Before you fully get in over your head with Google AdWords, though, you need to make sure your business is really ready for this kind of pay-per-click campaign. Google Adwords, after all, isn’t a magic bullet for marketing success, and a poorly planned and ran AdWords campaign can easily lead to disaster.
It isn’t beneficial for a company to immediately dive into an AdWords campaign simply because other companies talk about how profitable it can be. To get the most benefit from using Google Adwords, you should have these elements in place:
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1. Customer Demand
The first ingredient is customer demand. If your customers are not searching for your product or service in Google, then, obviously, AdWords search advertising is not going to work for you. So, before you get too excited about creating your first campaign, you need to verify there is, in fact, search volume for what you’re going to offer.
The tool to use is the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool. Besides showing the amount of traffic for any given keyword, its advanced options can also show you how competitive a word is, the number of local monthly searches, relevant alternative phrases, and the cost per click of the keyword.
When coming up with or settling on keywords, ask yourself if the keywords are actually being searched for enough on Google to justify your efforts. This can also help you determine the intent of the user and if you can afford the CPC of the keyword.
2. Marketing Budget
After doing some research and narrowing down your target keywords, calculate your maximum cost per click (CPC) you’re willing to spend. The more competitive a keyword is, the more you’ll have to spend (or bid) on it. Don’t just go after keywords that are competitive, target ones you can afford and which will most likely give you profitable results.
You don’t necessarily want to push your budget. For example, if you’re maximum CPC is $5, you’re more likely to make a profit by using a keyword that costs $4 instead of $5.
To get an idea of what your maximum CPC should be, you’ll need to assign numbers to your website conversion rate, your advertising profit margin, and the profit per customer.
There is a handy formula from Kissmetrics that can help you calculate your maximum CPC. It goes like this:
Max CPC = (profit per customer) x (1 – profit margin) x (website conversion rate)
3. Understanding of the Competition
If you really want to crush the keyword game, you have to start with those high-volume keywords, but you should also know what keywords your competitors are using.
There are several tools that can help you spy on your competitors, like one that is aptly named KeywordSpy. This tool collects and provides information on your competitors’ past activities, including the top keywords used and how long they have been using each keyword. If you see someone using a certain set of words for a long time, you can take it as an indication that that keyword has been successful for them, which means you should consider similar terms.
You can even look up a competitor’s past advertising and marketing copy and material that feature their top performing keywords and then export all the necessary information into your AdWords account.
4. A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and a Deal Too Good to Pass Up
There are millions of websites out there promoting all sorts of brands, products, and services. Any kind of digital marketing, including the utilization of a Google AdWords campaign, will be useless if your brand merely blends into the noisy background. You need to offer products and services that are unique and will separate you from the competition.
If you don’t yet have a USP, you can look to your company’s strengths, get insights from your current customers and look for opportunities your competitors have missed. A strong USP will catch people’s attention and drive more traffic to your site which will lead to more conversions and sales.
In addition to a strong USP, you need to have an offer that customers and potential customers won’t be able to resist. Coming up with an irresistible offer may seem fun and easy, but it can be harder than it looks. After all, every advertiser is seasoned in creating attention-grabbing offer ads.
What are the characteristics of a powerful irresistible ad? Well, they must offer value to the potential buyer, they must be believable, they don’t involve risk, and there is a clear call to action.
5. Outstanding Ads (and the ability to create them regularly)
When you use AdWords, you pay each time someone clicks on your ads. With that in mind, you need to create ads that not only lead to clicks to your website, but you only want high-quality prospects who are likely to convert into sales to click on your ads. This means you need to create eye-catching ads that speak to a specific audience.
In Google AdWords, the goal is to increase sales through more visibility and more clicks. The number of clicks you get can even have an effect on the costs of your ads, because it contributes to the overall Quality Score.
In other words, it pays to create exceptional, well-thought out ads.
The text of an AdWords ad is very limited, so you need to be quick to the point and only feature the most important information (in an interesting way). The standard elements of these ads include a headline, a two-line description and a display URL. You’re only given 25 characters for the headline and 35 characters for a description. Make them count.
6. Dedicated Landing Pages
If you’re new to internet marketing, you may naturally think you want the homepage of your website to rank for all your top keywords, and you may even want to send all the traffic from your PPC ads there, too.
This is a common mistake that can easily derail the effectiveness of your AdWords campaign.
When you create an ad in AdWords, make sure it goes to its own dedicated page on your website (not the homepage). You want the user to have a pleasant experience on your site so they make a purchase. Dumping them on your homepage and leaving it up to them to navigate your site to find the item they’re interested in will lead to high, costly bounce rates.
Instead, create a dedicated, destination page to link the ad too. Take the time to create a page that is relevant to the text in the ad and makes it extremely easy for the visitor to take the next action.
7. The Ability to Track and Measure Results
Before you make your ads on Google AdWords “live,” you should understand how to track the results of each of your advertising campaigns. If you don’t set up tracking, you’ll lose insightful data that can drastically improve your efforts. You will also be unable to identify weaknesses in the campaign and make necessary changes and improvements.
In Google AdWords, campaign tracking is found in Conversion Tracking. You’ll have to make sure this is set up and activated before your ads are deployed.
To set up Conversion Tracking, you must define what a successful conversion is for your company and its advertising objectives. Simply click on the + Conversion button and enter your conversion definition. A piece of code will be generated. This string of code will then need to be installed on the last page of the conversion funnel. For many companies, this is a “thank you” page.
So, Is This The Time To Get Started?
A Google AdWords campaign is an effective method for your business to increase sales and be successful. Always remember, though, just as a well-planned and timed advertising campaign can benefit your company, a poorly planned AdWords campaign can hurt your company.
It is best to familiarize yourself with the Google AdWords platform and be sure to have the abovementioned components in place before making your ads “live.”
Working with Google AdWords can be intimidating, confusing, frustrating and time-consuming, but you can determine if you’re ready to jump in based on the above criteria. Of course, if you still aren’t sure, you can always discuss your options with an experienced company.
Digital strategy is the application of digital technologies to business models to form new differentiating business capabilities. In the future, all business strategy will be digital strategy.
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Evolving the Definition of Business Strategy
Digital strategy focuses on using technology to improve business performance, whether that means creating new products or reimagining current processes. It specifies the direction an organization will take to create new competitive advantages with technology, as well as the tactics it will use to achieve these changes. This usually includes changes to business models, as new technology makes it possible for innovative companies to provide services that weren’t previously possible.
Today, technology has integrated with business to become something more than hardware or software. As digital technology becomes more pervasive and companies move further in the journey of digital transformation, digital strategy and business strategy will be the same thing. For now, it is still useful to use the term “digital strategy” to focus the effort behind digital initiatives.
It’s important to remember that digital strategy is both a concept and a thing — that is, a digital strategy should eventually lead to the creation of a concrete plan or roadmap. While you can keep changing the specific tactics you’ve decided to pursue, there should also be a clear commitment to your understanding of what digital means for your company.
