User Experience – a practical guide for beginners

What is User Experience?

Put simply, user experience comprises the totality of impressions users have whilst interacting with a website or app. The designer’s task is to design a product that enables effective interaction and helps the user achieve a specific goal, such as a conversion in an online shop.

Users must not waste time spending too long pondering the usability of a website or app. They should be able to use the solution intuitively, which is made possible by a well-designed user experience.

Why is user experience so important?

Designing and carefully considering the user experience is crucial to the creation and development of products. At a time when thousands of websites are launched every day, clients want to stand out from the competition. The user experience provides the right tools to achieve these objectives.

Well-designed products quickly gain an edge over those that are not focused on functionality and usability. When designing user experiences, the user is at the centre of everything, because we are creating the final product for them.

Find out what you should pay particular attention to – and why – when designing websites and user interfaces.

The 5 seconds rule in user experience design

That’s roughly how long it takes a user to form an initial impression of a website. It’s a very short time, but it’s enough to decide whether to accept or reject the site they’re viewing.

If you want to find out which elements of your website stand out or what needs improving, try the 5-second test on potential users. The results can help you improve the functionality of your website.

Responsive Web Design (RWD)

User convenience is paramount, which is why creating a responsive website is a key element of user experience planning. Some time ago, Google introduced the Mobile-First Index, which means that websites that display well on both desktop and mobile devices achieve higher rankings in search results.

A responsive website is one whose appearance and layout automatically adapt to the size of the browser window on both desktop and mobile devices.

Call to Action (CTA)

Encourage users to take action with well-thought-out CTAs. If you want to increase the number of orders or build an email list, you need to take the time to design an effective call to action.

A CTA is another way for users to navigate the website. Well-designed calls to action will undoubtedly boost your website’s conversion rate.

The psychology of colour

It’s no secret that different colours evoke specific emotions in the viewer. Before applying a colour palette, it’s important to consider what a particular colour will be used for – this is one of the foundations of a good user experience. A perfect example is choosing a colour for a CTA button – green can encourage a click, whereas red is likely to have the opposite effect.

Affordance

In other words, a product feature that suggests its intended use. In interface design, a perfect example of affordance is the raised surface of buttons, which suggests that they can be pressed. Suggest to the user the path they should follow to navigate the website effectively.

Information architecture

It is a method of organising and labelling information – for example, on a website. Creating a network of links between pieces of information and categorising data appropriately makes it easier to navigate the site. Good information architecture is crucial when creating websites designed to ensure end-user satisfaction.

Sorting cards

This study will enable us to test the developed information architecture in terms of its intuitive nature. Thanks to this the designer will know whether they have chosen the correct division of information into groups and whether he has named them in an appropriate manner. The result of the experiment is the creation of the best possible category tree .

Heatmaps (heat maps)

A heatmap is an excellent tool for assessing user engagement with specific sections of a website. The analysis results provide an average picture of how users behaved on the site and how much time they spent on its various elements.

Click tracking

Using this method, we can observe user behaviour on the website – we track the clicks they make whilst on the site. All mouse clicks during a visit to the site are recorded. We can then draw conclusions about the usability of individual interface elements.

The result of this analysis is a picture of the page, in which we can see “hot” and “cold” areas – areas, where the number of clicks was the highest and the lowest.

The effect of isolation

It is often used in e-commerce to maximise profits from the sale of products that are being launched or are on special offer. We may also encounter the isolation effect in price lists presenting subscription models.

Sometimes, when faced with a choice of several subscription plans, only one is highlighted and described as ‘the best value’ or ‘the most popular’. This is a clever ploy designed to suggest to the user that this is the package worth buying.

Visually separating the elements of a webpage can help to increase users’ interest in the product we wish to promote in particular.

Sakkady

Involuntary eye movements are caused by the fact that the range of sharp vision is limited. It is possible to notice the most important information within the field of vision by making saccadic movements.

Analysing them using an eye-tracker can help to identify the paths along which a user’s gaze moves when viewing the website’s content.

The path of sight

A graphical representation of fixations and saccades recorded by eye-tracking. The gaze path makes it possible to trace the order in which the user directed their attention to individual elements of the website.

Blindness banner

This is a very interesting phenomenon, and one that is particularly troublesome for advertisers who design run-of-the-mill banners. Put simply, most internet users unconsciously ignore elements of a webpage that resemble intrusive banner adverts.

User experience helps us understand users’ habits and motivations. A well-designed banner advert will not go unnoticed. In this case, it is important not only to focus on the visual message, but also to consider the best possible placement on the website.

Usability

Ease of use and intuitiveness are the most important features of a well-designed interface. Usability is measured against three key indicators: performance, efficiency and user satisfaction.

If you want to assess the usability of the interface, it is best to carry out tests involving potential users of the website.

Summary

Treat the design and planning of the user experience as an integral part of your business. A website ‘tailored’ to the right target audience will help to boost sales or achieve the specific conversion rate you’re aiming for.

Remember, that even a poorly chosen colour for the CTA may cause, that users subconsciously will not want to use it. Psychology and instinct work on long before this happens the senses become active.