The various combinations of possible steps have all been pre-empted and planned for. Apply this information to your audience and you’ll soon learn how you can employ UX to guide them along the path of your choice.

What’s it to you?

Your company needs to have a deep understanding of consumer wants and needs. A UX specialist translates these wants and needs into design that complements human psychology when it comes to interacting with technology.

UX 101

As Steve Jobs told us, “Design is not how it looks but actually how it works.” UX is responsible for:

  • Paving the way: Showing users how to complete your goals;
  • Making achieving your goals worth your users’ while;
  • Working with people’s laziness. No task should take more than three clicks to complete; 
  • Creating urgency. Scarcity works wonders; 
  • Planning for decision fatigue. Offer fewer choices or suggest the ideal one; 
  • Providing room for error. People make click-mistakes. Clever UX gets people back on track; and 
  • Triggering emotion and working subconscious wonders. 

Nudge, don’t push

“A user interface is like a joke – if you have to explain it, it's not that good,” says Martin LeBlanc.

Guiding your audience on the path that best suits you is all well and good, as long as it ends there. Although it’s tempting to go full tilt when conversions are the honest end goal, there’s a lot to be said for restraint and erring on the side of the nudge over a push.

A nudge would be taking advantage of subconscious processing, which allows your users to journey through your site naturally, with well thought out UX acting as a subtle guide.

A push would be using something called dark patterns. These are user interfaces specifically designed to trick people and must be avoided at all costs. What you want to do is gently pave the way, then reap the rewards. Earn, don’t take.

The line is fine – that doesn’t mean you can forget it’s there.

UX is not a free-for-all

As with designing, writing, and coding, not everyone can ‘just do’ UX. It takes innate talent, learned skill and years of experience. It’s worth using someone who knows how to play and craft in this particular realm of digital wizardry.

For more information, visit www.hellocavalry.com. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook, Twitter or on LinkedIn.