Tag Archive for: experience

These are The 14 Things Customers Want in an App

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

Designing a mobile app is not enough. Your mobile app must be able to communicate and interact with customers in meaningful ways. Think of a mobile app as a chatbot that talks to customers, responds to their questions, and executes commands.

So, your mobile app must go beyond physical appeal and encompass deep functionality and usability.

This post looks at several things your customers want in your app.

1. Rich experience

You must offer a unique customer experience for your app to capture the right audience and to be downloaded everywhere. Without thinking carefully about your target audience and their needs, you may duplicate a mobile browsing experience in an e-commerce app.

So, ensure you do thorough research to identify how to offer the best user experience. Look at ways to do things differently and offer unique and rewarding experiences.

2. Intuitive and easy navigation

Your app must be navigable to catch the right audience and retain them. Creating an intuitive and navigable app means incorporating simplicity, eliminating clutter, and being selective about the most crucial features you want to include in the front interface.

Documented research shows the number one reason users gave for deleting an app was that they didn’t use it. But if you find users using your app regularly, that doesn’t guarantee that your app is safe from being deleted.

14% of app users admitted to deleting an app they found hard to use. The overall usability and intuitive navigation are key features users look for in mobile apps. And mobile developers must always be on the lookout for how to deliver superior mobile experiences.

3. Simple check-out

Nothing is more strenuous to online shoppers than the check-out process. Users find check-out processes poorly designed and difficult to navigate. Sometimes, check-out processes threaten to compromise users’ personal and financial information, especially when credit card information is not well-processed or the debit card is debited twice.

So, ensure that you seal all the check-out loopholes and make the check-out process easy and seamless. Indeed, reputable online shopping stores ensure that customers only key in their credit card information once during their first purchase.

The system automatically recognizes this credit card information anytime the user makes future purchases. So, ensure that your customers do not have to key in their credit card details anytime they purchase from your app.

4. Personalized experiences

Everywhere you go, online stores and business organizations strive to make their online customer shopping experiences more personal. So, it should be no surprise that personalization is a critical element of mobile shopping.

In an e-marketing survey, more personalized mobile and mobile app experiences were the leading user expectation for the future. And to stand out in the mobile app space, businesses must put personalization at the center of their mobile app development strategy.

5. Simplicity

You can do many things to your mobile app as part of your mobile app development efforts. However, unless those cool things align with the needs and wants of your target audience, you may end up doing more wrong than good.

So, cramming your mobile app with features that are not important for the end users may end up compromising overall usability and functionality. We all know that users crave intuitive app navigation, which means simplicity is vital in maintaining this simple and navigable capability.

You must make a simple, usable design a key guiding factor of your design.

6. Demo

Although your customers will not tell you, giving demos of products and services in your app will do more good than bad. Often, demos provide solid proof that a product exists and works as demonstrated.

So, ensure that your app can support product demos.

7. Tracking

If your website doesn’t provide order tracking capabilities, ensure that your mobile app has this functionality. Greater transparency and quick shipments are critical for your customers. So, your mobile app must have an order or product tracking feature that allows them to keep track of their products wherever they are.

8. Returns

All customers yearn for a convenient and flexible experience anytime they buy – before, during, and even after buying. Companies like Zappos incorporate easy returns within the app.

9. Reviews

Customer reviews are the epitome of proof, especially in online shopping. Social proof is a great way to boost sales, especially if your customers offer honest, unique, and transparent reviews about your products and services.

So, your customers want social proof that your products are authentic and credible. This certainty comes from giving positive and accurate reviews and integrating these reviews into your mobile apps.

10. Support

If you will offer discounts, demos, and returns in your app, support is not optional – it’s mandatory. Giving support means including direct lines to live chats and customer service to ensure your clients’ experiences remain perfect and untarnished.

