The UX Design Process is the secret formula for making awesome websites, apps, and other digital products. But what exactly is the UX process? And how does it influence what users think and feel while using the product?

UX design has been around since the 1990s, but the concept itself is as old as time. As anyone who’s ever worked a customer service job will tell you, empathy is a powerful problem-solving skill. UX harnesses empathy to understand what makes the user tick — and in turn, create something they love using.

So, how do UX designers step into the shoes of their users? By guessing? Reading a few articles? Swapping bodies for a few hours? As cool as that would be, the answer is much easier than all that…by following a solid UX design process.

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The UX Design Process

• Research
• Analysis
• Design
• Testing
• Launch

What is Design Thinking?

UX design covers everything the user thinks and feels while using a digital product. For a truly impactful product, the user should have a problem for which the product presents a clear solution. 

The problem can be as simple as booking a hotel room for a weekend trip or as complicated as finding a primary care physician that accepts the user’s health insurance. No matter the difficulty, the product needs to get them from point A to point B in the most seamless way possible.

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On top of being easy to use, the product needs to resonate with users in a meaningful way. If you know the target audience is 60-70-year-olds purchasing life insurance plans, you probably won’t use bright, bold colors and lots of slang, right?

The trick is to have the design meet in the middle of relevant and easy-to-use. To strike the right balance, UX designers usually follow design thinking principles.

Design thinking has five stages that guide the typical UX process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Let’s apply design thinking to the example of the hotel booking product. Pretend the user booked a three-day trip to Chicago and needs to find a hotel.

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• Empathize: Consider the user’s wants/needs.
• Wants: hotel amenities, close to attractions, nearby restaurants, rewards programs, rooms with a view, etc.
• Needs: length of stay, budget-friendly, child/pet friendly, number of beds, etc.
• Define: Outline who the typical user is/what their goals are.
• The user: adults, 20-40 years old, married with 2-3 kids, make $50-70,000 a year, etc.
• The goal: booking a quality, reasonably-priced hotel room near Chicago’s best family-friendly attractions.
• Ideate: Brainstorm features that will help the user reach their goal.
• Features: filters, maps, restaurant/attraction recommendations, user reviews, safety ratings, event calendars, booking deals, etc.
• Prototype: Turn your branding and features into a usable product.
• Test: Test your prototype with your future users and find out what to add/fix.
• Examples of feedback: “This doesn’t tell me how far the hotel is from Wrigley Field.”, “I can’t search hotels by lowest price.”, “It would be great if this told me where I can find the best Chicago-style deep dish.”, “Why is the navigation bar so hard to find?”

As you can see, there’s plenty of overlap between design thinking and UX design strategy. When they’re used in tandem, the product benefits the business as much as the user. The best thing for the user is usually the best thing for your business.

What is the UX Design Process?

You’re probably thinking, “As long as I follow the design thinking process, I should be golden, right?” Well…yes and no.

Design thinking applies to every digital product, but the actual process of building the product differs from project to project. For instance, a full-scale web app is WAY more involved than a simple marketing website design process.

The typical UX design process generally follows these steps but may have some extra or repeated steps depending on the project. The trick is to intermingle those design thinking principles at each process stage.

The UX Design Process

• Research

You knew this part was coming…

Before you put anything about your product on paper, do your homework. Take a look at your competitors. What works? What doesn’t? Who uses the product? What do they want? And most importantly, what can you do better?

This is a prime opportunity to put yourself in the user’s shoes and empathize with them since you technically ARE a user. If your biggest competitors have key features hidden, slow load speeds, poor branding, or any other frustrating roadblocks, take notes! 

User interviews are also a crucial part of UX design strategy. You can infer a lot about how the target users feel from independent research, but why guess when you can get real, usable feedback straight from the source?

• Analysis

Analyze your findings from the research phase to define and ideate before designing. Think of this stage as a UX evaluation.

Have a good idea of what the user’s primary and secondary goals are with the product. Along with user feedback, this will help you decide what design elements and features are helpful or not.

Also, pull together any data you got about your users to create user personas (AKA a fictional user profile). Even though the person isn’t “real”, it’s based on real metrics and will help guide your design choices, creating a more tailored user experience.

Now that the groundwork is in place, you can start conceptualizing the actual prototype. With the personas in the back of your mind, start thinking about user flows, original features, and creating a unique brand identity.

• Design

It’s time to create the prototype!

Building the actual product is always exciting because you get to watch your concepts come to life. Plus, with your UX design strategy, you’re creating a useful product and attaching it to a brand you’re proud of.

