UX design has become imperative to site success in the last decade. As the global population moves online, a wide-scale digital shift has made the average consumer more active than ever before. With new demands for a streamlined journey from the landing page to the shopping basket, it’s time for marketers to design the site experience of tomorrow.
The current return on investment for successful UX design is 9,900%, according to experts from Forbes. As we move into 2023, a UX/UI-focused strategy is essential if brands want to see more engagement and a boost in conversions amongst their competitors.
From prioritizing personalization to optimizing a mobile interface, read on as we discuss the importance of UX design in 2023 and divulge the five web design trends marketers should follow as we approach the new year.
User experience is an essential component of any marketing campaign. While new, immersive tactics have driven the success of consumer campaigns in recent years, the age-old phrase “the customer is always right” remains at the heart of any successful strategy.
Modern-day marketers rank user experience as the driving force behind conversion success. Prioritizing your demographic’s demands and gratifications when designing your campaign is the key to keeping your engagement high and consumer retention stable.
A 2018 Forrester study highlighted the endless benefits of prioritizing user experience within a campaign, revealing that UX/UI optimization reduced brand switching by 15% while increasing positive consumer feedback by 16%.
While user experience strategies of today are largely digitalized, their philosophy remains the same. Swapping a high street store for an online site, consumers still expect brands to provide them with an accessible, personalized journey that leaves them wanting to return.
So how can marketers ensure their UX tactics are up to scratch in a competitive online arena? Read on to find out how you can stay ahead of the game in 2023 as we discuss the UX trends we think will dominate the e-commerce sector next year.
On the back of an e-commerce boom, an optimized site design has become a key player in a successful user experience strategy.
For marketers on a mission to rank highly in 2023, it’s time to start switching up that strategy and adopting new UX-driven tactics that will keep consumers clicking. Let’s look closely at five trending UX design predictions for the new year and explore how you can insert them into your next campaign.
Did you know that a whopping 74% of consumers claim that they refuse to interact with a webpage that is not personalized?
While staying on top of innovative digital design hacks is essential, the key to keeping consumers clicking is to make them feel valued during their site journey. New statistics from Monetate revealed that brands with a personalized site strategy could see a 19% increase in sales in the next year alone.
Consumers now expect more from online brands on the back of the pandemic’s digital shift. Each year brings a new set of accessibility, interactivity, and engagement-based demands from a newly active online audience. To retain a competitive advantage, marketers must work hard to personalize web content for users with various abilities and requests.
Airbnb provides a great example of site personalization. The holiday-based rental site uses a range of first and third-party data to inform a clever consumer focussed algorithm. It utilizes a hyper-personalized landing page customized to a user’s previous searches, stays, and current destination for a streamlined journey from the landing page to the perfect place to stay.
85% of consumers in a Kibo study claimed that a personalized homepage was the key factor that encouraged them to interact with a site post-pandemic, rendering it an essential UX focus point for future campaigns.
Covid-19 has significantly increased the number of mobile users across the globe. With 54% of Google’s traffic now attributed to mobile devices, 2023 is the year that cellular conversions take priority in an e-commerce landscape.
In a world dominated by the latest smartphone technology, consumers now expect brands to create a site experience optimized for mobile browsing. From a portrait-based site structure to improved touch response, users expect mobile sites to be fast loading and widely accessible on several smartphone devices.
As UX designers shift towards a mobile-friendly future, focusing on smartphone optimization could see more than a spike in consumer satisfaction. Google’s search ranking algorithm also favors sites prioritizing an accessible mobile experience.
Brands that take time to create a mobile-based version of their webpage are likely to rake in a higher SERP score and appear further up the organic search string.
Data visualization has also been tipped to trend amongst UX designers in 2023. As major online players such as Spotify and TikTok pioneer the way forward for engaging data-based design, marketers are beginning to deliver data to their consumers in a way that encourages them to enjoy an information-focused experience.
From video content to interactive infographics, there have never been as many ways to share data creatively with an audience. Tomorrow’s consumers expect a streamlined experience when engaging with a webpage or application. Minimalistic, structured design makes a page easy to navigate.
So, when marketers need to relay a string of information to their users, post-pandemic trends have seen them displaying data in innovative ways.
For example, Spotify Wrapped displays a yearly wrap-up of a user’s top-played songs and artists. Using interactive infographics, brand-focused plays on demographic trends, and a mixture of exciting visuals, Spotify feeds this app-based data to its consumers and encourages them to look forward to accessing their Wrapped results.
Taking a personalized approach to data/information sharing is vital. As users become more attuned to a visual-based experience online, including data visualization into your UX strategy is essential.
You can create themed visual content using video templates and high-performing infographics using template builders such as Envato. Not only can this streamline the aesthetics of your site design, but it aids data visualization for a more accessible user experience.
2023 will be all about delving deep into the details when perfecting a strong UX design strategy.
To create a consumer experience that rivals a sea of competitors, UX designers much consider each small site interaction. These small details are known as micro-interactions, described as feedback a site user receives after completing a small exchange, such as a click or swipe on a page.
Micro-interactions are a great way to physically navigate a consumer on their journey through a site, highlighting key areas to interact with and providing feedback on whether an action is right or wrong.
Studies show that micro-interactions build user retention and can keep site consumers engaged for longer as they receive constant gratification from their actions. From sound-based feedback to highlighting a button, inserting a range of triggers within your UX design renders the experience more interactive for the consumer and reduces the bounce rate on a page.
While optimizing site design for UX purposes is important, it’s also critical to optimize content for SEO in 2023.
In the wake of the e-commerce industry growing by a third since the onset of the pandemic, there are more search engine competitors than ever before. As the online playing field evolves, so does Google’s ranking system. 2023 will see a significant shift towards UX-based ranking as Google prioritizes sites that provide users with the best experience.
With one consistent goal, Google has begun to incorporate many user testing metrics into its algorithm to determine the probability of consumers valuing their experience on a site.
Therefore, it’s time for UX designers and SEO specialists to combine their efforts. From optimizing your copywriting services to prioritizing fast-loading page speeds, all aspects of a website must be Google-friendly to rank highly.
As we step into the future of UX design, there are two factors all marketers must consider when strategic planning. Those are details and devices.
In a technologically dominated era where smartphone devices are constantly evolving, UX design must be adaptable to remain accessible to all online consumers. Taking time to prioritize mobile optimization will put your ahead of competitors in the race to keep retention rates high.
2023 will be all about stripping back to basics and taking time to optimize all areas of your UX design. Those with a well-designed web experience will surely see a return on investment and a new competitive advantage within their industry niche.
Rebecca Barnatt-Smith is a freelance journalist and multi-media marketing executive, specialising in UX design, SEO and helping small businesses grow online.