The emergence of customer support systems has provided immense capabilities to address most of the recurring customer service issues. However, it’s important to note that offering live support through chats or even phone calls is a good way of keeping in touch with your customers – and ensuring they get the best customer service.

11. Security

Online and data security is a critical element and requirement for every online user. Every user needs online security anytime they want to use a new app. It’s advisable to take verified and prior measures to protect your app from malware attacks and hackers who may want to steal your customers’ information.

Remember that when you’re launching your app and when your app is taking off, hacker attempts and malware attacks may scare away potential users – and fail a promising app.

12. Image resolution

This attribute of a mobile app is overlooked, although it is a critical element of any design work. All your images must be crystal clear and with the perfect resolution.

A good image resolution is equally as important as easy and simple navigation. Proper picture display keeps the audience engaged. The quality graphics and fine detailing on your app help bring users closer to your app, making their stay worthwhile

13. Flexibility

All customers want to use your app in virtually all operating systems – be it ios or android. So, ensure that your app can operate in all operating systems and eliminate any restrictions.

That’s because there are many operating systems available for smartphones. So, make your app available on most of these operating systems to maximize your app’s output.

Always remember the different screen sizes and resolutions of different smartphone devices before uploading your app to keep your audience satisfied and engaged.

14. Notifications and updates

Last but not least, your app must contain notifications and updates. Notifications act as information networks that update customers on payment information, new products, demos, offers, and other important information.

In addition, notifications and updates help keep your app more relevant and fresh to your customers. You can keep your target audience engaged and notified of new features using notifications like SMSs, email, and social media.

You will keep your audience engaged and satisfied if you add revisions to your app.

NS804 – Keeping Customers Engaged by Acing Your App’s Performance!

NS804 is the leading provider of custom mobile app design and development. NS804 provides design and development solutions tailored to your unique business needs.

So, whether you’re a start-up, a medium-sized enterprise, or a large corporation, you can rest assured that NS804 will provide superior mobile app design solutions that answer your customers’ more pressing questions.

Contact NS804 for time-to-value mobile app design and development solutions.

What Will Make The Users Happy? Five Key Elements Of Great UX Design

/0 Comments/in /by

There are many elements of mobile app design that need to come together for an app to be successful. One of the most important ingredients to building a strong mobile app that attracts a massive user-base is UX. UX, or user-experience, defines the way users interact and engage with the mobile app.

A great UX is certainly the product of five distinct key aspects. The aspects laid out here compose the five pillars of user-experience design. In following the principles of these five pillars, or five key elements of UX, mobile apps are sure to be user-friendly. In addition to being intuitive and user-friendly, mobile apps should also be built with efficiency and beauty in mind.

The large mobile app market makes UX even more important. More competition forces companies to think about the end-user first. With the user experience driving the core of mobile app design, the companies that provide the best UX will rise above the rest. These companies will perform better in terms of brand perception, overall user base, and other valuable metrics.

In fact, Springboard has the users’ needs as the number-one priority in UX. This shows how important it is to think about the user first in UX design.

The Five Key Elements of UX

Jumping into the five key elements of UX, the pillars of user-experience are defined, and a clear theme develops. The five key elements of UX design are:

  • Information Architecture
  • Interaction Design
  • Usability
  • Prototyping
  • Visual Design

Breaking these five pillars down further, the core components of each individual aspect involved in creating an excellent UX can be identified, and optimized. Therefore, optimizing the entire UX process from top to bottom. In taking a closer look at each of these UX pillars, it becomes clear that they all share one common thread. In each of these elements, it’s clear that the end-user is the priority in UX.

Information Architecture:

Guiding users to the information they’re searching for. Assisting users in the effective completion of tasks. This is what information architecture (IA) is all about. Usability.Gov defines IA as, “the organizing, labeling, and structuring of content in an effective and sustainable way.”

Structuring content in UX design is really an art form. Designers must consider many aspects. Aspects such as information location, and process-flow. These two aspects of the user-experience will dictate a lot of design factors. Therefore, designers must understand things like where users will look for information. Additionally, designers will need to understand how users will want to get things done within the app.