Remember that the product does NOT have to be perfect at this point in the UX design process. UX has become so popular in digital product design BECAUSE of its iterative nature. You can still get creative without completely ruining the product because you can always go back to the drawing board.

• Testing

After you finish your prototype, put it to the test and validate your design choices.

Test the product with people that match your user personas to ensure it works for the intended audience. This gives you a little preview of how the product will fare in your competitive market before launch.

The best thing about user testing is that you can fix any product kinks before putting the MVP in front of real end-users. It also significantly reduces the number of unsatisfied users that will abandon the product and never come back.

How many times have you bought a tube of toothpaste because it said “4 out of 5 Dentists Recommend” on the package? Think of user testing as a similar guarantee because you wouldn’t put out a product that leaves users frustrated.

• Launch

There’s no feeling more exciting than watching your hard work pay off. Especially when your users really enjoy your product and make it a part of their everyday lives.

However, this doesn’t mean that the product will always be perfect as is. You should always have a maintenance plan to keep everything working properly. Technology is ever-changing, and software updates will be necessary from time to time. 

The digital product market is also evolving at the speed of light, and in the current competitive market, it’s only a matter of time before a new product comes along to steal your thunder.

Think about when Netflix first started as an online DVD rental service. They revolutionized streaming before anyone else and practically ended Blockbuster (RIP). And when other streaming services came along with bigger and better libraries, they created multiple original programs to keep their users returning to their platform.

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If you want your digital product to stay relevant, keep your finger on the pulse and evolve with the times. UX design strategy never ends after launch, but keeps growing and changing into bigger and better products.

What are Best Practices?

Best practices are industry-specific methods for carrying out procedures that are generally practiced because they produce favorable results.

The UX design process and design thinking guide the project, but best practices are guardrails that keep the design team focused on creating a seamless experience. 

People, technology, and industries are always evolving, and so are best practices. Just because something worked best ten years ago doesn’t mean it will always be standard practice. After all, could you imagine following a website design process from 2002? How dated and ancient would that website look?

We use these evergreen best practices as a fallback during the UX design process. Since anyone can spot these common themes in easy-to-use interfaces, we can see these best practices sticking around for a while.

CreateApe's Best Practices

• Know the difference between UX and UI: User experience and user interface design overlap quite a bit, but they are completely different concepts. Learn and understand the intricacies and nuances of both.
• Know your audience: We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. What works for a 21-year-old computer programmer IS NOT going to work for a 60-year-old grandmother.
• Keep content scannable: Break your content into easily digestible pieces for better focus and reading comprehension.
• Simplicity and clarity are paramount: Cut down as many steps as possible to streamline the user’s path.
• Consistency in UI=intuitive navigation: If the user can recognize elements and patterns in the interface, they’ll feel more at ease using your product.
• Design for accessibility: Not everyone has the same abilities, so designing for accessibility ensures you’re creating equal opportunities with your product.
• Eliminate distractions: “I love all these pop-up ads” - said no one, ever. You’re also 279.64 times more likely to climb Mt. Everest than click on a banner ad.
• Optimize for mobile: Four out of five mobile users access online shops with their smartphones, so make sure your users can take your product on the go.
• Allow for personalization: Users don’t want to dig through your site to find content relevant to them. Personalize interfaces and curate content for a more tailored experience.
• When in doubt, don’t reinvent the wheel: If you’re not sure how a user will respond to a conceptual design element, it’s probably safe to say they won’t get it. If it ain't broke, don’t fix it.

So, Why is the UX Design Process so Important?

As tech becomes more present in our everyday lives, we need to find a way to keep products working for real people. The UX design process ensures that tech will always have a human touch because it’s validated by real people like us!

Creating digital products involves a lot of conceptualizing and ideation. But when you follow the UX design process and best practices, you and your team get a clear roadmap to an MVP. You’ll also know what to expect post-launch by putting the actual product in front of your users and fixing problems before they cause any major damage.

None of this is a guarantee that your product will become the next Uber or Air B’n’B. But the UX design process will give your team a more organized approach to product design and help you foster meaningful relationships with your users.

Need help navigating the UX design process? Contact us for a UX evaluation!

Read more about our approach to UX strategy.

Trust us when we say your digital product’s onboarding experience WILL make or break the customer’s perception of your business.

Getting your target audience interested in the product is the hard part. But if your onboarding flow isn’t equally engaging and efficient, you risk confusing your user or (even worse) boring them into indifference.

Interactivity is the name of the game when it comes to your digital product onboarding experience. It’s about familiarizing the user with the product while giving them hands-on experience with the features designed to make their lives easier.