As an example, say your digital strategy (ultimate goal) is to monetize basic productivity software that your business has already developed and uses internally. At first, you lay out a strategy (plan) to package it as a mobile app and sell it to individual users. Later, you realize that it has more value if you sell it to businesses to incorporate into their own mobile apps. Your strategy (ultimate goal) didn’t change, but your strategy (plan) did. Changing the guiding idea of your digital strategy should amount to a big shift or reorientation for your company, but ideally, the concrete steps will be flexible enough to allow you to pivot as needed.Digital strategy needs to become the essence of business strategy.REQUEST A DEMOSee how Liferay can help solve your unique challenges
Digital Strategy in the Context of Digital Transformation
There is a tendency to talk about digital transformation interchangeably with digital strategy. The two terms are closely related, but differ in scope. Digital transformation drives change in three areas: customer experience, operational processes and business models. The process of digital transformation requires coordination across the entire organization, and involves business culture changes.
Digital strategy, on the other hand, focuses on technology, not culture. Digital strategy is most relevant to changes in business models, and uses technology to create the capabilities a company needs to become a digital business. Setting down a strategy is a key component of the transformation process, and ensures that technology is being implemented in a way that supports the business objectives.
Digital Strategy vs. IT Strategy
According to Accenture, digital strategy looks for ways to use technology to transform activity, and therefore business, whereas IT strategy aims to transform technology in isolation from the rest of the business. Traditionally, the process of IT strategy has been to determine which technologies to invest in, based on the current direction of the business. Digital strategy instead looks at the activities and processes that need to be transformed to provide better services for customers. Then, it looks for the right combination of technologies and strategies that can be combined to create these experiences. Digital leaders have found new competitive advantages and opportunities for growth by making this shift in strategy.Digital strategy instead looks at the activities and processes that need to be transformed to provide better services for customers.
Where to Start
How do you build a digital strategy? Rather than asking, “What’s our digital strategy?”, an article from Harvard Business Review suggests using the five following questions to ground your understanding of digital technology:
Does digital technology change the businesses you should be in?
How could digital technology improve the way you add value to the businesses you are in?
Could digital technology change your target customer?
Does digital technology affect the value proposition to your target customer?
How can digital technology enhance the enterprise capabilities that differentiate you from your competition?
To some companies, these questions will have obvious answers, especially those that have already experienced disruption or competition from new digital players. The intention is to identify how digital changes what you do, and then refine your understanding from broad industry trends to specific values that will form the foundation of your strategy. By beginning with a clear understanding of your company’s purpose, you can avoid wasting time and resources implementing technology that doesn’t enable new competitive advantages.REQUEST A DEMOSee how Liferay can help solve your unique challenges
Common Elements of Digital Strategy
Choose a Leader — This is arguably the most important part of creating a digital strategy, but choosing the right person will depend on company culture, structure and priorities. Whether companies place leadership with the CEO or an appointed Chief Digital Officer, the leader’s influence will need to match the scope of digital strategy; otherwise, it will be difficult to create the full buy-in from each department necessary to make effective changes.
Attack vs. Defend — McKinsey & Company emphasizes that companies would do well to categorize their potential threats and opportunities in digital business, then compare these against their own purpose. This clarifies whether a proactive or defensive stance needs to guide new initiatives.
Take a Measured Approach — Digital strategy often incorporates a process for assessing whether new technology will really complement or grow the current business. If you fear that your company is already behind on digital, it can be tempting to rush into a project without looking at how it fits your current strategy. By taking a measured approach, you can avoid wasting resources on initiatives that don’t align with your business’s needs and priorities.
Future Proof — The goal of digital transformation is to create an appropriate foundation for digital business. This means creating an organization that can continue to reinvent itself as necessary to keep up with changes in technology and customer expectations. Digital strategy should be visionary enough to carry companies through changes in the digital economy, in a way that continues to bring a digital edge to the business.
Have you ever been confused with the concepts of customer experience and user experience thinking that they are one and the same? For most, it’s still unclear what’s the difference between the two terms. While UX is about digital product usability, CX is about how the customer feels about the brand throughout the whole customer journey. It’s what closes out conversions, and drives long-term loyalty.
In this blog post, we’re going to sort things out and look a bit closer at these two quite different experiences. First of all, it’s good to understand what people mean when they use these terms. So let’s take a look at the meaning of each concept.
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WHAT IS USER EXPERIENCE?
In 1995, Don Norman coined the term of user experience, to describe the set of activities his team was engaged in at Apple Computers. Eventually, the term UX has taken a more limited interpretation in practice. It’s a user’s interaction with a specific digital product, such as a website, app, or software. It focuses on the digital interface in terms of utility, usability, navigation, information architecture, ease of use, and visual hierarchy. The key UX metrics are:
Success rate: The percentage of correctly completed tasks by the users. It’s about how effectively users are able to reach the goal that you want them to reach. For example, ten users attempted to register on the platform: eight of them succeeded and two of them failed. You need to find out why these two failed. The higher the success rate, the better the UX.
Error rate: The number of mistakes the user makes when interacting with the product. It gives an idea of how user-friendly and intuitive your product is. The higher the error rate, the more problems with usability.
Abandonment rate: The percentage of users who abandoned the task before completing it. The reasons for abandonment may be different: from struggling with complicated navigation to forcing users to update their software.
Completion time: The amount of time a user needs to complete the task. The shorter the processing time. The better the user experience.
Clicks to completion: The amount of time it takes the user to complete the task.
UX is an inevitable part of the CX. To put it another way, UX is the experience your users have with your product, whereas CX is the experience they have with the entire brand.
On the other hand, customer experience has a broader meaning. CX describes a larger experience a user has with an organization. It’s an umbrella concept that encompasses the way customers perceive your brand and feel when interacting with it across every stage of the customer journey. Above all, CX is the sum of all touchpoints, interactions, and engagements that a customer has with a brand and a product throughout the life of a customer relationship.
The customer experience metrics help you understand how loyal and satisfied the customers are with your brand. Customer experience is measured with metrics like:
Net Promoter Score (NPS): The gold standard customer experience metric. It stands for the willingness of the customer to recommend your company and product to others.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Measures customer satisfaction level with a product and the entire interaction with a company.
Customer Effort Score (CES): The metric that measures how easy it was for a user to interact with a product or service (solving an issue, finding the information, signing up, etc.).
For any digital product development, user experience optimization across all platforms and devices has become a basic rule. No matter how fancy your product might be, if your users don’t know how to navigate and use it, they won’t come back. In the hearts and minds of humans, no feature or benefit will ever outweigh usability. In fact, you have only seconds to capture users’ attention and keep them. The UX connects your users with your products and increases brand loyalty. UX design is focused on research, analysis, and testing, and because of that these risks can be reduced. In addition, investing in a good UX design can help improve SEO rankings.
WHY IS CX IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
Customer experience isn’t a buzzword. It relates to customer satisfaction and their willingness to pay for a particular product. In other words, the more satisfied customers are, the more likely they are to stay loyal, become your brand advocates, and recommend your product to their friends. We live in an experience-brand economy. Today customers are buying not just products. They buy brands that can transform their lives. Now more than ever, companies should rethink their processes and deliver an exceptional customer experience so that their customers come back.
To dilute the theoretical part of the differences between CX & UX, let’s take a look at the example of the biggest digital music service Spotify.
