX) is about much more than websites. When it comes to running a successful business or marketing your brand and services, UX is the foundation for everything. It’s good UX that will keep your customers coming back.
Whether you’re selling a product or a service, or just promoting brand awareness, it doesn’t really matter what the product does, it’s how it does it which makes the real difference.
If we’re to talk purely in online terms, the satisfaction of finding the information you’re looking for with ease will encourage you to revisit a site. A smooth and seamless buying process will encourage you to return to a seller because of its convenience.
Beautiful looking front-end design will be undermined by unresponsive buttons and laggy load times. Unintuitive signposting and siloed journeys are likely to make you bounce at the first opportunity. Invasive marketing which interrupts your progress will frustrate. A strongly positive customer experience is not possible under these circumstances.
UX is real life
Moving into the real world, brochures and business cards used to serve the same function as websites. Low-quality imagery, poor print, and cheap materials will generally inspire a negative impression because they offer a low-quality experience, and suggest the same of whatever is being marketed.
It’s the same for service. Where once we said with authority that ‘people buy people’, it’s actually experiences that people buy. We might like the rep, or the account manager, but if we don’t come away with a positive experience of the delivery process we’re unlikely to return.
The interactions and experiences which led to the purchasing decision, and all the experiences which follow in the delivery, are what live long in the memory. It’s these memories will coalesce into an impression of the brand, the brand relationship, and become the customer experience (CX).
UX will mean lots of different things
There’s no correct way to do things and perfection is an unattainable goal. Needs are always changing, as is the technology we use to meet them. Audiences and markets will have idiosyncrasies and counterintuitive behaviours which must be accounted for.
UX is the foundation upon which all else is enabled. Every interaction is an atomic component from which a brand relationship formed.
Your customers want intuitive journeys, pleasing micro interactions, intelligible copywriting, and high quality real life engagements from you. From us, you want clear solutions, thoughtful strategy, and quick wins to get projects moving.
In this light, everything is user experience.
