In today’s competitive mobile ecosystem, user experience (UX) builds the foundation for a successful app. It’s an approach to interface design where usability is considered before aesthetics. Favoured by the busy modern consumer, a well-designed UX makes using an app less demanding and more enjoyable.
Creating an effective mobile UX requires understanding and anticipation of what is expected from the app in terms of performance, visuals, features, functionality and overall design. But UX can also be leveraged to influence customer behaviour, which can increase sales, improve engagement, obtain subscribers and encourage repeat purchases.
Here are six tips that will help you bring the benefits of an effective mobile UX into your own app.
Making an Impression
The design of your sign-up screen can mean the difference between it being a good first impression and a major source of app abandonment. Focus on ensuring a short and simple process, keeping required information to a minimum. You can also improve the confirmation step by ensuring frictionless navigation between the apps involved.
Remember, a sign-up screen should not prevent users from being able to explore the app and experience its features. You need to first demonstrate the value and usefulness of your offer, which in turn can contribute to the likelihood of a user signing-up anyway.
Asking for Permission
While often required for certain functionality, permissions can also deter users if they’re overly intrusive or irrelevant to your app. Alleviate any apprehensions by assuring users with sufficient reason for each request. Ideally, your app should only prompt users when they initiate an action that requires new permissions.
Establishing Trust
With proliferating concern around data privacy and the collection of personal information, it’s become far more important to identify how you can establish trust in your app. This can include keeping all data sharing options disabled by default, giving users the freedom to choose what they want to share.
There should be no possibility of user content being automatically shared by your app on social networks. Including a clear and open message about your approach to privacy is also helpful.
Conversely, it’s worth looking into the qualitative data your app collects, as it might contain a wealth of insights into how you can improve the user experience. You can then make use of an analytics platform to visualize the inner workings of your app and generate reports on how recent optimizations are affecting the user experience.
Get More From Less
It should come as no surprise that minimalism is a popular aspect of UX design. Approaching your optimization efforts with the goal of simplification can help you identify and eliminate unnecessary elements. For instance, a navigation bar that only shows relevant features is far more user-friendly and efficient than a multi-level mess.
An interface focused on simplicity can also help your messages stand out, giving every title and call-to-action the attention-grabbing boldness it needs to effectively direct your users. Every successful effort towards simplifying your UX will contribute to a faster, more user-friendly app that keeps them coming back.
Know Your Stuff
If you’ve come this far, you probably care a great deal about your app. Chances are that you also recognize the value of consistently searching for additional guidance and advice to facilitate the development of a more successful app. If you’re looking for more learning resources, now is the best possible time to start choosing one.
There are many blogs, classes and other valuable resources that you can use to expand your knowledge on anything and everything to do with app development. Get started with a look into some compelling and informative pieces from this popular app development blog. A quick look at their range of services is sufficient assurance of their authority.
Be Visual
Many successful apps won their users over with a beautiful design that nobody could resist taking a better look at. And while UX design focuses more on functional enhancements, there’s no mistaking the importance of visuals. Striking elements can contribute to a more quality, interactive experience that users are encouraged to spend more time with.
It’s worth noting that a minimalist approach works just as well for visuals as anywhere. This is especially true for your use of text. Mobile is the last platform for anyone to tolerate an endless stream of paragraphs. As for visual elements, focus more on a great colour scheme and consistent style. Less is usually still more here.
Conclusion
Perhaps you entered this project with every fresh and creative idea imaginable, yet you’ve somehow ended up with something that hasn’t met your expectations. Maybe your approach doesn’t match current industry requirements. That’s not to say there isn’t a future where they do.
The steps you take to improve the user experience of your app on their own will make a noticeable impact. All that’s left is to keep expanding your knowledge and using your findings to implement the best solutions.