Stop leaving money on the table, 4 ways to increase engagement and conversion with UX

I have seen so many businesses leave dollars on the table due to the smallest and most subtle UX problems, resulting in lower conversion and customer retention. I bet there is an opportunity to get better results right now. Whether it’s a shopping cart, a subscription platform, or a purposeful web application, it is remarkable how many businesses I engage with who are missing out on huge opportunities to enhance their business outcomes through UX.

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1. Use data to drive decisions

Data and research are at the foundation of creating impactful user experiences. For your website to be successful it must be based on key findings from data and real customer insights. Methods such as surveys, user testing, and web tracking can help you understand and empathise with your customers. They allow you to have a deeper understanding of customer needs and relate to the areas of friction they may face when using your website. Building up a picture of the current conversion rate and usability of your product will help the business to define strategic goals to strive towards. Key findings from the data can be synthesised into patterns and trends to improve the website design, influencing consumer behaviour and increasing conversion.

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2. Design an intuitive experience

With insights gathered, you must design an experience that follows the mental model of the business’s target customer. Mental models are based on the cognitive assumption of how something should work and are built up through a series of pictures based on past experiences. To make things simple and easy to process for customers, you should follow existing design patterns and conventions. It is important to design a website that is well structured, and easy to navigate with clear calls to action on how to progress through the steps. The design must remain consistent in its use of marketing tone, colour, and font. The language should be clear and avoid jargon at all costs- assume the customer knows nothing about the product.

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3. Don't overwhelm the customer

The paradox of choice - when individuals have too many options to choose from, this causes frustration and affects the ability to make a decision. The customer is using a website to achieve a goal, so helping them get from A to B without any friction provides the highest chance of a conversion. If there are certain products or services you want to upsell, make sure this content is at the forefront of the customer journey. Surfacing too much information is visual clutter and detracts from the task at hand, increasing the chance of the customer losing interest.

4. Validate decisions through testing

Once you have gathered insightful data and designed potential solutions that plan to increase conversion, test! Try, fail, learn and improve. Run sessions and talk to customers at each step of the process to understand if the solution you’re proposing meets their needs and helps them achieve their goals.

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