Is your latest feature getting the love it deserves?
Imagine you as the proud owner of a product, have invested an immense amount of time, energy, and financial resources into creating a new feature. You poured your heart and soul into its design and development, meticulously addressing every pain point that your users were experiencing. After countless hours of hard work, you finally launch this groundbreaking new feature with eager anticipation, hoping that your users will love it as much as you do. And to top it off, you've even gone above and beyond by incorporating a trendy, flashy design that is sure to impress and pique the curiosity of your users. It's the moment you've been waiting for, and you can't wait to see the positive response from your users as they experience your product's new and improved capabilities.
But there’s more to the story! Will your users share your passion and embrace your innovation? Or will your feature fall flat and fail to make the impact that you hoped for.
As days go by, you realize that very few users are using the new feature and even worse, many users are leaving your app or your website without engaging with it at all. This is causing your conversion rate, which measures how many users take a desired action, to be very low. You are left scratching your head, wondering where you went wrong and why your users are turning their backs on something you thought would be a game changer. It is a frustrating and demoralizing experience, but it doesn't have to be that way.
At Modulr, we refuse to accept this as the norm, and we are dedicated to ensuring that our users never have to endure such experiences.
How do we accomplish this?
We prioritize gaining a deep understanding of what constitutes a great user experience. Every interaction counts, and we consistently prioritize our users in all the projects we undertake, adhering to user-centric design principles whether we're building a product from scratch or improving an existing one. To ensure that our users feel comfortable and engaged with our products, we keep the following 7 principles in mind:
1. Understanding the problem
Understanding the pain points of the users is key for success. It’s all about tuning in and truly listening to what they have to say. To achieve this, active listening and user engagement are paramount.
Begin by conducting user surveys. Expose them to the new features and see how they respond to it. Record their thought process while using it, their comforts, discomforts and frustrations. Ask them if they really need the feature or not. Their feedback will be invaluable in refining your products, ensuring they resonate with your audience.
Also, conduct a thorough competitor analysis and compare your new feature with the ones already present in the market. Analyze their strategies, find out the ‘beloved’ products by the customers and take inspiration from them on how to improve your product.
2. Embracing simplicity
Simplicity is beauty. The key rule to designing user-friendly products is to keep it simple. It is easy to get carried away with flashy designs but ultimately, all users care for is a product that is easy to use and that does their job without any hassle.
Designers often make the mistake of prioritizing aesthetics over usability. They introduce “fancy” representation of features that complicate the user experience and rely heavily on visuals that confuses the users rather than helping them. Visuals are powerful tools for communication but only if they are used strategically. When designing a product, it is important to consider how each visual element contributes to the overall user experience. Are the visuals helping to guide users through the product and reinforcing key information or calls to action?
Aesthetics are often prioritized over usability in product design. The designs include fancy features and rely heavily on visuals that can actually confuse users instead of helping them out. Visuals are powerful tools for communication, but only when they are used strategically. When designing a product, it is important to consider how each visual element contributes to the overall user experience. Are the visuals helping to guide users through the product and reinforcing key information or calls to action?
Labels and clear navigation are also key components of a user-friendly product. While symbols and icons can be helpful, they should never be used at the expense of clear labelling. At the end of the day, users want a product that is assistive, intuitive and easy to navigate. By keeping things simple, you will be well on your way to creating a product or a feature that your users love to use.
3. Engaging with behavioural design
Behavioural design is about understanding how the human mind makes decisions and using that knowledge to make tasks easier and more engaging for users. By tapping into the user’s natural tendencies to complete a task, you can create features that not only feels very intuitive to them but also arouses their curiosity and keeps them hooked.
That’s not all. Applying principles related to behavioural design can also help you to change the perception of your product in the market. With the correct approach, your products can be differentiated from its competitions and position it as the go-to solution for your user’s needs.