Interaction Design:

Interaction design is exactly that. The design of the interactions between users and products. In other words, this relates to the way that users engage with a mobile app. These engagements can also be broken into five distinct categories:

  • Words: Words are obviously any text that appears to the user. However, this category also includes system-messages, content-labels, and any other written content.
  • Visual Representations: Visual representations can be anything from color-schemes, to integrated media, and of course custom-design. This also relates heavily to branding. Designers should make it a priority to align color schemes and mobile-app visuals with the brand.
  • Physical Objects/Space: The physical objects category relates to the way users interact with the mobile-app. In other words, the platform or medium: Laptop, smartphone, etc.
  • Time: Time is a little bit more abstract, but it refers to the evolution of media contained in the app, or software.
  • Behavior: Finally this relates to the actual functionality of the app. How do users use the app, and what reactions do they have while engaging with the app?

Usability in UX:

In simple terms, usability means putting the design to the test. This refers to the data-collection process that happens when a UX has been significantly developed, and is ready for some real user-feedback. This data highlights important insight on design decisions previously made.

As a UX designer it is important to be the champion of the people, so to speak. This includes pointing out flaws, or user-frustrations in mobile-app UX. After finalizing the first version of the UX, designers can employ a myriad of tactics to gain real user-feedback. Some of these tactics include conducting lab-based studies, one-on-one interviews, tele-surveys, and focus-groups.

The data and user-feedback collected from these various data-pools will be extremely valuable in the ultimate design of the mobile-app. This feedback should influence decision making moving forward, updates to the existing UX, and bring about edits that likely should have been included in the first iteration.

Additionally, user testing provides key insights into how to market the product or mobile-app, and user behavior.

Prototyping:

Furthering the feed-back and design-finalization process, prototyping is an excellent, and cheap way to test product viability. Releasing a prototype is a great starting point as it provides a place for iterations. One can incorporate stakeholder feedback, and get real input on the functionality of their design.

This also enlightens and emphasizes and of the user-feedback that was garnered earlier in the data-collection stage from focus-groups, one-on-one interviews, and other data-collection tactics. Not only does the prototype allow for users to give additional feedback, it also offers a strong representation of what works and doesn’t work in the current design.

Prior to this stage, many of the design choices were probably based on theory, rather than practicality. Between the usability testing, and the prototyping stages, designers and mobile-app publishers should start to gain a good idea of where their design stands, and what needs improving.

Visual Design:

This is likely what immediately comes to mind when most think about UX. Visual design is a crucial aspect of an excellent UX, as has already been covered, yet it’s still only one of the five pillars that make up the principles of excellent UX design. The purpose, however, of visual design in UX is to provide the user with visuals that are both engaging and informative.

Visual design is important as it can establish a reputation for the mobile-app, and customers will start to recognize that brand. Visual design can also be extremely influential in the marketplace as far as determining demand for a product or mobile app.

For a long while, it was thought that mobile-apps had to be designed with one aspect or the other, aesthetics or useability. However, recent studies have shown that the two are actually in a positive correlation. More simply stated: the easier a mobile-app is to use, the more room there is for incredible visual design. Vice versa, an incredible visual design can actually improve useability, and guide the user through the process-flow, while also providing an engaging and aesthetically pleasing experience.

In UX design there are simply loads of variables to consider. Following these five pillars of UX design will ensure that your mobile-app, website, or any other design is both efficient, and intuitive. Providing users with a superb experience that stands out from the competition should be every designers goal.

NS804 has experience designing apps in nearly every marketspace, for nearly every type of user. Dedicated to making mobile-app design services more accessible than ever before, get in touch with NS804 today and get the conversation about your mobile-app idea started. NS804 offers additional help in designing an optimal user-experience, and top-to-bottom mobile-app design services.