With more and more people making use of mobile devices to search, navigate, buy and improve their lives, the use of mobile applications has grown at an unprecedented rate. Ensuring that your users are contentedly making use of your mobile app comes down to a seamless user experience from start to finish. If a mobile app is clever, intuitive and easy to use, you’re set to keep your existing users and also attract more by word of mouth or other means of multi-channel reviews and feedback.
If businesses aren’t considering user experience in this day and age, they are – by definition – not considering their users. Implementing changes according to findings aligned to user experience research and discovery will help you gear your products for your intended target market, but it will also ensure that they are happy and continue engaging with your brand.
Mobile applications are no different. They provide another channel for you to showcase what you offer to the world. If not developed in a user-centric manner, people will uninstall your app and find another, similar application that does what they want it to do in the way they want it done.
Developing mobile applications with a positive user experience is the key to ensuring continued loyalty, and perhaps even conversions, from your users. A positive experience includes:
- Making sure that the app renders properly for all devices
- It is quick and doesn’t waste a lot of battery usage
- The paths to action are clear and obvious and it don’t leave users feeling frustrated
If there is any inkling that your app is not fitting the bill, then here are a few more reasons why you need to place great importance on user experience for mobile apps.
1. Build a solid, loyal and happy user base
It seems an obvious path for all businesses and brands, but why then are users still being offered the same poor experiences that are rife with bugs, over-complicated actions and unfriendly interfaces? Developing your mobile app so that the experience is smooth, pain free and actually pleasant is the first step in the right direction towards building a loyal user base. Knowing that your mobile app is a go-to, reliable resource for a particular service is an opinion that will spread, and win you that brand loyalty you fight so hard to achieve.
2. Increase in sales or conversions
Yes, we want to keep users happy, but we also want to make money off our products and services. A positive user experience is a major contributing factor to aiding this outcome. If your app has been designed and developed to offer a premium experience, it will be used more often, which will mean increased traction, transactions, activity, traffic, etc. If you’re seen as a trusted source for what you can deliver, this in turn results in positive feedback for your mobile app, which will result in more users who repeat the cycle. Brand loyalty will also keep your foot in the door for repeat customers, which is ultimately where you want to be.
3. Less money spent on fixes and support
If your mobile app has been built with the right amount of user-centric foresight, it will already provide an experience with little or no challenges for your users. When a user encounters a problem with an app, it’s usually because that part of the process hasn’t been thought out correctly. This will mean that a fix will need to be implemented in order to rectify whatever the problem was, which wastes valuable hours that could be better spent elsewhere within the business. A properly designed mobile app that takes user experience into account will reduce your ongoing costs – plain and simple.
4. Get one up over your competition
You want to be the obvious choice in mobile apps within your niche. You want to be the resource that no one can live without. Then your mobile application needs to speak to this 100%. With a user-friendly interface, you’re already in the lead before your competition has begun. There are so many businesses offering services that are competing for the same space. Staying ahead is a task in itself and it can only be achieved if you’re delivering what it is your customers want. The only way to do that is to ensure that user experience is at the forefront of everything you create, including your mobile applications.
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