At the heart of Spotify’s customer experience strategy is delivering a tailored listening experience to the users. One of the wizards behind Spotify is user researchers who work together to understand what users are doing on the platform and why. Spotify is considered to be among the top of customer-obsessed brands. They continually work on uncovering customer insights to improve their entire experience. Spotify’s approach to the customer experience is multifaceted. First of all, the onboarding process is fast and clear. Spotify makes it easy for users to collaborate on playlists and share music, follow friends, check their music preferences. By using prediction models and data analytics, Spotify offers simple suggestions like “Your Daily Mix” or “Discover Weekly”, thus introducing each user personalized playlists.
No surprise, the next example that we’d like to mention is our favorite Netflix. A lot has been written about their approach to creating a personalized experience.
Netflix managed to develop cutting edge algorithms. These algorithms allow them to serve content that caters to the users’ tastes and preferences. This level of personalization is what makes users come back for more. No doubt that Netflix is an industry giant with a great staff, including data scientists. Not every business can afford such a level of customer experience approach. But what each business, no matter small or big, can learn from Netflix is being customer-centric and delivering a great experience with every interaction. Data informs every decision they make at Netflix. It begins with data collection. Ensure you collect data points across all customer touchpoints. This includes complaints, support requests, transactions, social media, and customer feedback. Netflix has turned customer engagement into a science. They’ve prioritized learning who are their customers and how to reach them.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Are UX and CX different? Yes, they are. Should they be considered completely separate and exclusive disciplines? No, if you want to win the loyalty of your users and customers. To make sure you’re making the right investments in both CX and UX, ask your customers. With this knowledge, you don’t have to choose between investing in your CX or UX.
Picture such a situation: you install the application and the first thing that you are asked to do is to register. Don’t you find it annoying when you need to enter your email, create a password, and share your private data before you even get to know the essence and the value of the app? Quite often it results in deleting the app without even giving it a try. As a result, it leads to poor user engagement. Think about it like this: the app market is oversaturated. Apart from technical issues, there is also a number of other reasons why users churn (https://cxdojo.com/how-to-increase-user-engagement-a-three-step-structure):
Lack of delivery of the basic product value.
Ineffective first experience.
Inability to motivate users.
If your app requires an account before the user can interact with it, make sure to provide a valuable user onboarding experience. The so-called hook that will arouse interest in the product and elicit further interaction between the user and the app. Otherwise, they might get demotivated and not provide the information necessary for registration. This will result in lower conversion and engagement rates.
There are a few ways in which you can optimize user onboarding:
Not asking for registration from the very first screen.
Not forcing any email confirmation.
Provide value and show users what benefits they should expect.
Based on the example of one of our recent projects, we would like to introduce you to our three-step structure on how to increase user engagement and retention.
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ABOUT THE PROJECT
While traveling the world, our client faced the challenge of finding kid-friendly restaurants. It turns out that the availability of such places is not a common thing in many countries and cities. He had to spend time searching such restaurants, exploring their web pages, and reading reviews to find the right one. “Wouldn’t it be great to have all of them available in one place?” he thought. With this in mind, he came up with the idea of creating a mobile application that would allow us to easily find such restaurants when traveling with kids. So, we helped with creating a digital strategy for this product idea.
HOW TO INCREASE USER ENGAGEMENT?
Apart from mobile application development, our team was responsible for the entire customer experience. Our client wanted to start engaging users from the very first version of the app; gather relevant data and update the service based on the received feedback.
In a nutshell, the main focus was to lead the user unobtrusively from the pre-register phase to full interaction with the app.
STEP # 1 – MAKE USER ONBOARDING VALUE-ORIENTED
We wanted to present the app’s benefits before asking users to register. The idea is to let customers understand how useful the app is for them and whether it’s worth wasting time and registering on the first screen. At this stage, the user gets the minimum functionality from the app but doesn’t instantly prompt to create an account. Time is priceless, and people want to know if they will spend it profitably. Simply put, your users will immediately know what they get from your app, without demanding anything in return. When users understand your app’s benefits first, they’re more likely to register the app.
As part of our project, when a person downloads the app, the first thing they get is an opportunity to try the basic functionality of the app. In our case, the application shows one kid-friendly restaurant in the neighborhood. Instead of forcing users to create a new account straight away, we let them try the app and see its value. Such an approach ensures that users get to know your app and what problem it will solve.
STEP #2 – REWARD YOUR USER AFTER REGISTRATION
The next step is registration itself. After the user creates an account, we reward them by giving a little more. Instead of one restaurant, we now show three restaurants. Thus, there’s no need for users to log in each time they access the app. The moment they open the application, they immediately see three kid-friendly restaurants in their location.
STEP #3 – OFFER USERS MORE BENEFITS
The third step allows buying our subscription, which includes the full package: advanced options, the use of filters (such as the availability of baby carriage ramps, suitable furniture, children’s meals on the menu, a play area, and other), access to the entire list of kid-friendly restaurants and their descriptions, etc. The idea is that you can subscribe only after trying the key functionality of the app (step one), and only after that decide whether you want to register and try the premium version.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Smoothly adding functionality allows users to first understand what our service is about and decide whether they want to spend time interacting with the app. With each step, we receive different statistics and get to know our users better.
That is to say, if a user installs the app, tries the basic functionality but doesn’t register, then we need to optimize the first step so that there are more registrations. Accordingly, the more registrations, the more chances that the user will buy a subscription. This structure is just one way to boost user engagement, increase app retention, and improve app stickiness.
The only thing is that you’ve never formulated a social media strategy for your company before. Sure, your business has a Facebook and Twitter account that it occasionally posts on with an interesting industry article or to get the word out about a promotion, but that’s about the extent of it.
You hear how your company needs to be present on social media, but you aren’t seeing the results that are everyone keeps claiming are yours for the taking.
Effectively posting on social media requires a well-thought-out strategy that must be continually tweaked and re-implemented. The occasional posting about company news or promotions will no longer cut it.
How do you start a social media strategy? There are so many social media channels out there, which ones should you post on? What kind of content should you post to get the most engagement? Should you pay to promote your posts? Do you know where to look to see how well everything is performing?
Before you get overwhelmed, here is a guide to get you started on the right path of a successful social media strategy for your business:
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Step 1: Set Goals and Objectives
Before you start a campaign in any business, you need to have goals and objectives in place to assess progress and know whether you’ve achieved success. A social media strategy is no different. If you don’t have any goals or objectives written out, you won’t know how your campaign is performing. These provide the foundation of your blueprint for your strategy.
Every subsequent course of action within the strategy is aimed at meeting or exceeding these goals and objectives.
With goals and objectives, you can quickly see when and where your social media campaign is going awry and make immediate changes to put it back on course.
When creating goals and objectives, it the S.M.A.R.T method is a good starting point. According to this method, the goals and objectives are to be specific (S), measurable (M), attainable (A), relevant (R) and time-bound (T).
Step 2: Do a Social Media Self-Audit
After creating the goals and objectives for your campaign, you should look at where your current strategy stands.
What social media platforms is your company currently posting on? What kind of material is being posted? How much or little engagement is there? When do you post? How often do you post?
