That’s why UX Audit is so Important for Business

Today, global leading companies are working to improve their IT solutions and invest in UX (user experience). This is one of the main factors that makes the impression of the brand and helps to increase sales.

Speaking of UX, companies usually imply UI (User Interface) i.e. the design part. These concepts are combined into one UX/UI complex rather often. In fact, UX is not just an interface, it’s about the user’s interaction with an interface.

Let’s consider a real-life example. We interact with an interface in different situations: while using mobile apps, plastic cards or chopsticks in a restaurant. For example, a customer comes to a restaurant to satisfy his/her hunger. He/she will use the “interface elements” — Asian chopsticks or traditional European tableware. The process of eating is the UX itself, and sticks or tableware are the UI. Today we will talk about UX and its practical benefits for business.

“User experience covers all aspects of user interaction with the organization, its products and services”

Don Norman, UX concept creator

The goal of UX is to simplify the user’s way of solving his task and to make the interaction with the product more efficient. From a business point of view, UX is a way to encourage the user to perform the required action.

Today businesses, more often, turn to the “expertise” of the IT companies to assess the effectiveness of UX. Here we would like to tell you how we in SimbirSoft, analyze UX and what businesses require it.

How UX Helps to Boost Profits

Work with UX aims to help the user achieve what he or she wants and leave him or her with a positive impression. The following UX tasks can be distinguished:

• to help the user with solving his/her task with the most efficient methods;
• to convey the feeling of the uniqueness of the product;
• to encourage the product to be studied and used;
• to convince the new user to “try” the product;
• to encourage the user to continue using the purchased product.

Let’s consider a mobile app for ordering pizza. The user should feel comfortable choosing pizza, adding it to the cart, editing and paying for the order. In this case user loyalty is higher, thanks to a good UX.

Competent UX consulting can bring tangible benefits to businesses:

• help to expand business and scale the sales;
• get rid of wrong hypotheses;
• achieve commercial success on the first try;
• increase user loyalty.

This saves on product maintenance:

• lower support costs;
• lower user engagement costs;
• less risk of negative feedback (and even legal costs).

Every dollar invested in design generates between $2 and $100 in profits, according to the research data of Forrester Research

UX Valuation

UX consulting (or audit) is a comprehensive expert assessment of an IT product. Besides the design of user experience, it also involves a whole group of marketing, development, design and psychology specialists.

The UX team analyzes three sides of the product: business, user experience and technology. This is usually done by the following specialists:

• UX expert is responsible for task analysis and hypothesis testing.
• Business analyst and system analyst for description of requirements.
• Analyst for development of a system prototype.
• Architect/lead developer is responsible for architecture design and technological solutions that will be used.
• UI design specialist for mockup creation.

Evaluation Methods

The purposes of the UX audit may be the following: to improve product metrics and/or to test hypotheses. Several methods are used for that:

1) External Methods

Questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, assessment and feedback analysis, or competitive analysis — everything that is related to the user needs.

2) Internal Methods

Architecture and infrastructure analysis, expert survey, UI analysis, UX writing — everything related to the expertise.

UX auditing usually involves product research, requirements gathering (technical and business ones) and modeling — creation of context scenarios that help testing hypotheses of the use of the product. The terms and composition of the works are individual, they depend on the needs of the business. On average UX consulting takes 2–4 weeks.

Which Businesses Need a UX Audit

Some entrepreneurs still believe that you can do IT business without UX, that it is nothing but a fashionable trend — a kind of a “cherry on top”. This is because a good UX does not guarantee success by itself. However, any product or function should be designed on the basis of the mandatory market, needs, and the target audience studies. It is important to continue the UX research even after the release of the product, as its improvement requires a three-way symbiosis “business + users + technology”.

Expert evaluation of UX protects the business from unnecessary risks. This allows to study the sentiment of users and the demand for the product, as well as to avoid reckless investments.

UX studies are carried out for the following purposes:

• to test hypotheses about the product;
• to identify the most demanded features;
• to identify most explicit and implicit customer needs.

UX studies also help the business:

• to get rid of “hallucinations”, that is to check the hypotheses;
• to find new segments or even create a new market;
• to achieve commercial success on the first try and to optimize the development costs.

Thus, in any case, it is important to pay attention to all aspects of UX, especially to the interaction with users. The better this process is organized, the more popular this product is going to be. As we have already discovered, a good UX helps the business to solve its problems and the bad one leads only to risks, and financial losses.

From our Business Practice

We at SimbirSoft help companies from different industries with UX improvements, including foodtech ones. Our partner, Burger King Russia, is a prime example of a research attitude towards UX. One of the biggest restaurant chains reached out to us to audit and improve its mobile app.

We looked at the UX through the eyes of users who use the food ordering app. We have found ways to optimize the ordering process — to reduce the number of visual elements on the screen in particular. We offered recommendations to improve the structure of the menu, the location of elements in the order form, and new simpler inscriptions on buttons in the app.

Basing on the UX audit, we compiled a customer care strategy for Burger King Russia. As a result, the company was able to take another step towards the development of its foodtech services. Once the proposed improvements are implemented, the customers would be able to order food even faster, much easier and with maximum comfort.

Summing Up

UX research helps to increase profits and reduce business risks. In a perfect world, this should be an indefinite process of improvement. UX consulting allows companies to evaluate the product from the user’s perspective and find ways to improve this product.

Learn more about UI/UX and the difference between: What is UI/UX and What is the Difference

That’s how we work with apps that needed to become perfect and there is only a month for that: How to Bring an App Back to Life After Failed Development in Just a Month

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