What Makes a Good User Interface?
Two-thirds of users will rather read beautifully designed content in case they only have 15 minutes to stay online according to HubSpot.
What does it teach us?
In the modern economy, people are not buying products or services anymore. They are buying experiences (Forbes) or, in other words, visual satisfaction and usability.
So, to keep ahead of a pack in these realia, one should think about staying up to date with the latest trends. Yet, implementing AR features or adding a voice control function to an app is not the warranty of success. These are the simplicity and clearness that make users stay with your online platform, website or app.
Complexity is annoying. Even loyal customers will bounce if they cannot complete the basic operation after the UI update. The same refers to acquiring new customers. Both acquisition and retention processes depend strongly on the level of their satisfaction.
To achieve a high user satisfaction rate, it is possible to make use of the plethora of practices teaching about what makes a good user experience.
All of them can be described in one formula: CSF-A-CSF (consistency, simplicity, familiarity, attractiveness, conciseness, seamless navigation, forgiveness).
Consistency
This feature caters to a smooth user journey through different interface elements. If the latter is consistent, a user will find the needed option fast, therefore the whole experience will be successful and customers will develop usage patterns quickly.
Conciseness
Stands for the application of the rule: less is more. According to the data from Nielsen Norman Group's research, a customer usually stays 10-20 seconds on a page. On average, users will read only a quarter of information presented on the web page unless the writing is exclusively clear. Therefore, all the content displayed on the page should be exclusively clear.
Simplicity
We are living in a highly competitive reality, where a customer can find an alternative solution just a click away. To avoid bounce, it’s important to bypass any error scenarios and make sure that if any of them still happens, a solution should be right at hand. (Forbes)
Seamless navigation
The inpatient users of today won’t spend time navigating through multi-step systems for finding the right solution. Therefore, it is recommended to consolidate navigation and minimize the number of tasks users should perform.
Familiarity
When starting a journey, a customer expects to take familiar steps, like finding a search button on the navigation pane, etc. Therefore, keeping things looking like something your customers have encountered before is important.
Forgiveness
A forgiving design is one that makes users avoid mistakes or makes them feel insufficient. For example, if a customer misspelled a search term, a system should gently prompt the right variant. The same refers to products or services that are not currently available. A great user experience presupposes offering alternatives instead of empty, zero-result pages.
Attraction
According to HubSpot, 38% of users will leave a website if the presented information or layout is not attractive. Therefore, an attractive design is what makes users want to return to the resource, therefore it makes every session a pleasure.
Yet, these guidelines are too general to give you complete assistance in this area. To find out what practical steps to undertake we recommend conducting market research to know exactly what your customers love or hate.
To increase your chances of building a successful user interface design, you should interact with your future audience in the very beginning. The interaction may be performed in the following ways:
2. Interviewing customers
It is better to do that by collaborating with an independent third-party agency that will apply a 100% unbiased approach. Of course, it is possible to get a bunch of data from analytics. That is why web owners tend to disregard the user-interviewing process. Yet, it leads to opinion-driven conclusions, that may be mistaking.
2. Learning customer journeys
Knowing exactly what goals your customers follow when using your digital service, what tasks they accomplish, and what steps they undertake will help you to virtually escort your customers through the process and make their journey a success.
3. Testing with early adopters
Every product or service will definitely be interesting to a certain bunch of people, called early adopters. It is strongly recommended to refer to their opinion before the project launch. This practice is an incomparable source of valuable feedback and advice.
Profound market research, checking on the competitive services as well as conducted user polls helps create a great user interface for any digital project.
Cost of a Good User Interface
A good user interface usually means a lot of research and analytics that require solid investment. 50% of website owners would reject improvements on the design due to high costs. An average yearly salary of the UI designer reaches up to $76K according to Glassdoor.
Yet, companies like Google and Apple, offer $ 116K and $ 123K respectively for the services of a highly efficient UI designer.
Hiring a full-time UI designer may not be a cost-efficient option, especially for a small-size project, like building a mobile app. Therefore, it may be more rational to hire a contractor for the time of the project. For example, an hourly rate of a contractor at Google is from $46 to $59, according to Glassdoor, and an average hourly rate of the UX designer on Upwork is $30-$125.
Improving user experience on your digital resource is often about rebuilding. Therefore, it is more reasonable to think about the user experience from scratch. Many companies offer web and mobile app development that already includes best practices of user experience design in the price of its implementation.
If you are interested to know the cost to make a great UI design for an app, for example, you may just inquire how much does it cost to make an app with a company that offers software development services. In such a case you will get a complete quote on the whole spectrum of services including both, design and development.
Takeaways
These days, users are valuing positive experience over everything. Thus, a good user interface design is a must-have in the experience-centric economy in order to influence the decision making of any client.
The key secret of success is paying much attention to analysis and real-life customer feedback. Aside from collecting these data, it is necessary to follow simple guidelines like keeping the design consistent, simple, familiar, attractive, concise, seamless, and forgiving.