We’re in an arena where almost every business is online in some form. Infact, the first encounter with a business is its website. This means that website design of an enterprise is solely the primary deciding factor in determining the credibility of business. The design and placement of elements on your website can take hours, weeks or even months but whether it has managed to achieve user engagement is decided in first few glances.
Following the rise of technology, Mobile Apps too have definitely become the next big thing in today’s scenario. According to Statista, there will be close to 4 billion Smartphone users across the globe by 2021. And by the projections of it, this number seems to be growing each year. This figure shows how users are keen on using mobile apps and communicating with businesses. The comfort of delivery, booking & utility apps and the addiction of games & social media has made the average man dependent on their phone and its unlimited applications.
This year, continued massive success of redesign for branding both global and local companies are aiming at simplifying forms and details to obtain better visibility and navigability. The ruthless killer of decreasing number of users on a website and inactive app users is the result of an unappealing design, slow loading time and complicated navigation. Apart from having a great UX it is equally important to have great UI and visual design. Read on and gain recognition on the UI and UX mistakes along with the novel solutions you need to imbibe for your business and talk with your customers.
What Separates UI From UX?
In its simplest form, UI design is what makes an interface beautiful and UX is what makes an interface useful. Both elements are crucial to a product and integral to each other’s success. Where the former stands for user interface, which is a graphical layout of an application consisting of buttons the user clicks on, text they read, images, sliders and many other items that the user interacts with. The latter means user experience that explains how well users can interact with the design such as navigating through tabs, smoothness and intuitive browsing. A visually appealing design fails to save by an interface that is clunky and confusing to navigate. And a perfectly appropriate user experience can be sunked by a bad visual interface design that makes the mobile app and website design unpleasant.
7 UI Mistakes To Avoid In 2020
UI must satisfy three criteria. It should be engaging, beautiful and elicit an emotional response from the user. Find out some of the most common UI mistakes you should refrain this year and provide a steady foundation upon which your brand can continue to grow.
#1. Unresponsive Design
Did you know 3.8 millions of users are using mobile to go online? The essence of responsive design lies in its accessibility on almost every device. Instead of creating a design for each device and redirect the user to the tablet, the layout of the browser automatically adapts the layout according to the screen width. Failing to adopt responsive design prevents owners from providing users with the best possible interface. Further, it also adds an extreme amount of effort on top of the design process and draws customers on different web pages for a better experience.
#2. Cluttered Layout
The prevalence of too many elements on one page often makes it frustrating to users. Designers may love their creative mess but customers don’t. Failing to navigate or searching what they need leaves them with no option than to turn to competitors and never coming back to your website.
#3. Un-Intuitive Navigation
A lack of hierarchy and navigation fail to showcase your products, services and end up confusing users. Often designers make the mistake of organizing the information properly such as placing the menu where they expect to find it, which is either across the top horizontally or on the left as vertical sidebar. Since you only have a few seconds to convince your users to stay. So, the importance of user friendly navigation is the key.
#4. Uninviting CTAs
CTA or call to action button complements user experience and condenses all your conversion power in one click. As a result, from color to copy everything about them should say click here. Often the gap created between understanding users behaviour and psychology fails to blend with designers creative ability and fails to scream for attention. To get the best benefits ensure all aspects of CTAs are defined and analyzed.
#5. Generic Imagery
Irrespective of the fact that visuals play a crucial role in branding and marketing, often users find it difficult to search for a solution and fail to establish trust in a brand. It is the inappropriate imagery, videos, clips that discourage users towards call to action.
#6. Making Users Think
Simplicity is the utmost form of sophistication and the most important characteristics of effective UI. Often designers in an attempt to please users complicate the message and indulge users to ‘Think More’ mindset rather than ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ principle. Whereas, the secret here is to minimize all friction so that the journey remains both smooth and fast.
#7. Complicated Prototype
Lastly, in an urge to add a wide range of features and functions for users, designers often fall prey to a website and application that is full of bugs and unsatisfied customers. A complicated prototype with too many elements is nothing less than a bad UI practice.
7 UX Mistakes To Avoid In 2020
Good UX is a result of comprehensive user research, information architecture design, which aims to provide positive experiences. It is necessary towards keeping users loyal towards services, products and brand.
#1. Ignoring Compatibility
Your UX must be compatible with all the devices and platforms, ranging from the latest to at least 5 years old. The compatibility issue with the native device can lead to distorted screens, sudden crashes or unnecessary memory usage.
#2.Crisp Content
The app content must be concise and clear. Unlike in websites, the mobile app screens are petite and only meant to direct action. So large chunks of descriptions or content lying in between, are just leaving a foul memory in your user’s mind. The text areas must comprehend well with the UX of your mobile application. To make an app UX look more sumptuous, you must combine it with quality images / videos, suitable iconography, soothing color theme and only the required content pieces.
#3. Poor Architecture
Much like a magnificent house cannot be built without blueprints first, a beautiful website and app cannot be developed without sketching it down through prototypes and wireframes. This initial stage mainly determines your app’s future. Detailed planning and architecture is the key to make your mobile application successful. By drawing and redrawing, you’ll come up with better solutions, like where is a certain button more visible, or that share button needs to have multiple options, etc. This visualization can help you concisely or elaborate your efforts, so do it wisely.
#4. Irrelevant Features
Do you know what annoys your users more than a bad interface, it’s unnecessary features jumping in their face and distracting them from the real call to action. An application should be appealing and unique. Addition of irrelevant features or overstuffing them, makes the UX ineffective and hinders the performance of the website and application. To help overcome this, prioritize your feature list, test it on real people, take feedback and cut down on the lowest ranking ones.
#5. Excessive Push Notifications
Reaching out to your users with meaningful notifications is a masterstroke. But like most good things, excess of these notifications can make you seem annoying. Some brands keep repeating their messages, or worse send unwanted ‘miss-you’ reminders over and over again. Once a week is enough, if the user is not coming back, take the hint.
#6. No Connection with the Users
Lots of applications look great on first glance, but on detailed use, their personalized UX fails. They are not designed according to the needs of the targeted user. The companies must carry out wide research before developing an app. Ask questions like who is your user? Will it help the business achieve its goal? Does it connect with your users? So a baby boomer will like bigger fonts and clearer messages, while a millennial might prefer animations and a minimal theme.
#7. Inconsistency
What’s the one thing that Apple devices offer and other smartphones might not – UX design consistency. Designing your app as per your brand guidelines is a good idea. But in this process you have to make sure to stick with it till the end. Companies use different UX and UI features to stand ahead of their competitors. But sometimes, it ends up frustrating the user. A small example is the use of different set of line vs filled icons. Little things as such witness the fall of users’ trust, and they might end up switching to your competitor.
Wrapping Up
The principles of designing aesthetically involves appeal, solid drawing and following a thorough and overlapping action in a sequence. A more chaotic design or a haphazard look of an app and website fosters negative attitudes and make onlookers intolerant to design problems. Companies that prioritize design perform better than their peers. UI & UX to a larger extent depends upon the needs and requirements of the target market. The gathering of information is prioritized and analyzed so that user experience becomes engaging as well intuitive. For illustration, the design and development requirements of millennials would be entirely different from elderly audience. As little as 50 milliseconds is what is needed by viewers towards the website to form an opinion.
More attractive designs will lead to more revenue? Is simplicity more important than eloquent design? Want more insights on how your brand can achieve such pro-level of user experience. Connect with the expert development team at Seraphic and we’ll offer you a FREE mobile app audit.