4. Keeping it familiar
It is human tendency to avoid the unknown. When it comes to customer experience (CX), it's crucial to remember that people generally prefer to stick to what they know. While it's tempting to constantly come up with new and groundbreaking ideas, it's essential to think about how these changes will affect the user experience. Constantly reinventing the wheel can be risky, both for your business and your customers. It can cause frustration and make people resistant to change. Customers just want a product or solution that simplifies their lives, without having to learn a whole new way of doing things.
While innovation is important, it is crucial to approach it from a customer-centric perspective. It is wise to strike a balance between the desire for novelty and the need for familiarity in order to provide a positive user experience. When users are familiar with a product, they already have the knowledge of how it works and what to expect. When you try to change the “look and feel” of the product or a feature, it can break their expectations and create resistance to using the product at all. They might completely ignore the feature or exit the product.
This is where the User Mental Model comes in. Every time someone uses a new product, a certain expectation is formed in their brains about how the product should be used or how it should look including its features, the icons, the visuals etc. Next time they use a similar product, they expect to find similar features and usability based on their past experiences. That’s because human brains are wired to create mental models of everything including the products we use to avoid relearning everything from scratch.
By understanding how users think and interact with products, you can provide a familiar and intuitive experience. Instead of uprooting users from their comfort zone, you can build on their existing knowledge. This way they will know what the new feature is meant to do and will engage with it accordingly.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can't innovate or push the boundaries of what’s possible. There’s plenty of room for creativity and new ideas within a familiar design framework. But by keeping the overall design and user experience familiar and intuitive, you can ensure that users will be more receptive to the new features.
5. Validating the ideas
To truly ensure that users engage well with the new features, it is crucial to validate the designs. This is where user testing comes in. By observing how users behave while using your product, you can gain insights into what they really think about the new feature. These insights can prove to be valuable for you to improve your designs.
User testing is a valuable tool to understand the mental model of your users. It can help you gather feedback to identify the pain points or any usability issues which then can be worked upon through iterations. The results of user testing can be used to identify the missing links in the design and then improve them to meet the user’s needs and expectations.
6. Ensuring customer satisfaction
Our strongest ‘Persuasion Principle’ is to keep our customers happy. At Modulr, we take pride in creating products that truly satisfy our customers. We understand that when it comes to using a tool, simplicity, familiarity, and convenience are what matter the most. That's why we always put user experience design at the forefront of our development process.
By placing the users at the center of the design process and product development you will win half of your battle. The key is to continuously listen to users, iterate and adapt based on their needs and feedback.
7. Making them come back for more
To captivate customers and keep them coming back for more, the product must have the “it“ factor. They need to be engaging, fun to use and designed for users’ convenience. Intuitive designs and persuasive Calls-to-Actions (CTAs) keep users hooked, while tailored content and personalisation creates a sense of relevance. Users should effortlessly ‘just get it’ and feel like the product was made with their convenience in mind. Once the product proves to be a trustworthy companion, the customers become loyal advocates and spread the word about the product. Creating a product that users love and keeps them coming back for more requires a thoughtful and user-centric approach.
Once again, it all begins by immersing ourselves in the user's world, gaining a profound understanding of their needs and pain points. Simplicity and familiarity are the guiding principles that shape a product's essence, effortlessly inviting users to embrace its features. By embracing behavioural design, we tap into the psychology of user behaviour, creating an intuitive and engaging experience that feels tailor-made for them. User testing becomes the crucible where ideas are refined and validated, ensuring that every aspect of the product is finely tuned to exceed customer expectations. In this symbiotic relationship, users not only become loyal advocates but also enthusiastic ambassadors, sharing positive experiences with others. Building using these principles will effortlessly captivate users, deliver a delightful user experience, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates.
At Modulr, we believe in prioritising user experience design and continuously listening to users, iterating, and adapting based on their needs and feedback. By creating engaging, intuitive, and personalized experiences, we aim to build products that not only satisfy customers but make them come back for more. So, let's embark on the journey of crafting irresistible products that leave a lasting impression, cultivate loyalty, and inspire users to embrace innovation.