User experience is the process that the user carries out when interacting with a product or service. This concept has its origin in the field of Online Marketing, being closely linked to the concept of Brand Experience. It also covers the set of factors and elements related to user interaction with a web page or application, of which a positive or negative perception is generated.
In general, the user experience depends on many factors such as design, programming, usability, accessibility, speed … but it also depends on other external aspects such as user perception, brand building, trust generalization, etc.
We can deduce that to achieve an optimal user experience we must offer the user a web page that includes these three factors: design, content, and speed. With this in place, we could say that we have a good website. If one of the three fails we will be losing many users.
Differentiate between user experience and usability
On many occasions the terms user experience and usability are confused, let’s see how they differ to better understand them:
- Usability: It is the ease with which people can use a particular tool or any other object made by humans to achieve a specific goal.
- User experience: Set of factors and elements related to user interaction with a specific environment or device, the result of which is the generation of a positive or negative perception of said service, product, or device.
As we have already seen, user experience and usability are not the same concepts, since the usability of a web page or graphical interface refers to the ease with which users can use the web page or app to act. concrete. In this way, we can include usability as one more factor in the complete user experience process.
The most common is that most of the websites are usable and generate a great user experience. But we can also find web pages on the net that are usable but do not generate a good user experience. A good example would be a website that is well structured and designed, but the vocabulary, message, or tone used does not satisfy its target audience.
The most difficult thing is to find unusable web pages that generate good user experiences. If the user does not find what they are looking for or it is very difficult to navigate the web, they will quickly abandon it and will not return. The user experience will have been bad.
Google and user experience
Google tries to add value to its searches and what better way for its first results to meet certain requirements in terms of content, design, and loading speed.
We talk more about this topic in other posts but … What can we do to improve the user experience?
All problems must be eliminated, that is, facilitate as much as we can the possible actions that the user wants to perform. The design of the web or app must be thought for the end-user, never for the organization or the programmers themselves. You have to be clear from the beginning about who your target audience is and work for it. If you don’t know what it is, work on it and first of all find out.
To improve user comfort, a good solution would be to add small functionalities, buttons, and step-by-step explanations. Also use images or graphics instead of words …, etc. All this helps the user and improves their experience. Therefore improves our position in Google.
Another important aspect is that the website is responsive, the user must have the same visualization quality regardless of the device used to access our website. In addition, the web page must load quickly and must be agile, otherwise, users will get tired of waiting.
On the subject of user experience, we must take care of originality, since if we do something very risky or innovative, users may not like it since it makes it more difficult for them to reach their goal because they have to learn to use it. We must remember that if a user does not find what they are looking for in a fast and agile way, they will leave our website and go to another of the competition.
We must not focus solely on the spectacularity of the design and we must always remember to have a website that is also usable, agile, and efficient.
Once we have the page published, we must analyze it to see what the errors are, see what is not working, test everything and apply solutions and interface improvements.
In a conclusion, we tell you that user experience is not everything but it is 70%. If you have the best products on the market but your customers can’t find a way to buy them, it won’t do any good. If you have a spectacular design but it is not functional and your clients are not clear, it will not do any good.
Everything you do on your website must be with the user in mind, don’t forget.