Improving Customer Loyalty Through UI/UX Design
A Customer Loyalty is any company’s best promotional tool. For a company that sells a product or service, brand trust is vital. It assures that customers will want to buy their products or use their services and therefore provide companies with their payment information through the company’s website. Having a Customer Loyalty base with brand loyalty means that your customers do not question the quality of your products and know that they can count on the company to make things right if they are dissatisfied. More importantly, customers reflect their positive experiences with a company by relaying their satisfaction to family, friends, coworkers, and strangers via Customer Loyalty feedback and reviews.
Most companies have a website or an app (or both) and these serve as primary contact points with the company’s client base. Customers use these communication means to interact with a company and form their opinion about it. While social media and various other online advertising channels that companies use to promote their brand, their website and app are ultimately the best way to hold a line of communication with their audience.
As the primary mode of contact with an audience, one of the most crucial aspects of a site or app is the design leading to optimal user experience, and the goal is to provide the visitors with the best possible journey. But if your firm does not focus on UX or they are not leveraging the services of a seasoned UX design agency, the chances of providing great UX lessen significantly.
Some companies feel that they want to build out their own UX design department. This process takes time and costs a lot of money. Even once this in-house design team is compiled, it will take time for its members to get accustomed to each other and grow a shared vision of the company’s goals. The alternative solution is to employ a design agency that is capable of providing the most relevant, optimal designs for websites and apps.
UX agency Clay, for example, employs a diverse team of talented specialists who frequently work with clients from many different spheres. If you utilize an experienced UX agency by pairing them with your own development and marketing teams, you will manage to build and enhance your brand loyalty from Customer Loyalty in ways that far exceed any advertising campaign you can hope to engage in.
So how exactly does a superior UX design help build up customer loyalty? Let’s take a look at a few ways.
Importance Of Appearance And Usability
Imagine walking past a physical storefront and seeing dirty windows, overgrown with cobwebs and riddled with spots, an outdated-looking entranceway with a rusty door, and trash spilled around the front. Does that look like a place you are dying to explore? No matter how you slice it, presentation matters, and customers could be missing out on truly valuable products the above store may hold inside because they have no interest in walking in.
The impact on your audience cast by a site or an app is similar. While your digital product should be practical and functional, if the appearance of your medium doesn’t quite look right, you will impact your standing with prospective customers who might genuinely benefit from your product. The user experience will be viewed in negative terms by those who see appearance as a usability issue. This phenomenon, better accepted as the aesthetic usability effect, is one of the many challenges that a UX design company must overcome in their design process. People naturally associate a product’s quality and usability with how it looks, even if the product’s quality is not actually that impressive.
When a user arrives at a website or logs into an app, the visual aspect is the first thing they see, and that is how they make their first impression of the product and the company before knowing anything else about it. That is to say, visual design matters. When paired with product usability, it helps generate a positive UX. When a customer likes the look, they are more likely to try, and even enjoy the product, building consumer trust.
Communication And Transparency
The more transparency your product or services has, the more customer loyalty they earn. People want more transparency from the businesses they support with their hard-earned money, so companies should always strive for openness. But how does a great user experience influence this?
Sharing information about your products, services, and offers, including detailed descriptions and even background on the company, is a good way to make your company more familiar to an audience. It’s like getting to know a person, the more you find out about the type of person they are, the more likely you are to trust them. The UX design assures that the information you share with your audience is appropriately placed, ideally displayed, and properly used.
Increased transparency and user experience can even be improved by something small. For example, branded links can be customized to allow the customer to understand where the link would lead them. This helps a rightfully skeptical audience understand that they are not being scammed. That within itself builds greater trust and improves customer loyalty.
It is also important to let customers know what you will be doing with the data they share with you. So if your website has cookies, your audience should be made aware of that fact. This can be done in multiple ways including headers, pop-ups, and footers. Your UX design company can advise you on which method would work better for your particular website or app. Cookies can help improve the user experience, making it doubly important that they are designed correctly.
Do not neglect to share your data as well including contact information, forms, and social media links. Your audience should have a means of leaving you feedback about their experience. Neglecting to express something the customer wants can be very frustrating, and building frustration is a good way to decrease brand loyalty and Customer Loyalty, a fact that many companies often overlook to their own detriment.
Security
Security is a significant aspect of a UX design and is one that your company must take seriously to build brand loyalty, Customer Loyalty and drive conversions. One method of security that builds audience trust is an SSL certificate being installed on the website. It lets users know that their interactions will be smooth and that they have peace of mind about their data being protected. Users (and companies) have a highly vested interest in keeping user data safe and private. A UX agency can advise you on methods that can be used to communicate effectively to your audience that their data is not at risk of exposure or exploration.
While the onus of selecting a security system and verifying its efficacy is initially on the product development team, it is the design of applications and global products that communicates to your audience that their data is secure. This should be done clearly and prominently while avoiding seeming intrusive and silly.
Conclusion
Great user experience drives and promotes brand trust and a customer’s intent to continue their association with the brand. By providing great visuals, intuitive features, and smooth navigation, you are letting the audience know that you take thought for their experience and value their time. To help win the hearts and business of your audience, you need to find a solid, reputable user experience design firm and work with them to achieve the best brand loyalty, Customer Loyalty results for your brand.
