Building an app? Avoid These 7 UX Mistakes
Have you ever come across an app that just feels off? You know, the kind where the value proposition is great but the experience is meh at best? It sucks both for the user and the company as they couldn’t make a connection, leading to a failed conversion.
Did you know 88% of users are less likely to return to a service or app after a bad experience?
The truth is your value proposition may be great, but if you deliver a bad app experience, you will fail to make a connection with your potential customer. Here are some common user experience mistakes you should avoid when building an app:
1. No User Feedback
Don’t leave your users out of the loop when your app is loading content or processing. Additionally, don’t hang the user on a blank screen. Adding simple loading animations and screen placeholders will go a long way in terms of reducing frustration and perceived app speed.
2. Eternal Onboardings
If I’m on my phone, I probably want to do whatever I’m doing in your app quickly. Don’t ask me hundreds of questions or ask me to fill out thousands of fields. As a rule of thumb, we think if you have to explain it too much then it’s time to go back to the drawing board. If you need inspiration, Germaine Satia wrote a great post on Smashing Magazine about mobile onboarding.
3. Tiny Touch Points
Stop making tiny buttons or input fields. Did you know he average user’s index finger is 0.6–0.7 inches wide? Design for that. It’s not the web, our fingers need to be able tap on an action ‘close enough’ and not precisely at a pixel level.
4. Introducing New Navigation Patterns
Want people to get your app fast? Then don’t introduce your own version of how a mobile app should be navigated. Use Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Android’s Design Guide, they exist precisely for this purpose. The less friction you introduce for new users, the better.
5. Hard-on-the-eye Color Schemes
Be easy on the eyes. You don’t need to ‘stand out’ with your yellow-over-black text.
6. Not Enough White Space
Apps need lots of whitespace. Elements need to be spaced apart, buttons need to be big, and it all needs to breathe. There is no fold in a mobile device, so there is no reason to cram everything in a small space.
7. Push Notification Hell
User retention happens at an experience level. Users who see value in your app are likely to come back. There is no need to send your users 20 push notifications a day. After a few, your app will just be screaming ‘uninstall me’. Here’s a great post on TNW on how not to get pushy.
Conclusion
Building a great app experience is not a hard task. In fact, the rules are simple: be observant on how great apps work (find and use patterns) and follow Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines or Android’s Design Guide
Have you every come across a horrible mobile experience? Let me know in the comments, so I can add it to the list above and help a fellow app maker out!
