The Importance of UX/UI in the Development of Mobile Apps

ByBuildinary's Editorial Team

The Importance of UX/UI in the Development of Mobile Apps

Table of Contents

• Why focus on UX
• Apps and conversion

User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are central to the success of mobile apps. Without a proper interface, users may not be able to utilize the features of your app fully. Ultimately, a poor UX can result in low user retention and engagement. It is safe to say that all apps that have a high conversion rate invest a great deal of time and energy into improving their UI and UX. There is no way people will patronize an app if it wasn’t designed to be easily usable and provide an enjoyable experience.

Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of UX. In an interview with Fortune last year, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia explained the importance of considering customers when creating products. He described this as “design thinking.”

“Design thinking is another way of saying empathize with the customer,” Gebba said. “It’s consideration for the person you’re designing for…What it means is you’re going to spend the time and effort to understand the needs of the person you’re designing for such that you can create something that’s valuable to them.”

Why focus on UX

While user interface describes the outer/surface design of an app that users interact with to control it, user experience refers to every aspect of a users experience with an app. Therefore, creating a UI that users can operate intuitively is one of the elements of UX.

User experience is one of the underlying factors that separates successful apps from all the others. According to a study by Forrester, companies earn $100 for every $1 spent on improving their UX. And that’s not all. Research shows that users don’t mind paying more to get a better experience. A study by Walker concluded that by 2020, user experience would be the main factor that differentiates brands – not price. This means if you want to create an app that will be successful, UX must be at the heart of your design.

Apps and conversion

It is clear that apps are an excellent avenue to drive conversion. According to a report from Criteo, apps have a 120% better conversion rate than desktops and mobile sites.

One of the main benefits of providing great UX is conversion. It can be tricky to measure the conversion rates of mobile apps because each app is unique and may require different conversion actions. For example, on social media apps like Whatsapp, the conversion goal is to get users to interact with their friends through the app. However, for an e-commerce app like Amazon, conversion means viewing and buying items.

If the UX of an app appeals to users, the high level of engagement will translate to a high conversion rate. It is important to note that attuning the UX of your mobile apps to appeal to users is not a one-time thing. It must be a continuous effort. Essentially, putting users first should be part of the culture of your organization. Most app developers spend up to 20% of their budget on UX improvement.

In recent months, one of the main focus of UX improvement has been to add diverse emoji to social media platforms and other apps. Some of the biggest social media platforms on the market including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have updated their apps to support different emoji. Recently, Tinder has been calling for more emoji options particularly emoji for interracial couples.

This goes to show that it is not only the major features that count, but minor things like personalized greetings and emoji options can go a long way to improve UX. Every marketer knows the importance of giving users more options and keeping up with the trends.

Here are some ways to boost your app’s conversion rate by improving UX:

1. Provide personalization options.
2. Use push notifications and in-app messages to drive user engagement.
3. Make your app easy to use.
4. Harness user data analytics to discover which aspects of your app users are drawn to and give them more of that.
5. Find different ways to enable users to complete your conversion goal. For example, Whatsapp started out as a text-based chat messaging platform. However, the developers of the app found more ways to drive interaction among users by adding voice and video calling functionality as well as status messages.