UX Website Design?

I’m confused by the term “UX Website Design” I’ve been doing web design since the internet was invented and there has been a huge evolution from the 8-bit days of websites with music playing as soon as it loaded and cheesy animated gifs. (and yet somehow .gifs are making a comeback) The evolution of communication is fun to think about

Websites began as an online version of a trifold pamphlet you would pass out to prospective clients – flat, no style information only. And now they have evolved to be interactive with live feeds from social media, videos, and who know what is on the horizon for website design. I think the next step for website consumption will be grafted into the VR experience.  Soon we will all watch movies, play video games and surf the web using VR like the minority report.

Waffle House

How much do you pay your employees to represent your company well? Let’s say on the conservative side $15hr X 40hr work week = 2080 hrs a year you can get from average employee. So the cost to pay them for 4ohrs for 1 year would be $31,200.  Now think of what it would cost to have a 24/7 waffle house type presence in front of your target audience representing your brand. 24X365 =  8760 X $15hr. Take a guess at what that would cost you…$131,400! So it blows my mind when a company doesn’t see the value of a website that cost $5k to be built properly with great SEO and a great user experience!

So what does any of that have to do with UX? Well by the simplest definition of UX Design

“The main goal of design research is to inform the design process from the perspective of the end user.”

ike the ease of use, interaction, the layout…yeah basically so the user has a good experience all around

That’s what I’ve been doing forever, look at our website design portfolio just never called it UX, #stupidhipsters

Parks Howell from The Business of Story said it best “Spoiler alert: I hate to break it to you that your brand is NOT the hero of your story. Your customer is. Place them at the center of your brand story and magical things will happen.”

We learn everything we can about the target audience, and then iteratively test our work throughout the design process.

ROI

Like I mentioned before, website have evolved past the brochure to being a powerful selling tool for your brand that should result on a quick ROI.

 

 

 

Mary Ashleigh Rings

November 1, 2016

Web Design Scholarship

Generation Z, my generation, is engrossed in technology.  We are “born with power cords not umbilical cords.” This generation couldn’t be more perfectly named! We have become Zombies to our technology.  We have reached the point that Albert Einstein feared. “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots!”

With more and more technology continuing to develop, Generation Z will become more and more lazy because of everything that technology can do for them.

So the question is How do you get inside that little box they keep staring at to influence their buying power.  What amazing user experience, UX, can you provide to reach this generation that FFW through every commercial on TV and streams music with no commercials?  

Website design has experienced a huge evolution from the 8-bit days of websites with music playing as soon as it loaded and cheesy animated gifs. (and yet somehow .gifs are making a comeback) Our evolution of communication is fun to think about

We began communicating with hieroglyphics and evolved, then devolved our way back to modern hieroglyphics in emoji based communication on apps.  Websites began as an online version of an information pamphlet that was flat and had no style. And now they have evolved to be interactive with live feeds from social media, videos, and who know what is on the horizon for website design. I think the next step for website consumption will be grafted into the VR experience.  Soon we will all watch movies, play video games and surf the web using VR with our friends without ever leaving our homes.

If you want your business website to be found by Gen Z you will need to research into what websites their generation already spends their time on. Then see if there is a trend, a commonality to those sites that attracts them.  This generation is highly social, as long as it doesn’t involve actually being social in person.  So placing advertisements of your business on social media that they use will allow them to “bump into” your website and they might want to try it out. It is also helpful to have your website displayed on the first google page for searches related to businesses because they will not put in the effort to look further into google when looking for something. If they do not find what they are looking for on that first page they will try searching something else to find the answers they are looking for.

Another good way to get their generation interested in your product or service is to offer a sample or free trial of it because they want to know what they are buying before they buy it.  So after they land on your website, design it in a way that draws the user’s eyes to a free trial offer.  This is a brilliant marketing target for every generation; however, you want your sample to be small so they if they like your product they will have to buy it to continue to enjoy using it.

All of this changes the way of how we market today because my generation consumes information in a non traditional/nonlinear way. For example if someone is thinking about buying a bike, the progression looked like this:

Step one is they would go to google type in “what are the best shoes for …”

Step two then read reviews

Step three search for prices online

Step four buy a pair shoes .

But my generation is more organic in how we spend our time online.

My purchasing process is more organic.

I start my day my looking through twitter and the ads that pop up are the first ones i see that day. I am more likely to look more into the product if it is boosted my someone famous that I like or has a funny commercial. Then as my day goes on i get a snapchat from my friend of her new Vans which makes me wonder what other cool shoes are out there so I hop on pinterest.  I would ask her where she got them and look up what other options there are. I would also ask her if they had any deals on them and if she did not know of any then I would go to google and look up discounts for the pair of shoes that fit my style.

If I saw a link to a video of someone famous that I liked I would click on it before I would click on a link to a website.  Producing a funny video with someone famous and releasing it onto various social media platforms is the best way to get the attention of my generation!

Advertise your product through a snapchat filter

My generation has been raised on the concept that everything we own from our cell phones to cars somehow have an expiration date and we need to upgrade…NOW!  The simplest definition of UX Design “The main goal of design research is to inform the design process from the perspective of the end user.” So knowing that should influence the design to be fun interactive, sharable and use brand power to influence our need to buy now before it’s gone and our old stuff is so uncool.

Parks Howell from The Business of Story said it best “Spoiler alert: I hate to break it to you that your brand is NOT the hero of your story. Your customer is. Place them at the center of your brand story and magical things will happen.”

The more you learn about Generation Z and their lifestyle and place them at the center, the better you can design a website to fit their unique needs.  The more creative your marketing the more people will want to “Share your article on social media and tell people to share and vote”

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