10 mistakes in the user experience that a start-up team can easily make

"How can I improve my web site (or application) user experience?" "This is a common and there is no standard answer question." Especially for the start-up team and products, this problem involves a variety of impact factors. Fortunately, there are some practical guidelines that can help us move in the right direction. In this article, we'll look at the mistakes that the start-up team can make in shaping the product experience, and how to avoid these problems.

why the start-up team pays special attention to the user experience

A good user experience can increase the satisfaction of users, improve the quality of their products and image temperament, and thus promote your business better forward development. If you have a product that many people are willing to accept, marketing will be a much easier job. In addition, the experience of a good product can greatly reduce the cost of customer service, but also to help your team or company to establish a positive public relations influence for future business development to lay a solid foundation.

Conversely, a bad user experience will have a huge negative impact on the start-up team and the product. Bad news can spread like wildfire, and if users are unhappy they will spread negative word-of-mouth and in serious cases your product will be hard to roll over.

I love the entrepreneurial talent Dharmesh Shan: "Don't try to please the user; it's important to create a happy user through the product." ”

From the outset, it is much easier to create a positive image of the product in the user's mind than to make the user dissatisfied and then try to reinvent it. A good user experience is not a huge investment or a large customer service team can define, it is a product cycle around the beginning of the concept, it is an attitude and culture.

UX (user experience) and customer experience

A smart team will always place customer value at the core and dig through a complete set of experiential strategies. This strategy covers a wide range of user experiences, branding and marketing, and is designed to create a comprehensive and unique experience model for customers. (Related reading: The iOS user experience differentiation and strategy)

In the past, many of the companies under the line business are mistaken, even if their site is not so easy to use and will not have much problem, after all, offline is the focus. Nowadays, this concept is hard to stand, because each point of contact between the user and the company will be related to the overall customer experience. In this competitive market environment, many new players are looking for opportunities to break through in areas where the user experience has not been truly in place.

Products that bring a unique customer experience are usually excellent and can be pleasantly surprised. We can think of big companies like Ocado, Apple, Innocent drinks, and moo.com (providing online print services, as shown above), Graze.com and other start-up teams, they have a common feature, that is their own products love and passion, as well as the core customer value.

Let's go to the bottom of the list to see what a typical bug the start-up team might have done with the product experience.

1. Good experience, wrong product

The right product should have the characteristics of simplicity, concentration, and compliance with business models. Many web sites and mobile apps have beautiful interfaces and superior interaction patterns, but when you're interested and knowledgeable, you'll find that they don't actually give users significant value. The problem is that either the product is not geared towards some kind of popular demand, or the solution it offers itself is problematic. To create a good user experience, we must first ensure that the product itself is in the right direction before the specific design work unfolds.

2.UX was late for work, slow execution

User experience design, including user research and competitive analysis, should be followed up to the project at the beginning of the product, which will help to explore the direction of the product and the mining of the product concept. In addition, initial product prototypes and usability testing can also help us identify potential problems with product functionality and interaction models as early as possible, reducing the risk of late redesign or even rework. (Related reading: Early prototype design and user testing of the product)

Try to use the "Lean user experience" mode of thinking, from the user's needs and use scenarios, around the most core use cases to build the smallest product features, to maintain the iteration, trot forward. This will help the start-up team enter the market at the lowest cost and maximum speed.

3. Lack of a clear value proposition

To establish a healthy and lasting relationship between the product and the user, we first have to stand at the product point of view and initiate a "dialogue" with the user in the right way. If they are not effective in attracting users ' attention in a matter of seconds and making them aware of important information, they may not be able to really translate into customers. Creating a simple and clear value proposition is not an easy thing to do, but once you do, it can help you to present the core elements of your product to the user in the shortest amount of time, and to let users know the difference between your product and the same kind of application in the marketplace.

When writing a value proposition, try to look at the user's point of view and think about what value they can get from your product and what the goal is. The purpose of the value proposition is to allow users to create concepts and continue to understand your product in the shortest possible time, so try to keep it short and easy to read.

4. Lack of focus

Start-up team is easy to go into a misunderstanding, is the hope that in a short period of time to do too many things, specifically, is to create a product function too much too indiscriminate. Trying to focus on one or some points will help to reflect the core value of the product and make it easier to interact with the target audience. All-Inclusive's products, in the end, may not really meet the needs of any one user community.

For example, using Dropbox (file storage sharing) and Instagram (photo sharing), their success cannot be achieved without focus, which is the ultimate in one thing. It's not as simple as it sounds, and most of the time we have to deal with external factors such as the voice of the user, the "advice" of the investor or the internal decision maker, and so on. Sometimes we must know how to say "no" and also learn the necessary communication skills to make our design decisions supported and accepted.