It helps to create a spreadsheet to document your answers to the above questions. Use this spreadsheet and compare it against your strategy’s goals and objectives. Are there things you’re already doing well? What needs changing in order for your goals and objectives need to be met?
Besides looking at the health of your current social media channels, be sure to completely fill out your company’s social media profiles, with a clear, identifiable picture and keywords. Completed social media profiles make your brand easier to find by consumers and it adds to your brand’s credibility and authority.
Step 3: Research
Maybe your company is posting on the wrong social media channels, or posting the wrong type of content, or is currently not on another social network it could leverage for increased attention. Maybe your posts are going out at the wrong time.
It can be tempting to be on as many social media networks as possible. The downside of this is that you will wear yourself out, waste valuable time, and produce hurried, boring bulk postings.
Social Media Strategy 2.jpgYou need to do some research on your industry, your desired audience, and even your competitors. Where are your ideal audience members most active? When are they most likely to engage? What interests them and what messaging catches their attention?
There are multiple social networks that allow you to gain insights into these questions. Facebook, for example, allows users to target specific audiences, see the interactions on their posts, the best and worst time for post engagement as well as demographics of those that interact with the posts.
In terms of scheduling posts, there are automation tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite that allow you to sync and schedule posts on multiple social networks in one place.
Observing what your competitors are doing and how well they’re faring on social media can give you tips and tricks on what to try out and what to avoid when formulating and implementing your social media campaign.
Step 4: Create Quality Content
You can be on every social media network and still not get the engagement and conversions you’re looking for because your content is bland, sales, useless and impersonal.
You won’t know what to write without first identifying your ideal audience and social media networks. When coming up with content, you want to not only catch people’s attention, but you want to make your brand stand out as an authoritative and trustworthy source of information in your industry.
As you do this, it’s important to design your content to take advantage of each individual platform. Twitter, for instance, only allows for 140 characters and utilizes hashtags. Instagram, and Pinterest utilize images. Facebook utilizes text, images and videos. YouTube utilizes videos.
Your content needs to match the format of the platform, be interesting, and be useful. It should not come off as impersonal or condescending. Have your content make your brand appear as a person, not an organization.
Like putting together a social media audit spreadsheet, and using scheduling tools for posts, creating an editorial calendar can help guide you as to what you write. With an editorial calendar, you’ll know what you’re going to write about and have details
Step 5: Continued Assessment
Once you research your audience, craft your content and schedule the posts on the appropriate social networks, you may be tempted to sit back and relax.
If you put a lot of time, resources and energy into a social media strategy, you want to make sure the ROI is worth it. Otherwise y, u’ll remain stuck and stagnant in your efforts.
Nobody wants to stay stuck and not grow.
As with any aspects of internet marketing, things in social media change constantly.
If you post a Facebook post at 2 pm one week and get a lot of engagement can turn into an ignored post the next week. Consumers also get bored seeing the same content all the time.
Social media strategies require time and a plan.
Just doing the occasional posting on a few social media channels will not result in a successful social strategy.
A well-performing social strategy begins with goals and objectives. You need to see where your current strategy is, research the best social media channels and your target customers and create high-quality, useful and interesting content.
Being a product owner can be overwhelming – like you’re trying to juggle lots of things at once. Between defining the product scope, creating a great experience for your customers, working with cross-functional teams, and understanding when something is your number one priority and all focus should be on that.
In this list of never-ending tasks, the key one is the ability to manage project risks. Risks are almost inevitable, and to mitigate them, you need to prepare yourself. Even a simple activity can turn into an unexpected problem. Addressing and realizing those risks in advance can save you time, costs, and sometimes your product. When you plan the digital product development process, first of all, answer this question: “do I understand the problem I’m solving, and is this problem worth solving?”
In this article, you’ll find more about risk mitigation planning, why you need it, and how to build products customers actually need.
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WHY DO PRODUCTS FAIL?
First of all, let’s figure out what are the reasons that something can go wrong in your project. Here are some of the most common risks associated with product development.
RISK 1: CREATING PRODUCT WITH NO MARKET DEMAND
As an industry expert, you might think that you know what your users need. This assumption creates a risk of working on a product that, as a result, will be used only by you and possibly by several more people (sorry for being straightforward). The risk is higher as you grow the product idea on assumptions or without conducting enough user research.
There are several questions that you should answer to minimize the risk of building a product that doesn’t meet users’ needs and wants.
The result of your answers will help you to differentiate your product and create a unique value proposition (UVP).
RISK 2: SETTING UNREALISTIC DEADLINES
There’s no universal formula to guarantee project completion on time. However, there are a few tips that can help you mitigate the chances to fail meeting the project deadlines.
Create a project roadmap with clear objectives, expected results, and ways to achieve them. Otherwise, you will work without understanding the final result the team should achieve.
Once you have a roadmap, you may want to make some adjustments. For example, you decided to follow the latest web design trends and add more complex and dynamic elements such as animated scrolling. It’s fine to add fresh solutions but keep in mind that frequent changes require more time to develop and test, and usually result in project delays. When you create a project scope, try to think through all the details as carefully as possible, so that during the implementation phase there will be fewer unexpected tasks.
RISK 3: UNDERESTIMATING HUMAN RESOURCES
Things happen. When the work on the product is in full swing, one of the developers leaves the project.
As a result, you might experience team members’ change-over or lack of qualified specialists. To minimize risks associated with human resources, try to organize team members into small groups. In this way, team members can jointly plan a project, share knowledge, perform code reviews and work together on tasks from the get-go. Also, the team should be able to easily perform work if one of its members is temporarily absent or has left the team.
RISK 4: CHOOSING A WRONG TECHNOLOGY
Before you start working on the project, you’ll want to be meticulous when deciding on a tech stack and whether it suits your business goals. This choice can make or break the entire product performance and UX. Here are four (at least basic) rules we recommend to keep an eye on when deciding on a new technology stack for your next project:
Make sure that tech is correctly updated. Old and legacy technology can negatively impact your business. Failing to keep up with the times can turn against you. Increased costs, crashes, and system downtime, decreased team productivity, legal compliances, and security holes are just the tip of the iceberg and consequences of using outdated technology. So consider regular upgrades an essential part of your strategic toolkit.
Focus on ongoing support. You don’t want your product to focus on a system you can’t be confident about. This means that if you decide to choose a particular technology, make sure it’s actively developing with constant updates. Otherwise, you risk ending up with a product with an uncertain future.
Choose technology that is reliable and tested. Don’t blindly follow trends. Consider whether the stack you are about to choose is just a fad or a well-established technology with a good track record.
Keep in mind personal requirements. When choosing a stack, one may rely on the technical expertise of the team. It’s not quite right. First of all, choose a technology based on the problem you want to solve. Think about who your users are and how to provide them with a great user experience and product performance. For example, if your project is complex the combination of multiple programming languages is inevitable. On the other hand, if you aim to enter the market quickly, you can start with less sophisticated technologies.
HOW TO MITIGATE RISKS IN THE DIGITAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS?
Here are a couple of things to catch up on when managing risks and your project:
Start with identifying the risks early on in your project.
Communicate about risks.
Prioritize the risks.
Understand the reason for and impact of the risks.
