Have you ever stopped to think about the role user experience plays in your daily life? Picture this: You’re at a subway station. After climbing a flight of stairs to the platform, you see the train approaching. You’re ready to validate your ticket only to realize that you’ve passed the validation terminal below! You’ve missed your train, and now you’ve got to face a round trip back down the stairs. You’re late.

This is an example of a typical scenario that leads many people to drive their own vehicles rather than take public transit.

In the virtual world, user experience (UX) designers and user interface (UI) designers are responsible for alleviating problems with user experience. They are constantly trying to create better engagement to help customers better navigate through content.

Let’s look at some definitions.

UX

UX or UXD is an acronym for “user experience design” and is often driven by research to understand the user and how to solve their problems. Once you’ve built your website, you need to track its performance and make constant tweaks to address your audiences ever-evolving expectations and ensure your customers are satisfied with the site’s usability and accessibility. Good UX should make the user more productive and give them access to the information and features they need.

UI

UI refers to “user interface,” and it’s a subset of UX. Specifically, it refers to the elements you see on a screen and the elements you interact with — things like menu bars and buttons. Alternatively, UX refers to the broader concept of how these features support the overall user experience.

Ultimately, revamping your application’s UX or UI is a multi-step process. It entails looking for ways to make your content or application more responsive and operate in a manner that meets the user’s expectations. This is accomplished through research and testing of information architecture, wireframes, and visual elements.

So when developers focus on engaging customers, they focus on having a deep understanding of what they need to make their experience as seamless as possible.

Beyond making sure your presentation is up and running, you need to make it a central hub of information by giving it an intuitive interface. Being vigilant and remaining ahead of the curve means constantly evolving and personalizing your content.

Building a good user interface starts with wireframing. Developers build wireframes to create a rough layout of their content so they can see how users will interact with it. Leading companies will show these wireframes to pilot or test audiences in order to pinpoint where the designs can be enhanced or improved before going live.

Delighted users = better conversion rates.

Good user experience design means providing information, guidance and visuals that work to keep users engaged with your content. You should avoid leaving the user to guess how they should interact with your content as this often results in frustration and confusion. This confusion breaks a user’s flow and ultimately affects the sales conversion.

As someone who has been in the software industry for over 10 years, I have witnessed many business owners push the bounds of what their company can do when they take investing time and money into developing a winning brand seriously. There is no secret formula as up to 10% of businesses fail. However, companies gain an advantage by hiring a great team that can guide the process of coming up with new ideas to stay competitive.