5. Lack of usability testing

Even in the face of the scarcity of time and human costs, the start-up team cannot ignore the importance of usability testing for the product. Admittedly, questionnaires, focus groups, user interviews and other research methods have their own advantages, but they can not replace usability testing this allows users and product prototypes to interact directly with the observation, in the process you are likely to get the user feedback from the unexpected information.

A notable example of usability testing is the "300 million dollar button." Once, a large online retailer found that they had lost a large number of customers in the payment process, so they invited a usability specialist, Jared Spool, to help with usability testing. By observing, he found that users were disgusted with the fact that they had to sign up for an account before paying for it; a common complaint was "I'm here to shop, not to build membership." ”

Based on this observation, they decided to change the login button in the payment link to "Continue" and tell the user that you can shop directly without registering, but the registration will bring you a convenient category. That change alone, the retailer's sales increased by 45% in the evening, while sales rose by a whopping 300 million dollars.

Never take it for granted that your product is very useful, because we are too familiar with their products, can not really objectively from the user's point of view to judge.

6. Table Slip

In a Web site or mobile application product, the function of a form is to allow the system to obtain input from the user. This is a very sensitive interaction point, and in general, a lack of well-designed forms can be an important reason for users to abandon the product.

Almost all Web sites use forms, such as search, subscriptions, transaction payments, registration, and so on. You need to be really careful with each form and consider whether the interaction in the details is reasonably easy to use, or the user is likely to feel frustrated or annoyed in these links.

Fortunately, Luke Wroblewski's Web Form design:filling in the blanks (Web Form design) has brought some changes to the world, and more and more people are starting to focus on the design of forms.

The detail adjustments in the form can sometimes bring a significant return to the site, including the conversion rate. Instead of throwing a single strand of a table consisting of more than 20 fields to the user, try grouping them logically or in steps. It's more comfortable to stand in the user's shoes and see what patterns are available to them. After all, the more fields you use in your form, the more likely they are to be unable to complete the form. Usually, the marketing department students like in the form can ask how many questions to ask how many questions, this method brings the result is the user aspect form completion rate greatly reduces.

7. Let the developer write the copy

Think back to your experience of using other Web sites or mobile apps, did you ever feel like you were being treated as a fool, or did you feel like you were yelling at you about unfriendly, blunt-looking cues? In fact, in many cases, the small scattered copy of the product is the technical staff in the development process of "writing". This kind of situation is quite puzzling--information copy is the important interaction point that the product communicates with the user, but we actually allow oneself to throw it to the person who lacks the specialized skill in this aspect to complete!

As designer Joshua Porter said: "Copywriting should be simple and powerful, it is fast, light, effective, it can be a sentence, a phrase, some words or a word, it is short but full of impact." "With a reasonable copy, you can connect the product to the user effectively." Make sure that the tone of the text is consistent in every aspect of the product, and that the use of some non written language from time to time can also enhance the user's good impression of the product.

8. Lack of emotion and personality

Give the product the right personality. For a long time, we've been focusing on features and usability, and now is the moment to think about how to integrate personality into the product experience.

Whether you are creating an online application or a simple presentation page, you can try emotional design ideas in your design plan. Whether witty, friendly, serious, cautious, as long as the design of the embodiment of personality temperament in line with the characteristics of the product itself, it can be in the user's mind to produce a long and deep impression.

Recommended reading: Giving personality to a product--elements of affective design and practical cases

9. Technology becomes barrier

Many sites appear to be a machine for the user, which is sometimes caused by technical factors. To make technology a product service, if a technology does not bring a quality user experience to a product, consider alternatives. It is not possible for a computer (or developer) to say "no" to compromise on a technical solution that hinders the product experience from being upgraded. Difficult to identify code pictures, error tips full of technical words, meaningless modal windows, repeated page refreshes, and jumps-these problems are great for the destructive power of the product experience.

10. Early or evening line

Many start-up teams avoid the public eye, spend months or even years in a "stealth mode" to avoid the introduction of products under too many uncertainties, or to prevent competitors from stealing ideas. At the same time, some teams will be very "lean" style, in the shortest possible time will not be crafted by the hard work of the first edition of the works released.

Seek an appropriate balance between "premature" and "pursuit of perfection". This is not an easy matter, the outcome of the balance will depend on the actual situation of different products, and the market competition of similar products is also an important factor. The bottom line, though, is to not push the product to the market until it really reaches the "minimum available". To ensure that the core functions in place, at the same time, around the core functionality of the user experience has been fully considered and carved (related reading: Minimize the availability of the design). If you release the product without reaching that level, you'll probably need to spend the next few days trying to make up for the negative impact of a product.

Original site to compile the article. If you want to reprint, please specify: This article from the is for Web English original: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/10-common-ux-m ... Translator Information: c7210-Interactive design and code players, is now working in the public comment network user Experience Design Group (DPUX)