Develop a risk mitigation plan.
1. START WITH IDENTIFYING THE RISKS EARLY ON IN YOUR PROJECT
You can’t resolve a risk if it’s unknown. For starters, try to make assumptions, brainstorm all potential risks, and write them down. This way you structure all of your concerns. Think of all the possible things that can go wrong and note them. Don’t forget to refer to past projects as this is a source of real risks that you can prevent in the current project. After you make a list of possible risks and review them, assign who is responsible for what risk.
2. COMMUNICATE ABOUT RISKS
Don’t be afraid and don’t avoid talking about risks. On the contrary, pay close attention to risk communication during team meetings and make sure that everyone in the team perceives risk management as an integral part of the project.https://giphy.com/embed/rZwm8oOApXjDBjs3Pk
Prioritization focuses on what matters most in the risk mitigation process. However, ‘what matters most’ can vary during the project: some risks may have a higher impact and probability than others. To evaluate what risks may have the most negative impact, and have a higher probability of occurrence create or use ready-made evaluation tools to categorize and prioritize the risks.
4. UNDERSTAND THE REASON FOR AND IMPACT OF THE RISKS.
Before defining how to manage risks, the project team should identify what can cause the identified risks. Think about the effects and consequences of a particular risk. https://giphy.com/embed/SAAMcPRfQpgyI
First, let the entire team answer these questions as accurately as possible:
What can potentially cause each risk?
How will each risk impact the project in terms of costs and product quality?
The acquired information will provide valuable insights into your project, and you will find it helpful later when optimizing the risks.
5. DEVELOP A RISK MITIGATION PLAN
For each major risk identified, create a contingency plan to manage it. You then act according to how you’ve prioritized those risks. Arrange a meeting with your project team and try to find answers to the following questions:
What can be done to mitigate the probability of each risk?
How to manage each risk effectively, should it occur?
How to make sure that opportunities are not missed?
Answering these questions allows your team to improve the digital product development process. Based on the above-mentioned points prepare an action plan and convert it into feasible tasks. Once you implement the risk mitigation plan, your work isn’t finished. Risks are dynamic and tend to transform, evolve, and reappear throughout the entire project life cycle.
SUMMING UP
Yes, risk mitigation might seem like a daunting task. But if you do your homework and embed a risk management strategy into the digital product development process, you can reduce the chances of project overrun, escalating costs, resources challenges, and more.
The digital strategyis the application of technology and digital media to create value, i.e. it defines in the digital realm what we do and how we do it. A successful digital strategy requires different areas because it will mix technology with marketing and operations. It is something complex to execute if you do not have the necessary profiles so the help of a digital agency or consultant is often essential.
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What is una strategy digital?
Once we have seen the definition of digital strategy, let’s really see what it is and why it is important.
The digital strategy must be aligned with the business strategy, after all it will be the digital piece of our business strategy. The objectives of the company must be previously defined and it will be then when we will create the necessary strategies to reach them.
Internet and the digital world ceased to be something optional for companies some time ago, can be somewhat overwhelming, but if we do not take advantage of digital media our company will be doomed to failure. We cannot do without having a digital strategy in our company.
Digital vs digital marketing strategy
If we look for digital strategy we can find many different definitions, mostly marketing oriented but a digital strategy is not a marketing strategy, in fact, a digital strategy will usually contain a marketing strategy.
A digital marketing strategy will generally be outward-oriented, will focus on bringing value to our customers, giving us visibility, increasing our reputation, brand value, etc..
On the other hand, the digital strategy is applied to the organization as a whole, both internally and externally. So our digital strategy will look at how to apply technology to our entire value chain.
Important factors for a good digital strategy?
Creating a digital strategy is not complicated, but if it requires talent and previous knowledge as well as some experience, what do we need?
Multidisciplinary knowledge: profiles of marketing, operations, sales and technology.
One previously defined business objectives.
The support from the executive scale of the organization.
Once we have what is necessary, we only have to see how to reach the proposed objectives using technology and digital media. To do this we must use multidisciplinary profiles and create actions that lead us to the proposed objectives.
The important thing will be that for each line of action, or part of the plan, we have defined metrics that inform us of our progress. After all, the environment is very dynamic and many of the actions in our plan will have to be adjusted, so having some metrics that are easy to consult is key. We must test, measure and modify in order to optimize to the maximum and get the best performance from our strategy.
The big problem usually comes at the time of having the necessary talent in the company to make a good strategy. That’s why digital consultants and digital agencies come into play, such as Xtrategy Digital who can provide you with the talent you need. This time companies will work together with your operations and marketing staff to devise and implement that strategy that will make you achieve your goals.
If you need help you can have a look at our digital consulting service, we offer you experts in different fields that will help you in what you need, take a look here.
Have you ever been confused with the concepts of customer experience and user experience thinking that they are one and the same? For most, it’s still unclear what’s the difference between the two terms. While UX is about digital product usability, CX is about how the customer feels about the brand throughout the whole customer journey. It’s what closes out conversions, and drives long-term loyalty.
In this blog post, we’re going to sort things out and look a bit closer at these two quite different experiences. First of all, it’s good to understand what people mean when they use these terms. So let’s take a look at the meaning of each concept.
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WHAT IS USER EXPERIENCE?
In 1995, Don Norman coined the term of user experience, to describe the set of activities his team was engaged in at Apple Computers. Eventually, the term UX has taken a more limited interpretation in practice. It’s a user’s interaction with a specific digital product, such as a website, app, or software. It focuses on the digital interface in terms of utility, usability, navigation, information architecture, ease of use, and visual hierarchy. The key UX metrics are:
Success rate: The percentage of correctly completed tasks by the users. It’s about how effectively users are able to reach the goal that you want them to reach. For example, ten users attempted to register on the platform: eight of them succeeded and two of them failed. You need to find out why these two failed. The higher the success rate, the better the UX.
Error rate: The number of mistakes the user makes when interacting with the product. It gives an idea of how user-friendly and intuitive your product is. The higher the error rate, the more problems with usability.
Abandonment rate: The percentage of users who abandoned the task before completing it. The reasons for abandonment may be different: from struggling with complicated navigation to forcing users to update their software.
Completion time: The amount of time a user needs to complete the task. The shorter the processing time. The better the user experience.
Clicks to completion: The amount of time it takes the user to complete the task.
UX is an inevitable part of the CX. To put it another way, UX is the experience your users have with your product, whereas CX is the experience they have with the entire brand.
On the other hand, customer experience has a broader meaning. CX describes a larger experience a user has with an organization. It’s an umbrella concept that encompasses the way customers perceive your brand and feel when interacting with it across every stage of the customer journey. Above all, CX is the sum of all touchpoints, interactions, and engagements that a customer has with a brand and a product throughout the life of a customer relationship.
The customer experience metrics help you understand how loyal and satisfied the customers are with your brand. Customer experience is measured with metrics like:
Net Promoter Score (NPS): The gold standard customer experience metric. It stands for the willingness of the customer to recommend your company and product to others.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Measures customer satisfaction level with a product and the entire interaction with a company.
Customer Effort Score (CES): The metric that measures how easy it was for a user to interact with a product or service (solving an issue, finding the information, signing up, etc.).
