MT: The Main Principles of UX Design

Rohan Mathew

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MD: Focus on user experience points. You have just a few seconds to force the user to leave at your website or mobile app. Pay attention to these UX principles and be user-friendly.

The Main Principles of UX Design

It wasn’t that long ago when Microsoft and Apple paid no attention to how users felt towards their websites. Nowadays, the rules have changed a lot. Designers and developers are focusing more and more on meeting the needs of the customer. With that in mind, we have to cover UX design.

For those of you who don’t know, UX and UI are two concepts very different from each other. What is UX, what are its main principles, and what do businesses and startups hope to achieve with it? To answer these questions, make sure to stick around.

User as an Aim

The core principle of UX is to put the user first. This user-driven approach proves to be very successful. Whenever designing a product (website, software, etc.), businesses have to involve the user in the design process. Why? Because users will provide valuable feedback that they can use to improve their products.

The term “user experience” simply means making your product more enjoyable in the eyes of visitors and customers. It is said that 88% of website visitors leave because of a bad user experience. The way to implement this principle is simply to do research and figure out what your user wants.

By looking at the latest numbers and UX stats, businesses can figure out what areas of their website or app to focus on. If a website or app lacks a Call To Action button, then hard data will tell them that it is vital for driving conversions.

While there are many other design elements to improve UX, look for what the user needs and wants from a website or app. This will help businesses figure out what works best.

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Clear and Intuitive Navigation

One thing that the user wants is to be able to easily navigate through the app or website. Clear and intuitive navigation is yet another main principle of modern UX design for startups. More so, navigation is essential for users to freely develop your website and app and eventually come to the products page where they make a conversion.

If a user cannot find what they need on the page they currently are on, they will look for the navigation menu to redirect to another page. If businesses don’t implement clear and intuitive navigation, then that creates a problem on its own.

The benefits for businesses and startups of having clear and intuitive website navigation can be easily summed up in a few short sentences. Namely, with clear navigation, users stay longer on a website or app. This drastically decreases the bounce rate. These two metrics are important in SEO. Another benefit is that it drives conversion. Regardless of what conversion means for a business, it is essential to turn visitors into customers. One way to do that is by providing users with a clear path to the products page.

One Style for All Types of Devices

When it comes to style and design itself, businesses need to implement one style for every device. Why? In modern UX, consistency is what matters.

When looking at the many principles of UX, there isn’t a more important one than style. Whenever building websites, mobile apps, or software, businesses have to make sure the design is consistent throughout the product. There’s no point in changing the background color on one page and another.

Considering that businesses can launch a website and an app for the same product, the point is to have a consistent style. Consistency is also important when we look at device screens. Namely, customers can view your website from their personal computers and laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

The thing to note here is that there are more than a dozen screen sizes, and businesses will need to optimize their product on all of these. No doubt, a website will look different when viewed from a personal computer and a smartphone. Depending on what approach the design team chooses, businesses will need to optimize their websites for all screens.

Mobile optimization, or optimizing a website for mobile devices, is very important in UX. Businesses have to make sure that their website uses the same design elements when visitors view it from their smartphones and laptops.

Easy Personalization

Everyone looks for ways to make their products and services more personalized. Considering that personalization plays a huge role in UX, it’s only natural that businesses make their websites and apps more convenient and more appealing for the user. Through personalization, businesses can drive more users to their products.

To make a website or app more personalized for the user, businesses can do a few things. One thing they can try is to find what works best for the customer. Let’s say that a business sells essential oils and wants to make its website more personalized. What the business can do is make the customer take a quiz to determine which product works for them.

When speaking from a design point of view, personalization is all about making the visitor connect with the brand. Being lifeless and dull is the last thing businesses want. By showing characters that the user can connect with, they make their products more marketable. This will, in turn, help them achieve marketing goals.

Feedback to Users

One of the most important principles of UX is to make the design interactive. There is only one way for businesses to communicate in real-time with a customer, and that’s through feedback. Feedback in design is all about telling the user in real-time what their action does while using a website or application.

When a user navigates through a product, feedback is essential to tell them what their click does. Without feedback, how would users know they’ve made a purchase on a website, subscribed to a newsletter, or performed any other action?

Here are examples of UX elements used for providing customer feedback.

  • Animations

Animations play an important role in providing user feedback. They can be used to tell the user if their click is valid or not, alert them of a change, and generally guide the user while using the website. 

  • Transitions

Transitions are equally important for user feedback. Unlike animations, transitions are more used for moving content instead of alerting the user of a change.

  • Messages

Messages are very straightforward UX elements. Through the use of messages, the application can alert the user of a specific change such as an incorrect login.

  • Sound

Sound is yet another UX element that gives users feedback, but not as commonly used as the previous ones. In most cases, sound design is used to draw the attention of the user.

Being able to provide feedback throughout the browsing process is very important in modern UX, so don’t neglect it.