Can you quantify people’s experience on your website?
That might seem weird but the answer is a definitive yes. If you ran a poll and asked people if they had complaints about navigation, page loading speed, colors, the theme, would the answer be yes? If so, you’re potentially scaring away business.
You shouldn’t ignore the value of user experience (UX). But should you hire a UX designer or do it yourself?
The truth is, you need a professional. Let us explain the benefits of hiring an expert UX designer.
1. Intuitive Navigation
Why hire a UX agency? One of the main benefits is they can provide intuitive navigation. Remember, the point of a UX designer is to make your site accessible, improving people’s experience.
A professional user experience designer understands why UX matters. They’ll implement crucial features and design practices, like making sure it’s easy to go back to the top of a page or fixing the text on the page so it’s readable regardless of screen size.
It shouldn’t take an eternity for visitors to find your contact page, a specific blog post, or a product. Professional UX designers can guarantee there won’t be any navigation issues.
2. Faster Loading Speed
UX isn’t solely about visual design. A crucial part of good UX is faster loading speed. A majority of users leave a site that takes more than a few seconds to load simply because it’s a waste of time.
There are faster options out there.
Hiring an expert can help identify how quick your site is for people with slow and fast Internet connections. They can then audit your site to determine what slows it down and work on improving page speed significantly.
3. True Responsive Design
Platforms like WordPress and Wix automatically give you responsive website design. This ensures your site’s layout adjusts for the screen size of the user, making your site applicable for both desktop and mobile viewers.
However, this isn’t enough. Don’t rely solely on a single button or plugin to automatically turn your site into a responsive one.
You still have to manually alter some other factors. Consider text size, image quality, and color scheme. These might seem like small details but a great UX designer understands how they can make or break the user experience on your site.
Perhaps the biggest factor you have to do manually is your site’s visual organization. Let’s dive into that next.
4. Visual Organization
Designing your site with an in-house team can work out well but a UX agency can provide better visual organization.
This refers to properly laying out how images appear on each page, how ads appear, and the synchronization of your color scheme and other page elements. They can help structure your blog posts so that they don’t look like giant, intimidating blocks of text on a mobile phone or like sparse lines on a desktop.
5. Faster Turnaround
Improving UX is no simple task. It can involve a whole redesign of your website, re-working of all your images, and implementing a new layout or theme. If you DIY the process, it might take up valuable time.
After all, you have to split your time between managing your business and fixing UX issues. If you don’t have a dedicated design team, you’ll have to invest even more time for training or hiring an in-house team.
With a professional team, you can get the job done quickly. They don’t have any other responsibilities except for the UX tasks. They also have the experience, skills, and tools to finish the job properly and in good time.
6. Better Tools
Speaking of tools, which ones do you need to improve user experience? How familiar are you with Hotjar, TryMyUI, and Mockingbird?
You can get some UX tools for free but they won’t give you the results you need.
It’s important to get an in-depth analysis of your site. You’ll want to see why people leave your page after a few seconds, not simply a general bounce rate. You’ll want to see why people engage with your landing pages and not only the percentage rates.
7. Accountability
What happens when things go wrong? What if your UX approach ruined your site instead of improving it? What if you slowed down your site or made it look like a jumbled mess instead of looking sleek and clean?
The only person you can blame is yourself. You’ll have to pay for the problems and fixes.
However, when you hire experts then they take full accountability.
When things go wrong, they have to fix it. If any issues do crop up you don’t have to drop everything to try to fix it yourself. You’ll have a professional team on hand to get it sorted in short order.
8. Lower Costs
Think you can save money doing UX yourself? This is rarely the case.
You’ll have to pay for the premium version of UX design and testing tools. Without experience, you might end up paying for too many tools or the wrong ones. Consider the costs of damage-control too, if your first UX attempt fails.
Hiring UX designer consultants is a more affordable and profitable route in the long run. They can seem expensive at first but the results are worth the investment. Also, since they can get the job done quickly, it means you can reap the rewards of a better UX sooner.
Hire a UX Designer Today!
Web design isn’t as easy as some make it out to be. You can simply design a basic layout in Photoshop or settle for free layouts on WordPress.
It’s a complex aspect of web design that can affect how visitors engage with your website and content. People won’t return to your site, even if it has the best products, if it’s ugly and confusing to navigate or if it takes too long to load.
Don’t treat UX like a last-minute deal. Hire a UX designer to get it done right.
