Nishant Jain, Partner, Design For Use
There is an old saying – what shows is what sells. These words ring particularly true for the Indian e-commerce segment. With over $20 billion expected to be riding on the market by the year 2017, this space is still recording exponential growth and the number of players in the industry are increasing with every passing day. Keeping that in mind, if one had to identify a single factor that could have a most telling impact on the success or failure of a business venture in the current ecosystem, user experience would definitely feature on the very top of the list.
Surprised? Don’t be. The reason for this becomes quite apparent if one considers all the following factors. Innovation is novel only till the moment it becomes an industry staple; deals and discounts are only short-term fixes to temporarily drive user traffic, and back-end analytics are a company’s internal business. The users will not care how complex or novel the algorithm you used is if the experience delivered by the solution is broken and unsatisfying. They would not prefer your service even if you offer it at the most competitive rates if your interface lags and is not fluid. Today, the digital users want an experience that is intuitive, trendy and seamless.
This is where having a User Experience or UX expert can help your business. Armed with an in-depth knowledge of website and app design integrated with a deep understanding of user behaviour, UX designers play a pivotal role in the end user experience quotient of your website or app. Not only can UX developers help with the placement of ads and the frequency of pop-ups and prompts, they can also design a navigational flow to intuitively identify user selections and guide them towards similar content on your portal. Also, by employing the principles of visual hierarchy, they can ensure that the most important thing on your site gets maximum attention. This directly affects the user behaviour in favour of the product/service. Moreover, UX experts can identify and iron out the current frailties in your website/app design to create a more seamless, robust user experience.
The industry has been gaining a lot of traction with several large e-commerce and m-commerce firms in recent times. The reasons are simple – digital commerce companies wish to tap into the vibrant, dynamic ecosystem offered by the Indian internet user base which currently stands at 354 million and is poised to grow even further.
This has led to an increased demand for the services of expert UX engineers and designers specialising in delivering high-quality end-user experience for digital platforms. From designing websites to creating applications, these UX experts are being sought to deliver the most tailored front-end consumer-facing solutions for the digital companies of all cadres.
What drives customer adoption, ultimately, is what experience digital portals and businesses are delivering to their consumers. Having a UX expert helping out your business can help you drive your own brand proposition through a wonderfully designed user-oriented interface.