The impact of User Interface (UI) design on Customer Experience (CX)
I often share posts on personal development as well as user interface (UI) design and user experience (UX) optimization. Today, I’d like to delve into the impact that UI has on the customer experience, making a clear distinction between these terms.
When I first delved into UX, UI, and CX, I found it challenging to differentiate between the three. However, they differ significantly in their definitions and in the work and optimization associated with each. To better grasp the knowledge I want to convey in this article, let’s revisit these three definitions:
UX (User Experience): This concept encompasses the entire user journey with a product or service. It goes beyond the visual aspect (UI, which I’ll define shortly) to include ease of use, overall user satisfaction, and how the product meets user needs.
UI (User Interface): UI pertains to everything a user interacts with on a website, application, or product. This includes buttons, menus, colors, icons, etc. A good UI makes usage easy, intuitive, and enjoyable.
CX (Customer Experience): CX is a term that broadens the perspective of UX to include all interactions a customer has with a business, not just through a specific product. This encompasses the entire customer journey, including customer support, in-store interactions, online services, etc. A good CX aims to create positive and lasting relationships with customers.
Now that we have defined and distinguished these three terms: UX, UI, and CX, it’s crucial to understand that, although different, they are all closely interconnected. Let me illustrate the connection between these terms with an example. As a web designer, I create mock-ups for websites, which are UI elements available on the internet. To execute these projects, I must consider an optimal user experience (UX) to enable the future client (CX) to have an intuitive experience while navigating the website.
A web product may have optimal UI but a catastrophic UX. I often observe this issue on inspirational sites like Dribbble, where designers create beautiful mock-ups but neglect the resulting user experience because it remains at the mock-up stage. For example, a person with a disability may be unable to navigate such a website.
Now that the difference and connections between UI and CX are defined, let’s delve into the heart of this article: how and to what extent user interface design can impact the customer experience.
The Interface Connects the Customer to the Business
In 2022, there were around 2 billion websites worldwide, with a vast majority belonging to businesses aiming to establish a digital presence to boost their revenues. It’s a common practice to search for a company online before physically visiting it, whether it’s a restaurant, a service provider, or a product seller. The first digital contact a potential customer has with a company is its website. Even though it’s a digital interaction, it should create a positive impression of the company for the future customer.
The interface must be designed for the company’s target audience and optimized. If the interface appeals to the user, the first step toward a future customer is accomplished, setting the process in the right direction.
Metrics to Assess the Impact of UI on CX
Many businesses find it challenging to gauge the impact of their website on their customer base. However, in 2023, various tools can help observe, analyze, and consequently improve different UI metrics on the company’s website to enhance the customer experience.
If you’re a company unfamiliar with Google Analytics, it’s imperative that you explore it. This tool, created by Google, allows comprehensive analysis of all aspects of your website: the number of visitors (with details like age, gender, location, etc.), bounce or conversion rates, indexed or non-indexed pages, and a plethora of other statistics and metrics that can be valuable at any given moment.
In my experience working for two years in a B2B digital agency, responsible for ensuring an optimal customer experience for all the brands we worked with, Google Analytics allowed us to observe the average time a user spent on one of the e-commerce sites for a brand. We discovered a bug causing frequent user logouts, significantly reducing the customer experience. This issue was promptly rectified using Google Analytics metrics.
UI Trends and Their Impact on CX
If you’ve ever delved into user interface design, you’re likely familiar with the concept of trends, representing popular styles or looks in interface design at a given time. This encompasses color choices, specific fonts, arrangement of elements, or even special features. Together, these elements form a UI trend.
For instance, dark mode has been an omnipresent UI trend in the web world for a few years. This trend is driven by the need for eco-friendly and user-friendly interfaces for those looking at a screen in the dark.
For a company, it’s crucial to have a website that is up-to-date with the latest trends. Let me explain. You’ve probably searched for a company online, for example, for social media development. You find its name, type it into your search bar, click on the website, and encounter an interface that might appeal to your grandparents, with vibes from 2005.
In such cases, the customer (you) loses confidence in the company, and the CX is irreversibly damaged. This could have been avoided if the company had engaged with a digital agency, allowing them to have an interface incorporating the code of the most popular UI trends. The company’s website would have reflected modernity and an awareness of current digital issues.
I genuinely hope this article has shed light on the importance of user interface for optimizing the customer experience and its impact on the latter. If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to reach out to me on Medium or via email at:
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