Hold on, before you start judging me for the title, I'm not referring to looks of humans or any other living things. What I really want to convey in this post is to how the design of your website/app can affect its success.
Before we start, Let's look at the definition.
User experience (UX) refers to a person's emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership. - Wikipedia
Today, I wanted to check how to renew my dad's passport. I went to passportindia.gov.in and since the website was loaded with text, I just did command+F and searched for the word "re-issue" and "renew". There was no match for those searches. After spending 5 mins reading through the homepage, I realized I had to click a tabbed section "Forms and Affidavits", then go to the e-form page and select Re-Issue of the Passport. Well, that was easy right? Nope. (Sorry TCS, please hire a UX designer).
What was wrong here?
Let's say you are developing a product that does XYZ. If your user had to come to your home page, search for sign-up button & navigate to some other page, finish signing up then start doing XYZ, you think everyone will be happy to use your product further?
Why does it matter?
In this digital era, nobody has time to spend more than a minute on any app trying to understand what it does (duh!). So, its crucial to give out a best first impression to a new user. Once the user signs up, it is also important to keep him engaged and make the interaction seamless. If you don't, somebody will come up with a better approach to solve the problem you are trying to solve and kick your product out of the market.
Why do you think Google's homepage is just the Google logo and the search bar even after 20 years of launching it. This type of simplicity was one of the main reason for its success as a search engine.
How do I build my product with better UX?
It is all about thinking in the perspective of the user while you define your product idea rather than thinking in your own perspective. When you decide this is what my app/website needs to do, also decide how it should be presented to the user and how easy it'll be to use.
Getting into the users' brain
If you want your app to have more user engagement, you first need to understand your target users. For example, if you are trying to build a portal to buy cars, you need to know how a person who is planning to buy a new car thinks like. Once you know what it is up to your creativity to present him with what exactly the user expects.
To Conclude, Quick Tips a user
- Don't put too much text on the homepage, put a very brief explanation on what you do.
- Have a call-to-action button for sign-ups/app demo.
- Let the users try the basic features of your application before asking them to sign-up.