There's a famous quote from Eric Ries, the author of 'The Lean Startup’, "Design is the new basis of competition”. Well, he's right.
Take, for example, Apple and Tesla, the two most design-focused companies in the world. Their focus on design and user interface (UI) makes their customers fall in love with their products and turn them into loyal customers for life. Ask any iPhone user to switch to Android or a Tesla owner to trade their car for any other, and you will realize the significant impact its UI has on their customers.
Similarly, your company also needs a well-designed UI to create an impact on your customers. Your website is usually the first touchpoint for your potential customers and can make a great first impression on your customers. Most customers first gather information from a product's/service's website before deciding to engage with the business. Therefore, having an impressive UI on your website is pivotal for creating a positive impression on your customers and their decision to engage with your product.
UI is the sum of the experience of using a website. It includes not just the aesthetics but also the responsiveness, efficiency, and accessibility of the website.
In this blog post, we will see why UI design is essential for your business and users, how UI is designed from branding, and the potential benefits an excellent UI design has for your business.
Why is UI important?
In today's digital world, almost every business needs a website. With a little internet browsing, you will realize that most websites look similar in design, making it difficult for companies to stand out. Your website's UI must tick all the boxes to catch the user's attention – it should be attractive, appealing, and easy-to-use.
Great UI can help you turn visitors of your website into potential customers; it can entice them to explore your offerings further. The straightforward navigation and easy-to-use UI features entail that you understand your target segment and their needs well. It makes them comfortable and happy, encouraging them to engage with you; enhancing the overall experience.
Great UI saves users' time and effort
Simplicity in design is challenging to achieve; ask any designer. But it translates into a compelling user experience that is pleasant and easy to navigate. A simple design has clarity, is intuitive, and is helpful to the user. It provides the user with an optimal experience that saves time and effort. Here are some tips on how you can create a UI that saves time and effort for the users:
The header should have all the core navigation elements – put all essential information in the header, as it is the first thing users see
Have highly visual branding through elements like visuals, words, clickables, and more
State important information using numbers in place of wordy statements
The call to actions (CTAs) should be clear and instantly noticeable
Check how the users will navigate information flow and make it as simple as possible
Use icons wherever appropriate to boost ease of navigations
Make content copy engaging – focus on writing style, vocabulary, and structures
Branding in UI
Branding encompasses visual elements that define a brand and its style, such as logos, colors, and typography. These elements together create a unique brand experience that stays with the users even after they exit the website. Let's look at the two broad approaches used for incorporating branding in UI:
Approach 1: Designing UI from branding
Branding outlines guidelines for brand colors, fonts, logo size and placements, icons, and spacing. UI designers can achieve consistency throughout the product and website by working on brand guidelines, thereby creating a harmonic user experience.
Approach 2: Deriving branding from UI
In some cases, especially in start-ups and small businesses that might not afford branding and UI simultaneously, the UI can be the root idea for future branding of products. If the company becomes successful and decides to get its branding done, the UI can help derive design concepts for other products and marketing.
How can you benefit from a well-designed UI?
Let us look at how a well- designed UI uplifts a business and its credibility!
A good UI design guides user expectation: Your website's design often sets the users’ expectations of your business. How and whether they engage with your business can depend on your website's UI's impression on them.
Delivers easy navigation: Website users are keen on gathering information as quickly and swiftly as possible. The ability to navigate through webpages easily is vital for them. A well-designed UI ensures that users are at ease while going through the website while doing their bit of research. Easily recognizable and familiar elements and a guided path to navigate help in this process.
Enables a competitive advantage: With thousands of similar websites, customers might not remember your business. They will be more likely to remember a website that catches their eyes. Thus, it is imperative to create a distinctive web image for your business through a well-designed and attractive UI.
Helps you save costs: Investing in UI design at an early stage can help you save on expenses later on. Problems with a website, such as difficult navigation, unattractive layout, etc., can later cost the business a great amount.
Improves customer engagement: To acquire customers online, it is essential to engage with them continuously. Using engagement features such as help options, online bots, etc., are excellent options to engage customers and guide them toward purchase.
Helps in customer acquisition and retention (the most important!): UI plays a significant role in acquiring and retaining customers. A website user will be enticed to explore your website and make a purchase only if it appears attractive and well-designed. An engaging, comfortable, and user-friendly UI can help you convert your users into loyal customers.
To Summarize
Designing an effective UI for your website is pivotal to your business; something you should never ignore. It helps make great first impressions on the users, encourages them to engage with you, and has the potential to convert them into loyal customers. An optimized UI saves users’ time and effort, and branding helps give a consistent user experience. A well-designed UI has multiple benefits for your business and could be your first step to success in the digital space.
Our acclaimed Experience Studio offers end-to-end services, right from the development phase of designs, ensuring an intuitive user experience. We continually challenge ourselves to create interactive and user-centric designs that keep our customers and us ahead of the curve. Our years of experience in the vast areas of businesses ensure we stay on top of what's trending in UI in each industry, an advantage for our target customers.
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