For any digital product development, user experience optimization across all platforms and devices has become a basic rule. No matter how fancy your product might be, if your users don’t know how to navigate and use it, they won’t come back. In the hearts and minds of humans, no feature or benefit will ever outweigh usability. In fact, you have only seconds to capture users’ attention and keep them. The UX connects your users with your products and increases brand loyalty. UX design is focused on research, analysis, and testing, and because of that these risks can be reduced. In addition, investing in a good UX design can help improve SEO rankings.
WHY IS CX IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
Customer experience isn’t a buzzword. It relates to customer satisfaction and their willingness to pay for a particular product. In other words, the more satisfied customers are, the more likely they are to stay loyal, become your brand advocates, and recommend your product to their friends. We live in an experience-brand economy. Today customers are buying not just products. They buy brands that can transform their lives. Now more than ever, companies should rethink their processes and deliver an exceptional customer experience so that their customers come back.
To dilute the theoretical part of the differences between CX & UX, let’s take a look at the example of the biggest digital music service Spotify.
At the heart of Spotify’s customer experience strategy is delivering a tailored listening experience to the users. One of the wizards behind Spotify is user researchers who work together to understand what users are doing on the platform and why. Spotify is considered to be among the top of customer-obsessed brands. They continually work on uncovering customer insights to improve their entire experience. Spotify’s approach to the customer experience is multifaceted. First of all, the onboarding process is fast and clear. Spotify makes it easy for users to collaborate on playlists and share music, follow friends, check their music preferences. By using prediction models and data analytics, Spotify offers simple suggestions like “Your Daily Mix” or “Discover Weekly”, thus introducing each user personalized playlists.
No surprise, the next example that we’d like to mention is our favorite Netflix. A lot has been written about their approach to creating a personalized experience.
Netflix managed to develop cutting edge algorithms. These algorithms allow them to serve content that caters to the users’ tastes and preferences. This level of personalization is what makes users come back for more. No doubt that Netflix is an industry giant with a great staff, including data scientists. Not every business can afford such a level of customer experience approach. But what each business, no matter small or big, can learn from Netflix is being customer-centric and delivering a great experience with every interaction. Data informs every decision they make at Netflix. It begins with data collection. Ensure you collect data points across all customer touchpoints. This includes complaints, support requests, transactions, social media, and customer feedback. Netflix has turned customer engagement into a science. They’ve prioritized learning who are their customers and how to reach them.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Are UX and CX different? Yes, they are. Should they be considered completely separate and exclusive disciplines? No, if you want to win the loyalty of your users and customers. To make sure you’re making the right investments in both CX and UX, ask your customers. With this knowledge, you don’t have to choose between investing in your CX or UX.
User experience design is an extremely vast, multidisciplinary and fascinating field. It shapes the products and services we use on a daily basis, and can make or break the success of a business or brand.
A career in UX design is fast-paced and challenging, requiring a highly diverse skillset. If you want to break into this field, there’s plenty to learn!
In this guide, we’ll provide the ultimate introduction to UX design and tell you everything you need to know about getting started in this exciting industry, including:
User experience (UX) refers to any interaction a user has with a product or service. UX design considers each and every element that shapes this experience, how it makes the user feel, and how easy it is for the user to accomplish their desired tasks. This could be anything from how a physical product feels in your hand, to how straightforward the checkout process is when buying something online. The goal of UX design is to create easy, efficient, relevant and all-round pleasant experiences for the user.
“User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” — Don Norman, Cognitive Scientist & User Experience Architect
UX designers combine market research, product development, strategy and design to create seamless user experiences for products, services and processes. They build a bridge to the customer, helping the company to better understand — and fulfil — their needs and expectations.
The Difference Between UX And UI Design
When talking about UX, the term user interface (UI) design will inevitably crop up. However, it’s important to recognize that, despite often being used interchangeably, UX and UI are two different things.
“UX is focused on the user’s journey to solve a problem; UI is focused on how a product’s surfaces look and function.” — Ken Norton, Partner at Google Ventures, Ex-Product Manager at Google
User interface design is not the same as UX. UI refers to the actual interface of a product; the visual design of the screens a user navigates through when using a mobile app, or the buttons they click when browsing a website. UI design is concerned with all the visual and interactive elements of a product interface, covering everything from typography and color palettes to animations and navigational touch points (such as buttons and scrollbars). You can read more about the work of UI designers here.
UX design is everywhere: the layout of a supermarket, the ergonomics of a vehicle, the usability of a mobile app. While the term “user experience” was first coined by Don Norman in the 90s, the concept of UX has been around for much longer.
Some of the most basic tenets of UX can be traced as far back as 4000 BC to the ancient Chinese philosophy of Feng Shui, which focuses on arranging your surroundings in the most optimal, harmonious or user-friendly way. There is also evidence to suggest that, as early as the 5th century BC, Ancient Greek civilizations designed their tools and workplaces based on ergonomic principles.
In the late 19th century, great thinkers and industrialists like Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford began integrating basic experience design principles into their production processes. On a mission to make human labor more efficient, Taylor conducted extensive research into the interactions between workers and their tools — just like UX designers today investigate how users interact with products and services.
Another key figure in the history of UX is industrial engineer Henry Dreyfuss. In his book Designing for People (1955), Dreyfuss provides a very accurate description of what we now know as UX design:
“When the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the [designer] has failed. On the other hand, if people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient — or just plain happier — by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded.” — Henry Dreyfuss, Industrial Engineer
In the early 90s, cognitive scientist Don Norman joined the team at Apple as their User Experience Architect, making him the first person to have UX in his job title. He came up with the term “user experience design” because he wanted to “cover all aspects of the person’s experience with a system, including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.” Since then, each of these areas have expanded into specializations of their own. These days, there’s a growing tendency for companies to hire for very specific roles, such as UX researcher or interaction designer, to cover all of the different aspects of user experience.
For centuries, humans have been seeking to optimize their surroundings for maximum user comfort. These days, the term UX design has strong digital connotations, often referring to apps, websites, software, gadgets and technology.
3. UX Design Disciplines: The Quadrant Model
UX is a broad umbrella term that can be divided up into four main disciplines: Experience Strategy (ExS), Interaction Design (IxD), User Research (UR) and Information Architecture (IA).
UX Design Disciplines: The Quadrant Model
Experience Strategy (ExS)
UX design is not just about the end user; it also brings huge value to the business providing the product or service. Experience strategy is all about devising a holistic business strategy, incorporating both the customer’s needs and those of the company.
Interaction Design (IxD)
Interaction design looks at how the user interacts with a system, considering all interactive elements such as buttons, page transitions and animations. Interaction designers seek to create intuitive designs that allow the user to effortlessly complete core tasks and actions.Learn more: What are UX, UI and Interaction Design?
User Research (UR)
UX design is all about identifying a problem and designing the solution. This requires extensive research and feedback from existing or potential customers. During the research phase, UX designers will launch surveys, conduct interviews and usability testing, and create user personas in order to understand the end user’s needs and objectives. They gather both qualitative and quantitative data and use this to make good design decisions. Learn how to conduct user experience research here.
