Make User Experience The Top Priority For Your Digital Transformation
Did you know that for every $1 you invest in User Experience (UX) design you will get a return of $100? Yes, you read that right. At least that is what the statistics show. This is how important User Experience is for your business bottom line. It is even more important if you have already jumped on the digital transformation bandwagon.
The core objective of business is to deliver meaningful and relevant experiences to customers. Digital transformation can surely help with that objective, but to really uplift the customer experience and turn them into loyal fans you need to work on enhancing the User Experience. In this article, you will learn about the reasons why User Experience should be your top priority when creating a digital transformation strategy for your business.
A Focal Point For Digital Transformation Strategies
Here are three reasons why User Experience should be top of your list while creating a digital transformation strategy.
1. Productivity
By far the greatest reason why you must put User Experience above everything else in your digital transformation strategy is productivity. Irrespective of how advanced or outdated your technology infrastructure might be or how good or bad your workflows and processes might be, it is imperative that you know what works and what does not in a particular situation.
According to a study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University, most people only spend three minutes on a given task and this number is even lower when performing a task via a digital tool. This makes it extremely difficult for businesses to implement digital tools in their workflows and processes. Thankfully, there is a fix to this problem. You can easily overcome this problem by improving the User Experience. With human attention spans at an all-time low, it is the User Experience that can save the day. Your goal should be to improve it to the point where users can perform every task with minimal effort.
2. Operational Excellence
IT headaches and bottlenecks in processes and workflows really hamper a business's ability to pursue and complete innovative projects. With remote and hybrid work gaining traction and the Great Resignation leaving its mark, businesses are struggling to maintain their operational efficiency.
Businesses that have already moved to the cloud have reaped the benefits of accessibility and scalability as well as the perks of a distributed workforce, but all these also come with their fair share of challenges. A higher employee turnover rate due to the Great Resignation and ambitious hiring goals have brought the User Experience into the limelight. With collaboration and filling in skill gaps becoming the top agendas for businesses, you need automated and streamlined processes.
3. Security
Surprised to see security on this list? Wondering what security has to do with User Experience and digital transformation? If yes, you are not alone. What most people don’t realize is that the better the User Experience, the easier it is for your employees to follow the security best practices and security policies.
One of the biggest reasons why most people don’t adopt multi-factor authentication is because it makes the login process more cumbersome by adding extra steps. This negatively impacts their productivity and increases the time they need to complete a particular task. If you can find a way to implement multi-factor authentication in a way that does not bother users but keeps cybercriminals at bay, you can get the best of both worlds. Your employee accounts will be more secure without negatively impacting their productivity. Similarly, you can invest in a dedicated server to turbocharge your productivity.
Instead of leaving security till the end, it is important for businesses to incorporate security at every stage of the process from start to finish. More importantly, it should work in the background without bothering the users and negatively impacting the User Experience. Instead of forcing your employees to log in to different accounts with different passwords, make it easy for them with a single sign-on. Small steps like these can go a long way in enhancing the User Experience.
How To Improve User Experience During Digital Transformation
Here are some of the ways you can enhance the User Experience while digitally transforming your business.
1. Conduct UX Research
The first thing you need to do is to perform comprehensive User Experience research. This will help you uncover ways to make every digital interaction and experience better. It will also assist you in unearthing problems and opportunities related to each function and finding suitable solutions to these problems. Just like security, you should implement UX research methods throughout the process. You can either use qualitative benchmarks or quantitative benchmarks for this purpose. Qualitative metrics usually focus on the why and how, while quantitative metrics focus more on the what and who.
2. Create Wireframes
Once you have done your User Experience research, it is time to create use cases, prototypes, and wireframes. In short, you should create a logical structure. This can help you link your information architecture with the User Interface. With a wireframe in front of them, it will give your design team more room for experimentation when it comes to designing User Experiences and User Interfaces. If possible, you should strive to develop a design system. This will bring more consistency to your design and User Interfaces and provide users with a more coherent User Experience.
3. Focus On Experience Optimization
Just because you have designed a great User Experience and have succeeded with digital transformation does not mean that your job is done. You should treat digital transformation as a continuous process and make constant improvements to the User Experience whenever the opportunity arises. By focusing on iterative experience optimization, the User Experience your employees, customers, stakeholders, and partners will get will keep getting better with the passage of time.
Have you made the User Experience a cornerstone for your digital transformation strategy? If yes, then why? Share the reason with us in the comments section below.