What Goes Into A User-Friendly Onboarding Experience?

As with most things in UX design, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution that works for every kind of product. Your onboarding checklist can and will change depending on the type of product you’re creating, the end user, and the industry you’re designing for.

For example, a SaaS system may need an in-depth walkthrough of different flows so the user understands how to execute tasks. In contrast, a healthcare app may have certain restrictions for HIPPA compliance and need robust customization depending on the user’s condition.

There's no strict rulebook that every product onboarding should follow, but you should always consider these factors when defining the structure of your onboarding process:

• Benefit-Forward: The user needs to understand the value of the product. Show them how they can accomplish a goal and the impact it creates.
• User-Centric: Focus less on showing off the product and more on how the product fits into the user’s everyday life.
• Functionality: Point out key elements and flows and show the user how to navigate them.
• Action-Oriented: Give the user a simple task to perform so they can see how everything clicks.
• Ever-Evolving: Your product will change as your business grows, creating opportunities to simplify and sharpen your onboarding process.

Even if your onboarding flow checks all these boxes, users may still speed-run the process and quickly click through each screen to start using the product. No harm, no foul. Just ensure they can access it whenever in case they get lost.

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Best Practices For Creating a Better Digital Product Onboarding Experience

You’ve convinced the user to see what your product can do for them, now it’s time to deliver on that promise.

As a UX designer or a stakeholder bringing the product to life with one, you probably have a lot to say about your platform. The trouble is that you don’t have the time or space to tell the entire story within a few screens. 

So, how can you give the user the gist of your product before they start interacting with it themselves? And how can you keep them invested until they land on their dashboard?

Take Your Audience On A Quick Product Tour

If you’ve ever downloaded an app before (come on, it’s 2023), then you’ve probably swiped through a few informational screens before beginning the official onboarding process. They usually have some value props and point out key features to help users understand everything they can do with an app.

App designers do this to give users a preview of coming attractions. Whether you want to give the user a rundown of the end-to-end experience or educate them about a feature they didn’t know about beforehand, a quick product tour will help your audience grasp your platform’s full capabilities.

Plus, you can cut down on the average onboarding time by briefly touching on less important features or doing a quick tutorial on how the product behaves.

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Go For The Guided Approach

Some product experiences are more involved than others. By that, we mean it’s much easier to swipe through a line-up of potential dates than fully automating a software database.

Where a quick product tour is useful for something entertainment or lifestyle focused, a SaaS system has more important ground to cover. It’s absolutely imperative that the user feels supported — but even then, you can’t overwhelm them with a wall of information.

A guided digital product onboarding experience allows users to learn as they go (not too slow or rushed). With informational call-outs, tips, and coaching, the user gets hands-on experience with your product while eliminating ambiguity around finding the content or features they need.

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Cater To Each User’s Unique Pain Points

If you have one of those multipurpose products, chances are that some features will be lower on the priority list depending on the type of user. Your onboarding flow helps you better understand each user's priorities and present content relevant to their needs. 

Keep in mind that you will have to collect some information from the user to know why they sought out your product. But that doesn’t mean they have to answer a million questions. 70% of customers are likely to abandon an onboarding process that takes over 20 minutes. Considering our online attention spans, a good portion of that percentage probably drops off earlier.

This is one of those scenarios where a little generalization won’t hurt. During your UX research, you probably grouped your target audience into personas. Use those previously defined personas to let users self-identify and tell you what they want from your product or service.

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Tailor The Experience To The User’s Preferences

Your onboarding flow allows you to learn a little more about your user. But with a few simple questions about the user’s tastes, you can show them how the product will personalize their experience.

Spotify’s onboarding process is an excellent example of how to gauge preferences before they start interacting with your product. By collecting data about the user’s favorite artists and podcasts during onboarding, Spotify provides a high level of personalization and recommends similar content to discover new music every time the user logs in.

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Walk The User Through A Sample Task

What you don’t know is what you don’t know, especially when you’re using a new digital product for the first time. Sure, we can logically connect some dots about where to find settings or where certain buttons go — but for the most essential user flows, it’s best to show, not tell.

A sample task gives the user clear step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish a goal. By walking through each screen at their own pace, users can absorb more information actively. 

Plus, with tooltips or AI assistance, you can boost the user’s confidence while interacting with your product by addressing potential hurdles early on.

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And Above All, Keep It Brief

Once the user creates their account, they’re too antsy to go through a drawn-out onboarding process.

