How UX and UI can Drive Better Customer Engagement

In a world where the size of the screen that we use to access the Web, has now become small on account of the mobile phone, and the attention span has become even smaller, it is all the more important to ensure that your website (or app) visitor has an extremely good experience when on your webpage…else all the marketing dollars that you spend to get the visitor to the site, goes poof ..all in a few seconds.

The term UX and UI keep getting used interchangeably but both are two different sciences. UX denotes Customer experience. Every time your customer comes in touch with your product or service, he or she is going to have an “experience”. That us UX.  Thus the laptop on which you are reading this article has a certain kind of experience for you.

And the chair on which you are sitting right now also is creating a certain experience for you. When you stand in a line in your bank to deposit a cheque, you again going through an experience. Designing this experience such that it meets the needs of your user base, however disparate or differentiated that base may be, is called UX.

On the other hand, UI indicates User Interface Design. It is the interface using with the user can engage with something and generate a response. So in the example above, the laptop has a UI, but a chair does not have a UI (nor does the queue in the bank). UI is a term generally used in conjunction with digital platforms like websites, apps, instruments that can be operated using buttons or touch-screens etc.

In the good old days (when the Internet first came to town in the late 90’s), the starting point for a website design was an attractive looking layout, which had a very brand-centric communication, and then  HTMLising that design, plugging in the content and the site was up and running. Over the past two and half decades, the Internet has exploded.

And for any business that is drawing traffic to its website, it has to address the needs and requirements of different types of visitors by organizing the information in such a fashion that everyone’s needs can be met in the shortest possible time.

Imagine a hotel website: there will be people coming to the website to make a quick booking (they know exactly which hotel and what dates). Someone else is coming just to check his loyalty points and how best can he use them. Someone wants to see the cheapest hotels being offered in a location while someone else wants to look at the hotels by guest rating.

And yet there may someone else who has a specific requirement of a pet-friendly hotel.  Understanding each of these different types of possible visitors to the hotel websites, understanding their specific requirements, and then being able to craft an outcome that meets, if not all, at least the requirements of the largest number of visitors, and leaves behind a very good impression of the brand…that is what a good UX-UI can deliver.

So if I need to represent this visually

(Courtesy: Barbara Ann Kipfer, The Order of Things)

What Does the UX and UI Process Involve?

The above diagram lists out the many steps involved in the entire UX and UI process.

• Stakeholder Interviews

Here we speak to all the stakeholders from the brand side (marketing, sales, leadership, technology, IT, digital) pretty much everyone who is invested in the customer experience and gather information about what is the brand vision, what are the various goals and objectives of the digital build, what are the different target audiences, what would we want people to do when they come on the website, what are our key success metrics for the website, etc.

• User Research

This involves actually doing interviews with users who represent the various diverse target groups that the brand wants to reach out to, understanding their motivations in engaging with the brand, what goals do they want to achieve when on the website and their motivation drivers.

• Creative Ideation

Here we identify what are a different kind of user journeys that seem to be emerging basis the user interviews. How is the user reaching us? And what does the user wish to accomplish and how does that align with stakeholder goals and success metrics.

• Experience Mapping

We craft complete end-to-end user journey for each of the cohorts, we identify specific touchpoints on the web build, what kind of content is the user looking for and how to help the user reach his goal and objective, fully informed in the shortest possible way

• UX Design

Next is the design phase. Wireframes are created based on experience maps. These are generally clickable wire-frames so they very closely represent actual journey the user is likely to take

• Usability testing

the wireframes are now tested by doing usability tests with actual potential users. Using eye-movement and thumb tracking software, one is able to understand how easy (or difficult) was it for a given user from a given target group, to find what one was looking for on the website and to complete the desired user journey. If users are taking longer than the desired time to reach the desired CTA (call-to-action) or are getting lost in the navigation…it clearly means that one has to go back to the drawing board and rework on the experience mapping and UX design.

• Production

A successful usability test means that our experience mapping and UX design is working. Now is the time to get the aesthetics (graphic design) and content in place and also start the tech development of the web build. A peer-to-peer code review process ensures a bug-free outcome.

• Launch

And now your web-build is ready for launch !!!

By Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO of Mirum India