94% of first impressions on websites are design-related. Users form an opinion about you through your website or app. Having a simple interface and dynamic images that perfectly reflect your brand is crucial. If you haven’t had the chance to harness the power of user-centric design, read our blog, which shows you how. Let’s start when you are ready!
What is User-Centric Design?
User-centred design prioritizes customers. It involves thinking like your customer and seeing what works for your audience. Your audience’s age, gender, and even style (if you can identify it) are important. New-generation coffee shops prefer a colour scheme of beige and brown mixed with dark colours because they have become places for studying and conversing with friends. Or spas with their relaxing green and white tones mixed with orange.
Creating a website for your audience involves getting to know your customers. Your customers can consist of old people; whether they are the majority or not, you want to keep the business going with them. Therefore, you make it as simple and seeable as possible so they can use it and recommend it to others. The aim is to make their experience ten times better than your competitors and keep your loyalty pool increasing.
UCD has several sub-disciplines that focus on different elements of user experience.
Different Branches, Different Solutions: User-Centric Design for App and Web Design
Interaction Design (IxD)
If you want your customers to interact with you and create engaging interfaces, you can go for Interaction Design (IxD). For smartphone interaction, designers work to create intuitive touch gestures (like swiping, tapping, and pinching) that allow users to navigate through apps, make calls, send messages, and use various features seamlessly. Baymard Institute found that 7 people out of a 10-person group abandon their shopping card because the website is simply not engageable.
UI Design
Another sub-branch of UCD is something more common to us: User Interface Design or in short, UI design. User Interface (UI) design encompasses the visual and interactive aspects of software, websites, and applications, aiming to create an intuitive and aesthetically pleasing experience for users. Apple’s iOS, known for its elegant and user-friendly interface, and Spotify’s music app, which makes music discovery and playback simple with personalized features and clear navigation, are good examples of UI.
Usability Engineering
A usability engineer might conduct a series of usability tests on a new e-commerce website to identify where users struggle to complete their purchases. Based on the findings, they might recommend changes to the checkout process to reduce the number of steps and simplify the interface, ensuring users can complete their transactions more efficiently.
Information Architecture
Information Architecture (IA) is the practice of organizing and structuring content to make it easy for users to find and understand information. It is a crucial aspect of web design and user experience (UX) that involves creating a clear, logical structure for information to improve usability and navigation.
User Experience Design
User Experience (UX) Design is the process of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. It encompasses the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function. The goal of UX design is to enhance user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.
How to Implement User-Centric Design to Your Website and App?
To implement user-centric design on your website and app, start by deeply understanding your users.
User research
Surveys
Interviews
Social media power
Pre-Launch: Researching Phase
Will help uncover your target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points.
For example, a fitness app might conduct surveys to understand users’ workout habits, goals, and challenges. A fashion app can look at first-party data and examine purchasing habits to understand the purchase patterns and behaviour behind them.
When you complete the first base, move on to the second part, which is creating user personas. User personas are fictional characters that embody your target users’ characteristics, behaviours, and goals. For instance, a music streaming service might create personas for a casual listener, a music enthusiast, and a workout enthusiast to see the pattern of behaviour and later on recommend music that fits that specific audience.
User personas will help you see the framing surrounding your customer. Based on their age, they could prefer nostalgic, faded-out colours or go for an aesthetic with contrasting colours (a good example might be Off-White). It will show you how tech-savvy your audience is.
If you implement gamification into your app or website, will they be able to use it?
Are they familiar with loyalty programs?
Can they have a good time at checkout?
User personas allow you to ask, “If I were a thirty-year-old woman, would I like this website?” (for example).
Using Technical Knowledge: User-Centered Design
If you are done with your pre-research of your market and customers and created user-personas that fit the description of your audience, it’s time to start your website or app. Whether your audience is car enthusiasts, individuals in their mid-30’s or even barbie-lovers, keeping the navigation simple and intuitive is the primary objective you are going to have.
The second is clarity, and the third is consistency. Keeping your web or mobile app simple does not always mean it will be super understandable. Keeping it simple simplifies navigating your website so customers can see what they look for without drowning in complexity. However, clarifying is another thing. You have to use clear and descriptive labels for navigation menus and buttons to guide users seamlessly through shopping.
Consistency makes users feel secure and not be confused about your brand or brand identity. Using your brand logos, colours, images and especially words within the design is important. With these in mind as the basics, you have to think about what you can put more for your specific audience to improve their experience.
Real-Life Examples from Experts: Mavi App
Mavi Jeans is a global lifestyle brand known for its high-quality denim products. To enhance customer engagement and streamline shopping experiences, Mavi Jeans partnered with Appcent to develop the Mavi App. This app integrates online and offline shopping into a user-friendly mobile platform, enhancing convenience and accessibility for customers worldwide. Why Mavi App is a prime example of user-centric design?
Personalized Shopping Experience
This feature incorporates a “Story” feature at the top of the screen, engagingly showcasing products. By presenting products visually appealing and interactively, the “Story” feature captures users’ attention and encourages them to explore further. Appcent’s customer-centric approach ensures an engaging, user-centred design tailored specifically for the Mavi app.
Ease of Use
Features like barcode scanning, easy filtering, and location-based stock inquiries simplify shopping. Customers can quickly find and purchase products by scanning store barcodes or searching for specific colour and size options.
Seamless Integration
Allows users to link their in-store Kartuş accounts, view past orders, and receive outfit suggestions based on previous purchases, ensuring a seamless transition between in-store and online shopping experiences.
Enhanced Customer Engagement
The “Explore” section displays Instagram images, allowing customers to purchase their favourite products directly from the app. Additional features like digital gift cards, order tracking, and an online return process increase convenience and customer satisfaction.
The user-centric design of the Mavi App led to significant improvements in customer engagement and sales. By 2024, Mavi’s digital channel sales increased dramatically, with the app accounting for a substantial portion of total sales.
This success can be attributed to the app’s ease of use and the effective integration of various shopping features, making the shopping experience more convenient and enjoyable for customers.
Incorporating user-centric design principles can transform how businesses engage with their customers, leading to increased loyalty and better overall performance.
Final Words
User-centric design basically makes customer experience the top-level priority. To achieve this, you must think like your audience. With the basics of user-centric design, you can achieve a lot, but to enhance your specific audience’s experience, you must put more thought into what they need, like, and their pain points. User-centred design looks simple to implement into your app and website, but it is actually hard to understand your customers deeply enough to know what they would prefer design-wise. Leave it to the experts, contact Appcent today!