There are a few different approaches you can take when you have a lot of ground to cover. For a more impatient user, you can enable a full product experience with a delayed sign-up. Let the user get the lay of the land and explore the features before they create an account (like Duolingo).

Onboarding should typically be anywhere from 5-10 steps, but if you need to collect more data, try breaking up your onboarding into distinct sections (basic info, plan selection, product tour, and so on). By segmenting everything into separate phases (and implementing a checklist or progress bar), the user will feel much less overwhelmed by everything they need to do.

Turn A First-Time Visitor Into A Product Loyalist With Your Onboarding Experience

Your digital product onboarding experience has the power to either wow users or drive them away. It should never (and we repeat, NEVER) be treated as an afterthought. 

While you’re designing, put yourself into the users' shoes and consider how you can help them fully immerse themselves in the product with your onboarding experience. Use your best judgment (along with the best practices listed above) to parse out what the first-time user needs to know and wants to see.

With a little UX strategy, testing, and ongoing iteration, you can create an onboarding experience that inspires confidence in your target audience and sparks long-term customer loyalty.

First impressions are everything in today’s market, and CreateApe is here to help you put your best foot forward. If you need a hand in shaping the perfect onboarding flow for your digital product, start a project with us today!

What is UX Writing? And why is it an essential component of any digital product design?

Let’s do a fun exercise together. Pull up your favorite song on Spotify or YouTube and give it a quick listen. What sticks out to you the most?

Is it the masterful composition? The energy and vibe? Or maybe a lyric that really hits home? Are you blown away by how much emotion a songwriter packs into a simple line with their word choice?

Now picture your favorite song without those lyrics. Sure, it sounds pretty on its own, and maybe you can paint a picture in your mind — but something FEELS incomplete.

This is the idea behind UX writing. If your favorite app didn’t have any written content, you would only have some cool designs to look at. You would have no idea how to use it to accomplish your goals. The UX/UI design might as well be wall art at that point.

Just like your favorite song, digital products need UX writing to compliment the tone of the design, communicate ideas, lay out directions, and support the overall experience. And we’ll show you how to use your brand identity to craft your website’s “lyrics.”

What is UX Writing?

There are multiple types of writing out there, so we need to draw some distinctions.

The three common types of business writing are copywriting, technical writing, and UX writing. All three require strong analytical skills to break down concepts and communicate them in ways that are easy to understand. 

Copywriting has a strong focus on marketing. Copywriters persuade the audience into buying their products, fulfilling a “want.” The goal is to bring in new customers, appeal to their desires, and talk them into making a purchase.

Technical writing is much more complex. It’s all about communicating complex information and processes in a easy way for the end user to understand and implement. In the UX/UI design field, this usually means material related to computer software and consumer electronics.

If you need an example of a technical document, dig in your miscellaneous drawer and grab the box your iPhone came in (because we know you’re saving it for SOME reason). The instructional manual has to show the average user how to set it up and how to use it.

UX writing combines copywriting and technical writing, but with a different endgame in mind. Simply put, copywriting sells, technical writing teaches, and UX writing solves.

The emphasis is on the user’s journey in UX writing. We’re writing for existing users, focusing on solving a problem and achieving a goal. In this scenario, there is no room for the abstract, so keep it simple and don’t overthink it.

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The Characteristics of UX Writing

While most copywriting services give you plenty of room to explore ideas, UX writing has a few more intricacies. Unless we’re writing a blog or some other long-form piece for a client, we are usually working with limited space.

Like a songwriter that packs a big punch with a well-written lyric, the copy on your digital product needs to communicate a lot while saying so little.

Empathy

UX design is driven by empathy for the user — and our designs wouldn’t be as impactful without written content. Being unrelatable is NOT an option.

It’s all about putting yourself in the user’s shoes and understanding how to communicate with them on behalf of the client. In UX writing, we need to know exactly what to say and when to say it to strike the perfect chord with our audience.

When you’re writing, always be thinking about what the user wants to hear and how the client can get them to the finish line.

Utility

It’s worth repeating every time: our online attention spans are short. We don’t have time or room to write a college dissertation about how amazing our clients are.

We have to reel in the audience with some thoughtful copy, help them understand the big picture, and get them where they need to go. Not only does the content need to be written well, but it needs to be structured perfectly in order of importance.

Utilizing active voice helps UX writers be as clear and unambiguous as possible, but it’s also on the UX writer to cut down on wordy sentences and paragraph length. Just remember the last time you looked at an enormous paragraph and thought “Nah, I’m not reading that” (even if the answer lies within).

Creativity

The client’s digital product is often the face of their brand. We cannot (under any circumstances) lose the client’s voice and tone for the sake of brevity.

