User Experience

The term "User Experience" (often abbreviated to "UX") can refer to many forms of interaction between a user and a system.  When understanding and improving user experience, focus is given to an understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities as well as any limitations that may be in place.

The user experience is not about the inner workings of a particular system but rather how it works on the surface when a person comes into contact with it.  As a component of web design, it can be tricky to pin down exactly what it is.  The process for creating a great user experience comes down to understanding and designing the user's experience from start to finish.  This goes well beyond what a website may look like or how it is seen to function.

User experience is a given while creating a good user experience is always going to be challenging.  Offering a good user experience can be difficult as human decisions and interaction can be irrational or at times unpredictable.  Subsequently there is no definitive checklist that can be used to ensure that a website will be user friendly or intuitive.

Points to consider when creating a great user experience:

Value:

Your website should be seen to offer value in what you are offering visitors.  Your website should quickly convey why your business should be considered by the visitor.  In the end it is all about providing the visitor with value so communicate this clearly.

Usefulness:

Your content should be original and fulfil a need.  Content on your website should answer specific questions or provide insight that solves a particular need.  Visitors may skim over much of the content on a web page, make sure that visitors know exactly why they are on a page ensuring the major points are clearly visible.

Usability:

Your website should be easy to use.  Certain aspects of web design and development have become the norm simply because they are easy to use.  Likewise your website should function intuitively with visitors able to quickly reach the content that they seek.

Desirable:

Your brand identity should, through imagery and other design elements, evoke positive emotions and appreciation.  Visitors should want to return regularly because they enjoy interacting with your website.

Findable:

Content needs to be navigable and easy to locate, not only from within your website but also from external sources.  Your internal navigation is crucial in providing a visitor with easy access to your content.  Ensuring your content is easily accessible from external sources ensure that search engines can crawl your website or that other websites can link back to relevant sections of your website.

Accessible:

Content needs to be accessible across multiple platforms and devices.  This will ensure that no matter whom or how someone reaches your website they can access your content or make contact.

Credible:                                                                                 

Users must find your website to convey a professional and authoritative message.  Visitors to your website should believe that you are the business that will meet their needs.  By offering a clean professional design

For real estate websites interaction and accessibility remain key considerations where search is a crucial point of interaction.  Prop Data is due to launch our updated and far more advanced property search facility.  Designed and developed for ease of use, yet improved functionality we hope to improve the overall user experience.  The goal is to make it easier and quicker to find the relevant content.  We hope that this will improve the user experience for all of our clients’ websites improving all of the above mentioned aspects of a good user experience.

It is crucial that you understand who your end users are.  When you know what tasks they are looking to perform and how they are likely to go about these tasks, you can format and file your content accordingly.  While you as an advanced user with more detailed knowledge of a particular industry may expect your website to function or respond in a particular fashion, the end user may find that experience confusing or frustrating.