Providing online products or services is not an easy job. With the customer interaction happening virtually, it is a challenge to provide them with an experience that will convince them to make a purchase. But a good UX design can solve the issue. The real challenge is to first determine the issues and needs of the customers and then get down to the root of the issue and solve it.
A product’s viability is completely dependent upon the experience of the product. The needs of customers like empathy, functionality, experience, & information are getting satisfied or not will decide the product growth. To meet customers’ needs this is how research methods help.
1. By creating effective personas we will be able to find out needs, issues, desires, motivations and behaviours of targeted customers.
2. Customer journey mapping which inculde 5 E’s (entice, enter, engage, exit, and extend) helps us to find how customers are iteracting with the product.
3. Story boarding is the most creative method. We as humans are prone to understand any task if its is presented in story format. It becomes easy to understand behaviour, moods, & journey of customers through story in visual format.
But before we tell you how to solve the customer needs, first let’s find out the type of needs you would often come across.
Types of Customer Needs
Experience
It is important to understand the importance of a good experience. The best way to solve customer needs with UX is to design the products or services in such a way that they provide the users with an easy and pleasurable experience. Anything that is too complicated to understand is a complete turn-off for the customers.
Design & Functionality
The better the design and efficient the functionality, the better it is for the customers. A user buys a product or service to make life easy for themselves, and if the product doesn’t solve that for them, it would be an undesired purchase. Any product should provide an easy-to-use design that is feature-filled for proficient functionality. The products or services that a business provides must fulfill their desires, get their work done and do it all without any hassle.
Empathy
Customer relations are not just about making a sale and forgetting about it. Good businesses last longer and flourish because they provide great products and do it with a personal touch. The customers must have a feeling that their service provider understands their concerns and needs, and thus is in a position to serve them well. Being empathetic can take a business a long way.
Information & Control
Providing the customers with all the information about the products or services offered by a business helps them feel that they are making an informed decision. Every customer hopes to have complete control over their actions and giving them just that by equipping them with the right tools can prove to be of immense help.
Methods to Meet Customer Needs with UX
Identifying the customer needs is one thing and providing them with effective solutions is another. It is not always possible to provide an effective solution to every customer’s need, but all businesses must strive to fulfil customer needs. Here’s how you can do it with UX:
- Creating An Effective Persona
Having a great persona is perfect for creating the first impressions and this is what every business must do – create a striking persona based on the target audience for the products or services offered by the business. This will help you gather important information about their needs, issues, desires, motivations, and behaviours. It can be done by gathering as much information as possible through research.
- Mapping The Customer’s Journey
Mapping the journey of the customer from the first time they interact with the brand right through the purchase process and even after the purchase has been made is an important tool in knowing how they feel while interacting with the brand at different stages. This will help the business improve the overall experience by analysing how the customers react at different stages of the purchase process.
- Creating A Storyboard
Drawing up a storyboard of the entire interaction cycle of customers can provide the business with important information about their behaviour as well as that required for planning the future. Right from enabling the business to chart out a long-term plan for further interactions with the customers, to getting better at fulfilling their needs creating a storyboard can help achieve it all.
- Creating A Basic Framework
Preparing in advance and having a plan in place up until the last step can help a business prepare for the best and the worst. To this end, the business should work towards creating a framework that provides in-depth insights and details for all ongoing and upcoming projects. This exercise is not only helpful for digital products but equally beneficial for services as well.
- Testing The Usability
Once the prototype is ready, a business must check its usability by testing its functionality, ease of use, and overall testing of the product. Through testing and gathering all the important information, the business can then work on improving its products and services before going on to implementing the insights. Through usability tests, it can easily identify and understand the customer’s needs and create products and services that perfectly fulfil all their requirements.
It is our hope that you are now well aware of how UX design could prove to be revolutionary in not only addressing the needs of the customers in the most effective manner possible but also in enabling them to enjoy a unique experience with the brand.
Frequently Asked Questions about Customer Needs and UX design
How can providing a good user experience help a business?
Understanding customer needs is crucial to ensuring that they are offered the right services and products, and efficient UX can provide that. It is a process that is evolving continuously and businesses must keep themselves up to the task. With deeper insights, business owners can serve the customers well, thus making sure that the business does well.
What does UX design provide for a business?
UX design can vary based on the requirements of the clients, but certain aspects remain constant. These are user-research reports, UX audit reports, creating user persona, sitemap, customer journey map, UI sketches, interactive prototypes, wireframes, and more.
