An old Google study revealed at the time that an average mobile user has around 36 installed apps but regularly uses only 9 of them on a daily basis.
A great UX design can leave a long lasting impression and that’s what makes a difference between the apps the users keep or the ones they delete.
How to make a great UX design?
UX design is a dynamic process – to offer your users the best experience possible, listen to their feedback on what they like or dislike about your product – it will help you to continue to iterate with each released version of your app.
You should always follow a user-centric design so that the app grows to fit the needs of the user as
everything revolves around the END USER.
Firstly, always do a short research – explore similar mobile apps and their features but don’t be a copycat as what works for one mobile app might not work for the other.
Instead, learn from your competition and analyze why certain trends work and why others don’t. Combine your research with your own brand to serve your business and your users’ needs – repeat, customize and learn from the research as it will make your UX stronger in the long run.
The most common way of validating your product is testing it with your target audience. Develop a minimum viable product (MVP) first to figure out if your idea’s well-accepted by its core users.
In case you wonder how much will it cost to develop a mobile app, you can check some online calculators which can help you to get some rough estimation.
What are the best ways to improve UX for your mobile app?
Proper features and speed
Google/SOASTA research states that if a page takes more than 5 seconds to load, the probability of bounce increases 90%! It’s a wide known fact today that many mobile users abandon an app after a single use just because it doesn’t deliver the user experience they expected.
There are many ways to speed up your mobile page such as optimizing images, reducing plugins etc. so check them for making your page load as quick as possible.
The functionality of the app must help users to complete tasks and it’s the first motivation for downloading your app. Prioritize core features crucial for completing the tasks and offer only relevant features that will encourage even more users to ‘taste’ your mobile app.
Efficient onboarding and usability
When users try your mobile app and come across troubles within the first few screens, they’ll discard the app without thinking.
Onboarding shows the value of your app to users by demonstrating how to do what they want quickly and efficiently. Delivering a good onboarding experience is the cornerstone for attracting and retaining the users. We already know that user retention drops within the first few weeks but if you include efficient onboarding, you may witness an increase of 50% in app user retention. Not only it lowers the abandonment rates but can also help boost long-term success metrics like user retention and user lifetime value.
Reduce the number of steps within account creation/sign up etc. and include multiple registration options (Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.) as users value simplicity.
You can show your users which icons can be tapped or swiped, consider the size of buttons and links and make it easy for users to tap them – just remain consistent with gestures within your app so to optimize usability and put enough space between the buttons to prevent any selection errors.
Minimal User Input
Try to reduce search effort for your users with some search strategies like barcode scan or keyword search. It guides the users directly to what they’re looking for and the simplicity of the process can significantly increase conversion rates. User input (entering credit card number, registration data, checkout information etc.) should be minimal as users can get frustrated with the smaller screen.
To avoid high abandon rates, make sure to limit the number of fields required and include only the necessary information. You may also add autocomplete, shortcuts, spell check and prediction text assistance to build better user experience.
Gesturization Tune
Gesturization involves actions that users make while interacting with your app like swiping, tapping, scrolling or pinching. Knowing your users’ behaviour is crucial for gesturization as it helps to understand the actions they’re familiar with.
Gestures enable users to engage with the technology through the sense of touch and some popular gestures are: tap, double-tap, swipe, drag, pinch and press. Good thinking is to keep swipe gestures out of hard-reach areas, to provide enough tapping space etc., as these gestures are just a cherry on the top of UX cake for smartphone users.
Clean and tactical UI design
Your design should be glanceable – it means that your visual design conveys the message easily and quickly, at a glance. Maintain the visual consistency with the color palette, typography and other elements; create a seamless visual flow from first to other elements and facilitate for the users to complete their goals with ease.
Remember, be consistent with UI design and just keep it simple – less actions, darker colours, shorter navigation and limited background services.
Keep the unwanted features away from the users as it can slow them down from achieving the goal thus leading them to abandoning the app.
A minimalistic approach to your mobile app design is always the best choice
‘ THE MORE MINIMAL, THE BETTER. ‘
Security and trust
A thing that can be annoying is when a user downloads the app and instantly gets overrun with permissions to be accepted prior to using the app itself. Make sure to provide transparent permission policies and allow your users to control how their personal information is shared within a mobile app.
If you clearly outline your business policies and practices, your users will be more secure when accepting permissions. You can include links to your privacy regulations or display trusted badges of security, especially if your users trust your app for their personal and financial information.
Clear CTA
When defining action buttons for your mobile app, you must define your action clearly.
An action button should be easily visible and approachable so create bigger buttons and place them at a fair distance to allow easier app navigation.
Sometimes, just plain wording does a trick, e.g. to put ‘request a cab’ button instead ‘submit an order’ as it will explain the purpose better.
Personalized UX
Personalization provides a unique UX. Personalize whenever possible because if you align user experience with users’ preferences, they’re more likely to continue using your mobile app.
To remind, make sure to display only relevant content as irrelevant content or too many push notifications will create a counter effect. You can use location data to suggest specific retail or e commerce deals to certain users, or you can include user’s name in messaging – all these are effective ways to personalize.
Support
Users usually need assistance so provide them with multiple ways for customer support like self-serve FAQs, live support, click to call buttons or live chats. As per a survey, customers today prefer a self service rather than contacting a support agent, so it is a wise move to offer them such feature.
It will help users to reach their goal quickly and in return, you will get a happy customer hence increase your user retention.
Final Thoughts
The above tips show that your app must be intuitive for users along with visually pleasing design and reliable without draining the battery. UX design itself should be subtle, natural and decluttered – the users must feel the obvious navigation flow.
It MUST fulfill the users’ needs and MUST NOT be faulty.
The key to failure is trying to please everyone so don’t make your mobile app for anyone – do the research for your target audience and find your unique value proposition (UVP) as it’ll help you to build a loyal user base.
Effective UX is a foundation of a mobile app – every brand needs to provide a positive experience with their digital content to their customers, users and clients.