What is UX and why does it matter for your site?
When I first got started in design, I studied something called User Experience (UX) design. These days, I don’t do very much UX work, but I’m glad I have a foundational understanding of it because it influences everything I design! Today I want to share a little bit about what UX design is and why I think it’s important for wedding pros to incorporate its practices!
Your website is an airport, not a museum
If you’ve been hanging around my blog or Instagram page for a bit, you may have heard me say this before! Users aren’t visiting your site to stand around and admire how pretty it is—they are visiting because they are trying to accomplish a goal. Your website’s job is to make it as easy as possible for them to accomplish that goal. That’s where user experience design comes in!
What is UX Design?
UX Design
It’s tough to boil down UX design to one exact definition. UX design actually covers a broad range of disciplines and roles. Basically, UX design is the process of making user experiences efficient, usable, and delightful. If you’ve ever used a website that made you want to pull your hair out, you’ve experienced what happens when a business doesn’t value UX design.
“User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” — Don Norman, The Nielsen Norman Group
Design Thinking
UX design is also related to the concept of design thinking. In design thinking, designers follow a set protocol to create design solutions (like websites) that will meet both user and business goals. The steps are: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
Benefits of UX
It’s important to note that both UX design and design thinking are iterative processes! That means that there’s no such thing as being “done” with your website’s UX. It’s a constant process of testing and re-evaluating how to make the experience better.
Think of any company you interact with online, and it’s safe to say there is a large team of designers working hard behind the scenes. Any time you buy an outfit, book a flight or post to social media, you are participating in an experience that a designer specifically created for users like you.
But just because your wedding business isn’t a Fortune 500 company doesn’t mean your business can’t reap the benefits of UX design as well! Here are a few key jobs of a UX designer, and how you can apply it to your website:
Aspects of UX Design and How they can help your site
Research
Most UX designers would argue that research is the most essential building block of any design project. If you’re not basing your designs in research, you’re just guessing as to what will be successful. UX designers conduct both primary research, like user interviews, and secondary research, like a competitive analysis or market research.
In your business, try this:
User interviews don’t have to be as scary as they sound! Chat with 3-5 people who fit the profile of your ideal client, and ask them about their needs, goals, and frustrations relative to your business. For example, if you are a makeup artist, you might ask your pal who recently got married: “what was the most frustrating part of finding and booking hair and makeup for your wedding?” Their answers will give you great insights you can use to improve your website!
Personas
In the creative world, we tend to refer to personas as “ideal client avatars.” They are basically the same thing! In UX design, a persona refers to a made-up person who represents your website’s users. This representation should not be purely demographic-based, but specific to the user’s goals, needs, frustrations, and specific scenarios. Also, keep in mind that your website might have MORE than one persona.
In your business, try this:
When creating your ideal client avatar, focus less on the “fluff” and really figure out your ideal client’s goals, needs, and frustrations. It’s even better if these are based on the information you got from research! For example, if you are a florist, your ideal client’s goal may be to create a beautiful experience for her guests, while her frustration might be that she has trouble picturing how it will come to life. Now you can specifically design your site with that information in mind!
Information Architecture
Information architecture is how the information on a website is organized. It’s important to structure your site in a way that makes sense for users. That way they aren’t having to guess where to find information. The different pages you have on your site, as well as the content on them and how they link together through CTAs, are all part of information architecture.
In your business, try this:
Before you dive into creating that new beautiful website, break out the pencil and paper and sketch out a site map. What pages will your website have? How will they be organized? Which ones will be in the navigation bar? For example, you can think strategically about “where would a user be most likely to expect to see pricing information?” This strategic approach will make your site easier to navigate for users!
UI (user interface) design
User Interface design is what most people think of when they hear the word “design.” The user interface is whatever the user sees when they are looking at their screen. It includes branding, color, typography, and layout choices. All of these work together to create a visually pleasing design.
In your business, try this:
If you aren’t able to invest in a full custom design, choose a well-designed, visually pleasing template. Many designers (like me!) also offer template customization as a service, so that could be another option. If you are just starting out and needing a truly DIY solution, do a little research about color theory and typography. It will make a world of difference!
Usability
Usability refers to how easy is to use a website: Are users having to search to figure things out, or is the interface intuitive? How quickly and easily can users accomplish tasks? Often, UX designers will conduct usability testing. In a usability test, the user is given a task like, “add an item to your bag.” Researchers observe how the user goes about accomplishing that task, and what errors or missteps they had along the way.
In your business, try this:
Usability testing doesn’t have to happen under laboratory conditions! Ask a few friends to help test your site. Give them a specific task (preferably one your users will actually be doing, like submitting an inquiry), and observe and take notes as they complete the task. This will give you great ideas for where you can make things more clear to your users!
Accessibility
Accessibility is design for people with disabilities. Think about it this way: most stores have an automatic button that will open the door. This allows people with physical disabilities, like those in wheelchairs, to easily enter and exit. But these buttons can also be helpful to people who don’t have disabilities: a parent carrying a small child, a person with an arm full of groceries, or even someone who just got done working out and is super tired! Design for the web is the same. We must make websites usable for all people. It is the right thing to do and everyone deserves equal access. An added benefit is that when we work to make things accessible, it makes life easier for everyone!
In your business, try this:
Design your site so that it is usable for people with disabilities. This means using alt text on images for those using screen readers, making text large and dark enough so that users with poor vision can still read it, and captioning any videos.
Design is more than just a pretty website
When you’re designing a website for your wedding business, of course, it should be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing! But if that’s all it is, your website isn’t doing its job. Try applying these principles as you go through your design. See how much you can improve your site by making it clearer and easier to use!
My website audit checklist is a great place to start!
Have you ever heard of UX design before? Do you have any questions about it? Tell me in the comments!
This is insightful. More changes are rapidly coming in the future with the fast paced proliferation of technology and high expectations from users on what their experiences on different devices should look like.
Thanks for this detailed post.