Working with a UX design agency can take your digital product to the next level. The right agency can help increase conversions, boost customer satisfaction, and generate user loyalty.
How? It’s because a UX design agency’s focus is to create a phenomenal experience for anyone who uses your product. UX is short for user experience. It’s a vital element of any digital product, from websites to mobile apps to SaaS platforms. The term evolved out of UI (user interface) when designers started recognizing the need to focus on the overall experience.
#What is a UX Design Agency?
A UX design agency specializes in crafting a superb experience for their clients’ users. When the project is done, the client will reap the benefits of having a greatly enhanced piece of software that will keep users coming back and welcome new users with open arms.
However, not all UX design agencies are the same. Some will genuinely dive deep and gain an understanding of your users, while others are simply UI design agencies that use UX as a buzzword to get your business. How can you spot the difference?
#What Makes a Good UX Design Agency?
Every UX design agency should follow a user-focused design process, starting from day one. They shouldn’t simply ask for all the information about your users; they should gain even deeper insights about them.
User research is the first step in any UX design process. It should be done before anyone loads up an artboard or even sketches out a mockup on a napkin. Without knowing everything they can about your customers, how can they design something your customer will appreciate?
User research is essentially a listening exercise. It seeks to get input directly from users that can help inform product design decisions. The more inputs available, the more confident a designer can be when they design. Some of these inputs included:
- Demographic information
- Behavioral context
- Mental models
- Critical concepts in the industry
- User goals
- User pain points
- Usability with existing or similar solutions
- Overall desires
- Accessibility
- Requirements and desires to aid in productivity
A good design agency will advocate for getting these inputs before any design work starts.
Once the user research is complete, the next step is to design the product with all of this information in mind. Of course, this is only the beginning of the UX design process.
Designing something that your users will appreciate will also require plenty of user testing, which happens right after the prototype is developed. Testing can be done online with anonymous users who match the right criteria, or it can be done in person with existing customers. Of course, other aspects should be tested as well, such as overall functionality and compatibility with target devices. After every testing phase, UX designers return to the design phase. This is when the designer applies what was learned in the user testing phase to create a better user experience.
The above process is iterated until the users, and you, are both happy with the product. At that stage, the new design is implemented and deployed. You’ll immediately start seeing how your users feel about the latest changes.
A premium UX design agency will strictly follow this process, which keeps the user at the forefront during every stage.
If you find yourself in a situation where your agency just hands you a new design and sends over an invoice, be skeptical. Ask them what they based their design decisions on. Are they basing their decisions on users’ mental models? Have they tested these concepts with real users? Sometimes a new design can hurt the user experience. You want to be sure that they did meaningful research to inform their design decisions.
#Benefits of Working with a UX Design Agency
Think of your UX agency as the center of a flywheel. Your agency can help you really understand your users needs, and translate this into user experience improvements that spindle outwards to your all channels. Some of the benefits you’ll see include:
- Increased conversion with your onboarding process
- Increased loyalty from existing users
- Increased ratings on review platforms (like an app store)
- Increased revenue from revenue generating activities on your platform
- And so many more
When people like an app, they want to spend more time on it. They want to make purchases from it. They want to tell their friends about it. The benefits of working with a premium UX design agency are endless because they put the user at the forefront of the entire design process.
Hiring the right UX agency can do wonders for your business. Not only will you reap immediate benefits, but you’ll be able to craft a roadmap for your software that’s driven by real data, not just hunches and inclinations. Do You Need a UX Design Agency?
Is your app getting a few too many bad reviews? Is revenue dipping? Do you think your SaaS product could just be doing better than it is? You likely need to work with a quality UX design agency.
With Pulp is a UX design and dev agency. Contact us for your UX design needs, and we’ll get to work putting your users first in the design process.