UI/UX and Why it is so Important for Your App or Website

January 23, 2018 | Heather Stugen

We live in the digital age where people rely heavily on the internet, phones, computers, and gadgets to provide information in a quick and seamless way. How the user retrieves and views that information needs to be both stunning and enjoyable. Everything should have the right colors, shapes, and functions to provide a high-quality user experience. That idea is what we call the UI/UX.

What is UI/UX

You may have heard someone say UI or UX in a conversation about apps or websites. Now it has become pretty common to mention it so more and more are becoming familiar with the term. However, if you are still unsure or just have a basic idea of what it is, no problem, you will be an expert after reading this article.

UI stands for User Interface and UX stands for User Experience. Both relate to the design of a website and mobile app but in 2 different ways. UI refers to how it looks; what the user sees such as colors, shapes, and the placement of each function. Think of it as the visual aspect. UX refers to how the user actually uses the product. The functions and how they go about making their way from point A to point B in the easiest way possible. Think of this as the touch.

To better explain this, think about your car. When you look at your car you see the color, the shape, and all the little pieces that make it such as the wheels, rims, grill, etc. You chose that car partly because of how it looks and that is the UI of the car. Next, once you start up the car and actually start driving it, you see how comfortable or uncomfortable it is to turn the wheel, press the brake, and click buttons on the dash. The experience of driving the car is the UX.

User Experience

This should be the first thing you do when you decide to build your app or website. This pretty much defines the digital relationship your customers are going to have with your company. You have to think about every option the user has to get to their desired destination and then rethink how it can be simplified even more.

The more you focus on UX in the beginning of the project, the smother the development for your project will be. Whether you or someone else is developing your project, the most time should be spent on UX because that is what will give you your leads. When you hire app developers or a website development company make sure they know about both UI and UX as they should be well versed. You can speak with Rob at 408.805.0495 to go over UX needs for your project.

User Interface

This goes hand in hand with UX. You really can’t have one without the other. Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. When you decide your color theme, logo, and style of your app or website, it has to make sense and look amazing to your users. To truly know what the right design is, you must first think about who your users are. Once you determine that, then determining the design will be easier.

Each color and shape has an emotional tie to it so it is important to know what users will think when they see it. For example, if you choose the color red, people will think stop vs green which is go. For shapes, a square and a circle do have different meanings so choosing right shapes is just as important. Those are pretty straightforward but there are so many colors and shapes which elicits a different emotion. All of this should be taken into account before programming even starts.

Why is UI/UX Design so important?

Ask yourself why does a person like a particular app or website? Better yet, why do you like a particular app or website? More often than not the answer has to with how easy it is to use or how nice it looks. That, in the end, is the reason why they keep coming back and is what others use to build their product to become successful.

If you take your UI or UX seriously, it could at the very minimum double your web conversation rates (number of people who come to your website and turn into real leads/customers) and mobile app download/usage.

Remember that people’s attention spans have drastically decreased over the years. If we haven’t found what we want in a few seconds we exit that app or website to find what we are looking for somewhere else. Your UI/UX can make or break you.

If you want to learn more about UI/UX for a project you are thinking about contact us at team@sdi.la

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