Why An Investment In a UX Company Is Worth It By Tory Darling, Codal Inc
______________________________________________________ Pulling the trigger and deciding to build an app or even overhaul and redesign a website is a decision that requires great thought and a substantial budget. Especially if you want to get it “right” the first go around, the initial cost for building is often a surprise for those who have not gone through the process before. Although the ones that have, will often tell you it is worth that initial cost; that is if they had a good experience. Those who experienced a poor one will often tell you is because they didn’t invest enough in research and testing, also known as user experience. Since lots of people get sticker shock when they receive a quote building an application or designing a website, trying to cut “unnecessary” corner is often an initial reaction. Categorizing research and extensive testing as unnecessary is the first mistake. It is those individuals that see the value of UX research services who really end up with a successful product. In order to successfully convince the ultimate decision makers of the importance of UX in the design and development, making aware of it’s direct benefits the most effective route.
Benefit #1: Save on Development If you move from design to development and have done minimal to no user experience research, the development will be on a product that will require many modifications once actual users are experiencing the product and undergoing challenges. A mobile application development agency that does not offer UX services should have a partnership in place that offers those, especially since the cost of launching a phase two product is much higher than catching the user struggles during the design phase. For instance Codal, a mobile app development agency in Chicago, provides an agile design and development process that works in designing, testing and developing in a seamless and fast pace way. Catching the issues before product is in the development stage will ultimately save money since you avoid those extra development costs to fix those mistakes.
Benefit #2: Lower the Bounce Rating Specifically looking at websites, an assumption one can make is the higher the bounce rating, the lower the user experience on the site. A user bouncing can be an outcome from various factors from long page load time to poor user journey.
It is critical to be aware of current user expectations and the common pitfalls of a design in order to test and produce data on those features. A UX design agency needs to stay ahead of design trends enough to know generally what works and what does not, then testing to see if that insight is practical for the specific website or application.
Benefit #3: Increase Sales and Loyal Customers When the costs of acquiring a customer are relatively high, losing them immediately to poor UX is a worst case situation. Providing a seamless and pleasant user journey not only increase the chance they will come back, but it will also increase the opportunity to convert, whether that be purchasing a product or filling out a contact form. For e-commerce specifically, there is really many steps to could go wrong and lose that customer forever. The user first needs to explore the site, then find a product, select a product, add it to the cart, insert personal billing and shipping information, and then eventually confirm the purchase. In any one of these instances, the user could get frustrated whether by the amount of fields or a cluttered page. That is why hiring a user experience research service is the best strategy to ensure the user’s experience convinces them to convert.
Conclusion Bypassing the user experience aspect of building a application or website is not something that won’t come with great consequences. It is important to be more proactive than reactive when designing, especially since the cost of fixing mistakes after development are much larger than during the design. Looking for more insight on UX design services? Are you wanting to develop an app and you need to know the cost to develop an app is? Visit Codal’s blog, or come talk to us here! We’d love to hear from you.
Codal Inc App Development & UX Design Agency www.codal.com