Incorporating user experience (UX) into a web designer’s work helps them see their websites from users’ perspectives. This approach helps website design meet user needs more efficiently. Many web developers focus on their website’s client side. However, UX designers focus on how visitors experience websites and the features that optimize or undermine their usage.
Therefore, website designers need sufficient user experience to develop better websites. This post sheds light on how UX journeys and SaaS product redesign services help web developers create effective websites.
User Journey Maps: Definition, Types, and Benefits
A user journey is a path users take to achieve their goals on a given website. This journey identifies different ways of enabling users to achieve these ends fast and most conveniently. It seeks to understand this experience from a visitor’s perspective from a website’s homepage, menus, and links. Unlike a customer journey that analyzes the steps before and after using products, a user journey primarily focuses on what happens inside websites and apps.
Types of User Journey Mapping
Developers can approach their UX user journey map differently based on what they seek to derive from it. User journey maps come in three main types, as discussed below.
- Persona-based
This map lays out a designated persona’s journey. It’s useful when optimizing a website for a particular persona type or improving user experiences with specific needs.
- Current State
A current state map looks at websites as they are. It helps web designers identify a site’s improvement opportunities in its current design and understand how visitors use it.
- Future State
This UX user journey focuses on the ideal future site design. It’s beneficial when planning a major site redesign or change.
Benefits of a UX Journey Map
Essentially, all UX efforts seek to make websites’ use more intuitive, functional, and enjoyable. It benefits designers and web owners because it:
- Inculcates and promotes a user-centric approach to web development.
- Helps create a shared corporate focus and vision for your business.
- Exposes blind spots and flaws in how visitors interact with and use your website, making room for improvement.
How to Create a Successful UX Journey?
Here are actionable insights to help you create a successful UX journey map.
Define Your Scope
Clarify your goals to get more relevant insights after completing your journey map. Start by defining your goals to outline what you want to achieve. For example, your journey might seek to improve transactions on an app.
Your scope can focus on an entire site at once or a specific area, like boosting online payments. A focused range helps you improve a problematic area, while a larger one gives you a broader overview of how your entire website works.
Gather and Assess Your Current Data About Users
Collect and analyze your current information about your users. This data can be available via studies and research. This way, you don’t fall for subjective approaches that could plunge you into conclusions that depend on loose deductions and hunches. Gather accurate data by:
- Collecting preliminary insights obtained from user research and studies.
- Listing user touchpoints.
- Listing activities users perform during their journeys, such as researching particular products.
- Including employees who regularly contact your customers in the data collection process, like help desk executives and social media managers.
Develop Your User Personas
Your customers’ needs differ. Thus, have different journey maps for various user segments. You can gain this insight through user research, interviews, surveys, and feedback.
Contextualize Your User Persona
Contextualize your user persona to fit when and how different personas visit your website. Visitors searching your website casually with sufficient time will use it differently from those seeking specific things while hurrying. So, figuring out the “how,” “when,” and “what” in each persona’s mindset helps you map their experience more accurately.
Proper contextualization significantly affects your website’s final design. For instance, if your visitors go to particular pages while hurried, it would benefit them if you placed that information on the front page. Alternatively, you may link it on your homepage for smooth access.
Here is a handy example of a user persona:
Let’s assume John is a 22-year-old college student seeking an off-campus apartment. He prioritizes location and cost over the house’s features. Definitely, John is hurried and visits many nearby apartments.
How do you help him check for such a house better? By designing your website to allow for easy mobile browsing.
Define Your User Goals, Expectations, and Pain Points
Now you know your target site visitors but don’t know their needs well enough to accommodate them. You should take time to figure out their needs and wants. Also, determine their problems and which of your products or services can solve them. Don’t forget to figure out any possible frustration your products or services might cause.
So, how do you establish your users’ frustrations and pain points? By asking yourself user-focused questions, interviewing customers, asking questions on social media customer service platforms, and surveying customer-facing executives. Some helpful questions are:
- Can my site help my customers achieve their goals?
- Where are my clients’ problems?
- What areas should I improve?
- Where and why do customers abort buying processes?
After identifying these bottlenecks, note them down on your user journey map.
Prioritize and Remove Bottlenecks
Now, you have to prioritize your findings and eliminate roadblocks. You only need to identify the parts that need urgent resolutions and list their particular problems. For instance, if users often complain of a cumbersome sign-up process, enhancing it would be beneficial.
Update and Enhance Your User Journey
Lastly, improve your user experience journey whenever necessary because it’s living and serves users with dynamic needs. Prepare to update it frequently to accommodate and meet your visitor’s evolving needs. You can get valuable insights for upgrading through customer feedback on their overall satisfaction. Moreover, Digital Silk is the best web design company in Arlington for unique and user-friendly web designs.
Conclusion
A successful UX journey in web design creates a holistic user experience view. It helps web designers and owners design new sites or improve existing ones to prioritize users. This guide shared tips on creating such a journey. Use these ideas to accelerate and boost your web design efforts.
Also Read: What is Cross-Cultural Website Design?