Within these four areas, there is a whole host of sub-disciplines. As you can see in the graphic below, user experience design is so much more than just a case of sketching and wireframing. It’s a multidisciplinary field, drawing upon elements of cognitive science and psychology, computer science, communication design, usability engineering and more.
Now let’s take a look at how these disciplines translate into the day-to-day work of a UX designer.
4. What Does A UX Designer Do?
“How do I explain what I do at a party? The short version is that I say I humanize technology.” — Fred Beecher, Director of UX, The Nerdery
UX designers seek to make everyday products, services and technology as user-friendly and accessible as possible. They employ design thinking to reconcile the user’s desires with technical feasibility and business viability. The diagram below shows the Design Thinking Process, adapted from the d.school. The Design Thinking Process can be broken down into four different stages: inspiration, conceptualization, iteration and exposition.
During the inspiration stage, the UX designer seeks to understand and observe. To do this, they conduct extensive research and competitor analysis in order to fully grasp the problem or challenge they are setting out to solve. This involves interviewing those who are, or will be, directly engaged with the product.https://www.youtube.com/embed/FrsQSplB_Cg
The designer then uses this feedback to identify the user’s goals, emotions, pain-points and behaviors. All of this information helps to form user personas. The next step is to consider what these personas are trying to accomplish when using a particular product, and the journey they will take to do so. The designer considers information architecture and uses various techniques, such as card sorting, to map out user flows.
Once the user flows have been determined, the designer knows what steps the user needs to take to complete their desired tasks. They will visually brainstorm solutions for each of these steps, creating wireframes and prototypes of what the final product might look like.
With prototypes to hand, the UX designer will then conduct usability tests to see how users interact with the product. This shows whether or not the user is able to complete their desired tasks, or if changes need to be made.
UX designers not only come up with solutions to user problems; they also need to present their ideas and designs to key stakeholders as part of their day-to-day work.
This is just a broad overview of the UX design process. In reality, tasks will vary depending on both the size and the specific needs of the company. Larger companies might employ a team of designers, with each focusing on a specific aspect of the process such as research or visual design. In smaller companies and startups, it’s not unusual for the UX designer to wear many different hats and take on the whole spectrum of tasks.
No matter what product or service they are designing, or what stage of the process they are at, UX designers will ask themselves the following questions:
Is the product usable? Is it logical, self-explanatory and easy to use?
Does the product or service solve an existing user problem?
Is it accessible for different categories of users? You can read more about accessibility in design below.
Is the product or service desirable? Does it create a positive experience which the user would be happy to repeat?
UX designers rely on a number of different tools as they go about their work. At the research and inspiration stage, they will use survey and polling tools as well as video chat software to interview users and gather as much information as possible. There are also specific programs for wireframing, prototyping and usability testing, with Balsamiq, InVision and UsabilityHub among the most popular in the industry. In addition to design-specific programs, designers also use communication and project management tools to keep track of their work at all times. You can learn more about UX design tools here.Learn more: A Day in the Life of a Remote UX Designer
What Kinds Of Projects Do UX Designers Work On?
As the tech industry grows, the field of UX design is becoming increasingly varied. UX designers can find themselves working on a wide range of projects within various contexts. Here are just some applications for UX design.
Website, App And Software Design
In the age of the internet and smartphones, the usability of a website, mobile app or piece of software will largely determine its success on the market. Together with UI designers, UX designers are responsible for ensuring a smooth online experience for the user. From ecommerce websites to dating apps, from CRM software to web-based email clients, each and every online journey you take has been carefully designed by a UX professional.
Voice Design
Voice user interfaces are revolutionizing the way we interact with technology. In the U.S., around 50% of adults use voice search on a daily basis, and ComScore estimates that, in the early 2020s, 50% of all searches will be voice-based. UX designers have a huge role to play in the rise of voice, as products like Amazon Alexa can only be successful if they are user-friendly and accessible for the masses. Designing for voice requires a slightly different approach to that of websites and apps: learn more in this beginner’s guide to VUI design.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
With the global VR market expected to be worth around $27 billion by 2022, UX designers will increasingly be required to design immersive experiences. Likewise, since the Pokemon Go craze hit, augmented reality has also been working its way into the mainstream. More and more, UX designers will have to adapt their approach to ensure the latest technologies are accessible and user-friendly.
Service Design
UX design doesn’t only apply to tangible objects and digital products; experiences need to be designed, too. This is where service design comes in. As explained on Wikipedia: “Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.”
Whenever you buy a coffee, stay in a hotel or use public transport, your experience is the result of service design, and service design methodology is very similar to that of classic UX design.
5. The Value of UX Design
The value of UX design is immense; not only for the end user, but also for the business or brand behind the user experience.
From a user perspective, good UX design ultimately enables us to go about our daily lives as effortlessly as possible. From setting an alarm to chatting with friends online, listening to music or using a calendar app, the ease with which we complete these actions is the result of good design.
When designing these experiences, UX designers must consider how they can bring value to all kinds of users. They do this by practicing inclusive design—otherwise known as universal or accessible design.
Universal Design (UD)
As motivational speaker Molly Burke explains, universal design is the practice of “designing and building everything to be accessed, enjoyed and understood to its fullest extent, by everyone, regardless of their size, their age, their ability, or their perceived ability.”
Universal design follows seven key principles:
Equitable use: The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
Flexibility in use: The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
Simple and intuitive use: Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
Perceptible information: The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.
Tolerance for error: The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
Low physical effort: The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.
Size and space for approach and use: Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user’s body size, posture, or mobility.
From a business perspective, designing first-class user experiences is absolutely key to ensuring customer satisfaction and building brand loyalty. Only if a product or service is hassle-free and enjoyable will the user want to return.
“Good design is good business.” —Thomas Watson Jr., CEO, IBM
The Competitive Advantage Of Design-Driven Companies
According to a study conducted by the Design Management Institute, design-driven companies consistently outperformed the S&P 500 by 219% over a 10-year period. Furthermore, a study commissioned by Adobe found that design thinking in business creates a measurable competitive advantage. Design-led companies reported 41% higher market share, 50% more loyal customers, and 46% competitive advantage overall.
User-friendly, universal design is beneficial to everyone, and UX designers are in a position to truly shape the world around us.
6. How To Become A UX Designer
As we have seen, UX design is an extremely multifaceted field. Working in UX requires a highly diverse skillset coupled with a passion for user-centric design. A career in UX can be very varied, challenging and financially rewarding; according to Glassdoor, the average salary for a User Experience Designer in the United States is $97,460.
There is no standard background or path that leads to a career in UX. However, the best UX designers typically share certain qualities and attributes, including:
An ability to think both creatively and analytically
A strong gift for empathy and a user-first mindset
An interest in technology and how humans interact with it
Strong problem-solving skills
Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate
UX designers come from all walks of life, and you don’t necessarily need a university degree to break into the field. Employers tend to look for a mixture of design skills, business acumen and soft skills. Some requirements you will often see in UX designer job descriptions include:
Proficiency in creating user stories, personas, sitemaps, wireframes, prototypes and storyboards
Ability to plan and conduct user testing, surveys, and formal evaluations
Ability to iterate your work based on user testing data and qualitative feedback
Understanding of interaction design principles and information architecture
Ability to translate goals, objectives, and data into digital experiences
Understanding of business metrics, and how your designs contribute to performance
Strong communication and presentation skills; an ability to articulate and discuss your design decisions with clients and stakeholders
Many people switch to UX design after gaining experience in another field — like psychology, computer science, marketing or customer service. To get started in UX design, it’s important to do plenty of reading and research, to get to know the UX workflow, familiarize yourself with industry tools and build up a solid design portfolio. The most effective way to prepare for a career in UX is by taking a structured course and working on practical projects. Find out what exactly you should learn in a UX design course here – and feel free to check out these free UX design tutorials.
