In my day to day work where I am engaging with both blue chip, and challenger brand SME, organisations in the design and development of enterprise mobile applications and responsive web designs, I am often asked “what makes customers click?” Or, more importantly, what makes people tick? For brands, it appears that these are the most prominent questions of 2017.
For this reason, I’d like to share a few tips related to interface design for creating a beneficial user experience. For the uninitiated, UI design focuses more on elements like composition, rhythm, balance, colours, and legibility, whereas UX design focuses more on interactions, animations, swipe or call to actions, and how elements come across to a first-time user. When you blend these fields together it makes the job of a designer more straightforward by focusing on a deeper set of extrinsic guidelines.
Below are my top tips for making applications and websites look ‘tappable’, for want of a better phrase, and elicit a strong call to action.
· Complexion reduction – While this is normally used to ensure content is the key visual on the screen, it always works for making call to action stand out. Removing unneeded colour or “Chrome” as it’s called (like the chrome in a car) it stops the user becoming distracted by the interface or unnecessary elements. Instagram did it a recently – to go with a full white interface so the only colour was notifications and the main photography.
· Wording – This may seem self-explanatory but language that alludes to a lighter touch can help – “Try Something” “Get Started” is a lot better than “Proceed” “Set Up” “Confirm”.
· Things need to look tappable – Buttons needs to look like buttons, things need to stand off the page – this does not mean 3D effects, it might just be subtle shadows, intelligent use of colour or a perception of depth.
· Natural Hierarchy – Sizing, position and colour all help gives the user a sense of what is important on the page, if the useless terms and conditions are bigger – the user may believe these are more important and give extra concern to what they are getting.
· Keep it above the fold – The main call to action should be obvious to the user so it needs within the screen when you land on it – if the user can see the buy button quickly – unless they are fully committed to the purchase, they won’t go out of the way to find it.
· Natural User Flow – The call to action needs to appear and be placed at the appropriate point of that journey. Therefore, it is important to follow the users eye through the screen, they are being taken on a journey on the app or website.
As more organisations are interacting with their audiences and customers through apps and websites, the user experience is having an increasingly stronger impact on how an organisation is perceived. In fact, some see the user interface as an extension of your brand. For consumer and b2b that rely on digital media to interact with their audiences and customers, user experience design is no longer an option. It is a necessity.
