User Experience (UX)
The overall experience a user has when interacting with a product, website, or application, encompassing usability, accessibility, and satisfaction.
Definition
User experience (UX) encompasses every aspect of a user's interaction with a company, its services, and its products. In digital contexts, UX includes website navigation, app usability, checkout flows, content readability, load times, accessibility, and emotional response to design.
UX design follows user-centered methodologies: researching user needs, creating personas and journey maps, prototyping solutions, testing with real users, and iterating based on feedback. The goal is creating products that are useful, usable, and delightful.
Why It Matters
UX directly impacts business metrics. Studies show every dollar invested in UX returns $100, and 88% of users won't return to a site after a bad experience. For e-commerce, UX optimization can increase conversion rates by 200-400%.
Beyond conversions, UX affects brand perception, customer loyalty, and support costs. Products that are intuitive to use generate fewer support tickets and higher customer satisfaction scores.
Examples in Practice
An e-commerce site reduced checkout steps from 5 to 3 and added progress indicators, decreasing cart abandonment by 35% and increasing completed purchases by $2M annually.
A SaaS company invested in user research and discovered their onboarding flow confused new users. Simplified onboarding improved activation rates from 40% to 75%.
A healthcare portal redesigned for accessibility, ensuring screen reader compatibility and keyboard navigation. Beyond compliance, the improvements benefited all users and reduced support calls 60%.