User experience is how a person interacts with a product or service in terms of usability and efficiency. We’ve all experienced frustration when using a website before, perhaps on a sign up form, booking system or checkout process. However conducting in-depth user research with your website design would eliminate those frustrations as we learn about your target audience and the ideal user journey.

UX audit & competitor analysis

To kick off our UX design process, we start by identifying the problems with your existing website by conducting a UX audit. This highlights issues in terms of visual design and user experience, making suggestions for improvement as to how the website could be more aesthetically pleasing and user friendly.

Then we’ll conduct a competitor analysis. This involves researching competing businesses in your industry and understanding what other websites are offering.

Surveys, interviews & user personas

Let’s understand your users – what features do they like about your current website, what pain points do they face, what similar platforms do they find useful, what would they like to see from your new website? These questions would be answered by conducting surveys and interviews directly with your customers.

Collecting this information will allow us to create user personas. User personas provide an overview of your typical target market identifying demographic type information and insights such as likes, dislikes, goals and frustrations, providing a clear view for the design direction ahead.

Understanding the user’s journey

We can then move onto exploring the ideal user journey. Every user has a task to complete when arriving on your website – this may be to browse a collection, make a booking or purchase an item. In order for the user to achieve their goal we must create a journey that allows them to complete their task with ease and efficiency.

This is achieved by creating user flows and site maps. User flows map out the user’s journey to completing a task. While site maps highlight the pages and features required to get there.

Sketches turn into prototypes

With the research underway we can begin to design your website. First we would sketch some initial concepts, developing the best layouts into wireframes, and then into a working prototype which is a “mockup” version of the final website.

Testing the prototype is essential

At this stage, we have a research informed and beautifully designed working prototype of the new website. However, it is essential to conduct a prototype usability test with your target audience to ensure the website design meets their goals and expectations that were identified in the beginning of the process during user research. It will provide valuable insights from the customers themselves and may identify usability issues. The UX process is complete!

So how can UX research elevate your website design? At DHD, we’re designing a website for your customers to use – in that case, involving your users in the design process will provide a competitive advantage for your business as your website will meet your customers’ exact wants and needs.