This is a question often overheard from people who don’t really know what product designers do, or from those who are new to the industry. So what do product designers do?
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The role of a Product Designer.
Let’s try an experiment. Walk around the teams in your room and ask a developer, a PM, a UI designer, a UX designer, and maybe a QA engineer what a product designer does. Now formalize your findings… I bet you will find they all vary and some may even be shocking. This may be the right time to get your teams together and host a fireside chat to discuss what a product designer actually does.
It’s not uncommon in many organizations to have different opinions as to what a Product Designer does. I have worked for some of the biggest organizations, and even there it was a grey area. If you really get into it though, it makes sense: product design and the whole digital design ecosystem has moved and evolved so fast in the last two years that role specifics can confuse even the most seasoned designer.
This confusion may be attributed to competing and complementary niche roles. Specialists in UI design, UX design, information architecture, UX copywriters, mobile designers, web designers, interaction designers, animation designers, and so on, can often be lumped together or crossover in responsibilities.
I hold the role of Director of Product Design at aequilibrium, a digital product agency in Vancouver, BC, and I like to consider myself akin to a conductor of the digital orchestra. In my experience, product designers typically come from one or many of the listed specialist roles and have adapted to another, then another, building out their toolkit over many years (and late nights) to become the holistic, data-driven, results-based, pixel-perfect, bleeding-edge technology masochists that we are. Although the role is still much in flux as the industry changes day by day, this is my attempt at conveying the breadth, wealth, and utility of this sadly underestimated role.
Solving problems with design.
Product design is about problem-solving, and product designers seek to improve the experiences of products by solving complex design problems. If you look at your Product Designer as someone that makes your solution look presentable, look again. They are there to help you identify, investigate, and validate the problem. Ultimately, he or she is there to craft, design, test, and ship the solution.
“Product design is not purely aesthetic.”
They do so by using a variety of skills:
Animating
Prototyping
Coding
Research
Visual
Interaction design
Psychology
Business strategy
“Present a product designer with a solution, and they will tell you what’s wrong with it.”
A Product Designer will never commit to one idea from a client or a manager. Instead, they will explore various alternatives to solve a single problem. Using analytics and gathering existing user data are critical to finding the right solution, as is employing cross-functional teams from every corner of the business to help brainstorm as many solutions as possible.
The designer process.
Product Designers use wireframes and prototypes to validate their designs. After user validation, they will provide several fully baked low-fidelity concepts (more wireframes, and workflows) that will aim to solve the problem at hand. With a clear strategy for how, when, and what to A/B test, the build and release plans will become evident.
“A product designer will design the solution until the problem changes.”
During active sprints, Product Designers will join the development team to see through their solution. UI audits, micro interactions, App Store requirements, you name it, are all part of the Product Design process. On smaller teams, Product Designers will also work with marketing and stakeholders to ensure the story is consistent with the product through the development of social assets and websites.
What I find most personal is that Product Designers will often take part in the continuation of a product long after the first version has been released. They will follow up on data and metrics to continue validating their design, possibly until the end of time.
A marketing mindset.
One of the major areas of work that is often overlooked in the role of the Product Designer is branding. It is part of the Product Designer’s job to ensure the product is designed on brand; if the product doesn’t deliver what the brand promises and what the stakeholders have asked for, users will not stick around. Trust me on this one.
Product Designers are therefore regarded as the caretakers of the business’ foundation. Any such discrepancies will ultimately cause the product to fail. As such, it’s of utmost importance for the Product Design team to work closely with the Marketing team.
Product design is constantly changing.
This is an ever-evolving world. We all feel it. That which was extraordinary yesterday is mundane today and stale tomorrow. Product design is still trying to figure out its place within this highly reactive space. Hell, half the platforms we have to design for today didn’t even exist a couple of years ago. And you can be sure there will be even more in the years to come with even more complex experiences to discover and create solutions for.
Product design is thus adaptive, agile, and flexible. As Product Designers, we need to understand that while good, well thought through design is timeless, nothing is forever and we need to be open to whatever change may come our way.
A strategy I enjoy deploying is preparation. By understanding and keeping up with industry standards and the latest tech and tools, I’m easier able to tackle new ideas and iterations. Microinteraction prototyping using InVision Studio is an example of a tool I recently started to learn, along with my design team where we learned the basics together. We currently spend any free time between projects playing around so that the following week we all have something cool to show each other. So far it’s been a lot of fun, and one of the meetings each week that I actually find myself looking forward to the most. I encourage all Product Design teams out there to consider following our lead. It’s an excellent way to stay apprised of the latest developments and to continuously hone your skills. If we deem the new process a great value-add to our team and also to our clients we start assimilating it into our design process–– we win and clients win.
Product design today.
We’re just starting to wrap our heads around Product Design, and that’s ok because this industry and the technology behind it moves so fast we are running to keep up with it. New capabilities in codeless prototyping, microinteractions, animations, and work tools like the aforementioned InVision Studio not only allow us to push the limits of product design but also the capabilities of the tools we used to create and show them.
Unfortunately, product design has classically been seen as purely aesthetic. “Make it pretty,” they say. This is a perception we have to change. We are the architects of the user experience! And as such, it is our responsibility to educate those around us, above us, and under us, about what it is we actually can and should be doing.
When you hire a Product Owner, you likely do so because this person is well-versed in a wide range of disciplines; they understand some front- and backend coding, timing, budgeting, business valuation, analytics, management, etc. In many ways, this is how you should be thinking about hiring Product Designers. Sure, they might have a beautiful portfolio, but can they be a key player throughout the entire product development process? A good Product Designer should know a bit of animation, prototyping, coding, user research, visual and interaction design, market validation modeling, customer scenario, and journey mapping modeling. They should know when to deliver wireframes, and when to deliver pixel-perfect mockups. They should know when to use animation, and when to prototype. They should know how to validate a product hypothesis, communicate and gather data on what the user wants, and aggregate this data into business intelligence information to the stakeholders. Last but not least, they should know how to convincingly communicate their solutions.
Product design is evolving.
In my time at aequilibrium, we’ve gone from a handful of mainly Visual Designers to a full-stack team comprised of Product Designers, User Researchers, Prototypers, and UX Copywriters.
We’ve gone from being at the end of the product development and design cycle (“We need buttons on this new feature we’re going to launch”) to the very forefront (“We want to investigate all the possible ways of enabling our users to interact and explore our product”). In a nutshell, you could say that we’ve truly gone from being a cursory consideration as the beauticians of the product to the curators of that which matters most—the user experience.
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