All failing mobile apps have one common denominator—poor user experience design. Bad design experience fuels high churn rates and negative customer reviews. No wonder, according to Think with Google, negative brand experiences negatively influence buying decisions.
But how can app designers and developers improve their design solutions to give users the best experience? Our discussion focuses on this question with a specific focus on mobile apps. Keep reading to learn the ten ways to improve your mobile app’s UX design.
#1 Improve Consistency in Your App Design
Improving consistency in your UX design assures users that they’re using the same brand’s apps across the entire product scope. Always use the same logo and header design in the app’s UI. Additionally, your app’s navigation system should be consistent. Using more non-conventional designs in your apps frustrates users. Thus, build your user trust by following design conventions in maintaining consistency.
#2 Boost the Search Feature in Your App Design
Your app users use the search filter to find or buy your products or services. If the UI is poor, has cumbersome navigation, or its essential links are challenging to locate, your bounce-back rates will increase. Thus, provide your app users with a handy in-app search engine to make searching easier and more convenient. This approach significantly improves your application’s usability.
Credit: from CMarix
#3 Animate Your Transitions
Animations create a seamless flow when moving between pages. So, you may leverage transition animation to improve your app’s UI and UX. You can also let users see animated transitions when completing actions.
Here are tips for successful animation implementation.
- Don’t use animations without preceding user actions.
- Use animations in a way that users can understand how to complete actions.
- You may use up to two animations in your application, but don’t overload your apps.
#4 Make Onboarding Easy
Convenient onboarding is another way of improving your mobile applications’ UX. Complicated onboarding can make users abandon your app and download your competitor’s alternative. Only include basic instructions to facilitate onboarding. Excessive information load during this initial process lowers user satisfaction.
When it comes to your app’s features, please don’t give your users excess information about them at once. Instead, only show them the value your app adds to their lives and leave them to discover the rest later. Below are tips to help you improve your newcomers’ onboarding process:
- Experiment with several login options, such as through social media, emails, and phone numbers, to know what works best for potential app users.
- You may also experiment with the timing, i.e., the best time to ask prospective users for registration or login.
#5 Mind Your Permissions Request
This part is one of the most sensitive in the app’s design. If your app needs permissions to function, for instance, location and contact access, push notifications, or access to media, explain to users the reasons for asking for those permissions and the value they get after giving them. Otherwise, you expose yourself to competitors because modern users value privacy and don’t want to give excessive data-sharing rights to any app.
Further, be very careful with the kind of personal details you ask of users. People are very sensitive to requests for personal data. For instance, demanding users’ phone numbers when you don’t intend to call them will turn users off.
Also, pay attention to the registration process. Make it as simple and quick as possible. You can even allow users to log in using external social media accounts or Google. Also, if your app needs user names and passwords, they should be easy to remember. Don’t insist on usernames and passwords with a zillion characters or numbers. You can allow users to choose any login they can easily remember, such as their email addresses.
#6 Understand Your Users
Understanding your users is another excellent way of boosting their experience with mobile apps. Your entire journey should start here. If you don’t understand their specific needs and pain points, your app’s design will definitely give them a bad experience. You can leverage user personas to design user-centric mobile apps. This tool helps designers choose proper solutions and strike the right audience with the right UVP from the first time.
#7 Keep Everything Simple
Most people use smartphones in busy environments, which reduces their focus and patience. Complex designs irritate most users, making them uninstall the apps without regret. Below are actionable tips to simplify your mobile applications.
- Utilize easy navigation.
- Make your apps user-friendly.
- List all your products and/or services correctly.
- Use simple designs.
#8 Provide Help Within Your App
Customers visiting physical business premises have human assistants to welcome and help them when they need assistance. You should also provide them with the same experience in your mobile apps. Don’t forget to offer chat assistance within your mobile apps to let your users access live chats with your support team whenever necessary.
The market has different apps that help app developers engage their users directly. REVE Chat is one such tool with complete developer API and mobile chat SDK developers can integrate to provide instant live chat support to the customers within their apps.
#9 Make Login and Registration Voluntary
We saw that making login and registration easy boosts your app’s overall user experience. However, you can also improve that experience by making it voluntary.
Many app designers overlook or don’t know this requirement’s detrimental effects. The truth is that 54% of potential app users avoid apps requiring mandatory registration unless they offer essential services like mobile banking. Thus, assuming that your app is non-replaceable and forcing people to register only hurts you. If you have been compelling potential users to register and witnessed the eroding performance of your product, please make registration voluntary again.
#10 Improve Its Visual Appeal
Lastly, improve your app’s visual appeal to give users the best experience. You can reduce text and use lighter images to make the application more interactive. This way, you grab your users’ attention and create an aesthetic appeal that many digital-savvy users appreciate.
Closing Remarks
Combining stellar UX solutions to achieve user buy-in is necessary and possible. This post discussed the top ten ways of enhancing your mobile app’s UX design. Use them to accelerate your users’ experience with simple, intuitive, and user-friendly designs.
