The Pillars of UX

A lot of our time and thinking is spent about what constitutes a good “user experience”. What is really at the heart of good UX?

by Hagen - June 2014

A lot of our time and thinking is spent on what constitutes a good “user experience”. User experience (UX) is a term that is bandied around a lot these days, typically when reviewing designs. It has become borderline clichéd, and is frequently misused and misunderstood. Too often the term UX is used interchangeably with design. Design (“look and feel”) is no doubt an important component of UX, but it is by no means the whole part.

Drawing on experience, common sense, analytics and user testing, the following (in no particular order) are what we consider the pillars of good UX.

Look and feel

A good UI (User Interface) is a big part of UX, but it’s not the whole part (as we will establish with the below points). What is considered a good UI tends to change quite often in digital. The Flat Design trend which is so prevalent today would have been considered very boring a few years go. Skeumorphic designs have pretty much come and gone, and drop shadows and rounded corners are so very old school. A good design remains a very subjective thing. The main advice here would be to find a good agency or designer who is on top of their game and to trust their judgement.

Information architecture (Navigation)

A pretty site is of no use if one can’t find what one is looking for with minimal fuss and the least possible amount of clicks. Given the fast pace of life these days, people have no time to dig around a site trying to understand how it is structured. This is why a high quality search that is quick and produces relevant results (ideally in an auto complete list) is so important for most websites – especially for e-commerce sites. A good search does not, however, excuse a site that has been structured poorly. If nothing else, search engines will not rank a site with poor information architecture highly. Some key concepts here are to think logically about the people who will be using the site, putting yourself in their shoes, and seeing if you can easily navigate the areas of the site that might interest them. Try to remain objective and look at the website with a fresh pair of eyes.

Speed

Speed, in this context, refers to the time it takes for a page to load. The importance of a fast loading page cannot be underestimated - if the site loads slowly, all other UX factors, no matter how well done, become immaterial and the site will suffer. Benchmarks suggest that anything over two seconds to load a page is too slow. Achieving load times of less than 2 seconds for bigger websites (e.g. e-commerce sites) requires optimisation of the code and database (especially database queries), server side optimisations such as gzipping content before sending it to the browser, and client side optimisations such as minifying JavaScript and CSS. If a site is loading slowly, typically the place to start would be with code and especially database and database query optimisations.

Optimised for the device

There is little point in elaborating on the importance of mobile. It’s a given these days that if one is building a digital asset (e.g. a website) and not thinking about mobile, then one is doing it wrong. Given the tools available in building a responsive site, there should be no excuse not to optimise for mobile (as well as desktop) on one code base, which is what responsive design entails. Read more about RWD here.

Think about content

When you look at the heart of the matter, users are visiting your site because they are interested in the content. If the site is beautifully designed, but lacks original content, users will have no compelling reason to stay there. If it’s an e-commerce site, users (especially South African users) need a lot of convincing to buy. Typically they need to be told all the details of your product, see what other people say and ideally watch a video before they feel confident in buying online. In a physical store, a consumer has the benefit of touching the product. Since this is absent in a digital environment, much more persuasion in the form of content is needed.

So why is UX important?

Conversion

A site with a good UX will result in increased conversions. In plain speak, this means more money. It will result in more people buying on the site, contacting you, signing up for your newsletter and engaging with you.

Positive word of mouth

Any business owner will tell you that the most effective form of marketing is positive word of mouth. This can’t be bought and no amount of spend dedicated to shouting from the rooftops in the form of radio and TV ads can beat a whole lot of people telling their friends how great their experience with a particular company (or in this case a "digital asset") has been. Consumers are fatigued. They are tired of mass advertising and bull$$it. People are looking to engage with companies that they trust, and who better to take advice from than the people they trust – their friends?

Higher ranking on search engines

Google (insert your favourite search engine here) is a clever beast and it is becoming cleverer by the month. When Google first started out, SEO companies quickly realized that the system could be “gamed”. Create a whole bunch of junk backlinks to a website and it magically ranks high in search results. This has all changed, resulting in many of the so called “search marketing agencies” looking for an alternative form of income. The key point when thinking about search engine optimisation is “Google is smart and tries to serve the best possible result to its searchers. Every time. ” This means that it will look to rank websites that have a fantastic UX (the HOW, as per the points above) and are authoritative (the WHO).

UX matters. I would go as far as saying that UX is everything in the world of digital, because it encompasses everything – from the initial strategy sessions, to the design, system architecture, development and testing.

Thinking about UX should be the thread that governs all decision making and binds all of these phases in the project life cycle together.