After all, the client’s communication style plays a big part in shaping the user experience. We form our designs around these identities, and copy that does not support the look and feel makes for a disjointed and awkward experience.

Be aware of UX writing constraints, but let your imagination run wild within them. Form some key messages that sum up the client’s purpose and weave them throughout the written content with some clever, inventive word choices.

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Establishing Voice and Tone

Whether the client already has their voice and tone set in stone or needs help creating them, they are absolutely crucial in creating copy that resonates with the user.

Think about a high-end luxury watch company. If you go to their website, notice how the messaging isn’t all over the place. It’s smooth, suave, and succinct. You get the big picture of their personality and target customer just from reading a few headlines and buzzwords.

This is because they have an established voice and tone — a style and flair that shapes the storytelling and breathes life into written content.

A company’s communication style plays a massive part in their brand identity. Sometimes it’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions a brand. Take Wendy’s for example…is the first thing you think of their square burgers or their savage Twitter roasts?

Voice characteristics are like personality traits. Let’s stack the watch company and Wendy’s against each other. If they were people, they’d live completely different lives. How would you describe the brand if they were a real person?

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Voice and Tone Discovery

Like all things UX, you’ll get the best idea of the characteristics your copy needs to emulate by talking directly to the end-user. Your interviews will show you how to play into the communication style that resonates with them.

Client interviews are also super helpful because they likely already have an idea of what their brand is about and who their users are. They’ll likely have some key messages about what makes their brand the best and know how they want the user to feel when reading those messages.

The user knows how they like to be talked to. They also know when they’re being pandered to. And the client knows what they’re all about and the audience they want to reach. It’s up to the UX writer to fine-tune that research into characteristics that make a brand stand out.

Ask these questions to hone in on voice characteristics that work for the client and audience:

Client Interview Questions

• How would you define your brand?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses as a brand?
• Who are your biggest competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses as a brand?
• What sets you apart from your competitors?
• Why should your audience choose your brand?
• What are some other brands/communication styles you admire?
• Who is your target audience? Define them in three words.
• Are there any keywords we should include?

User Interview Questions

• What brands do you gravitate to? Why?
• What are your opinions of the client’s product? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• Why do you keep using the client’s product?
• What drives your purchasing decisions?
• What is most important to you when using a website/mobile app?
• Where do you mostly use digital products? Desktop, mobile, iPad, etc.
• What turns you away from buying/using products?
• What are some of your favorite/least favorite marketing campaigns?

15 Tips for UX Writing

From Hemingway to Wilde and even Taylor Swift, we all have different writing processes. A special routine to help us get in the zone to write a masterpiece of literature (or just some really great digital product copy).

So brew a fresh pot of coffee, put on your favorite playlist to get in the right headspace, and keep these UX writing tips in the back of your mind.

• Be concise. If a sentence is feeling wordy, it is!
• Write for an 8th-grade audience. Not everyone visiting your page is an industry expert.
• Keep your interview notes and voice and tone guidelines handy for quick reference.
• Review brand and style guides beforehand to make sure everything gels.
• Look at competitor messaging and consider how it could be improved.
• Avoid jargon whenever possible. If you have to, explain it in the most basic terms.
• Present tense and active voice are your best friends.
• Use SEO keywords like spices – don’t overdo it!
• Keep a thesaurus by your side to vary up your vocabulary.
• Draft alternate copy to explore more ideas and give the client choices.
• Empathize with the user by leading with the primary goal of the page.
• Keep copy consistent and on-brand.
• Peer reviews are super useful for exploring ideas and catching errors.
• Keep your headlines and microcopy as short as you can.
• Utilize bulleted lists to your advantage to make content scannable.

Who Can Help Me With UX Writing?

Allow us to throw our banana into the ring!

If you need us to take care of the whole design from beginning to end or just need help writing copy for a landing page, we’ve got you covered.

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On top of our expert UX/UI design and full-stack web development teams, we also have an in-house UX writing team to provide copywriting services for all your digital products. Websites, mobile apps, product copy, blogs, investor decks, scripts, social media content — you name it, we can write it.

We’ll work with you to form a unique voice your audience won't soon forget, then craft copy to solidify your style. And since we work in tandem with our UX/UI designers, all the parts come together like a perfectly-produced top 10 hit.

Like what you're seeing? Do you need to UX-ify the copy for your digital product? Start a project with us today!

A successful digital product can do wonders for your company. But if you’re not actively improving on what you already have, it’s only a matter of time before another brand emerges and steals the spotlight.

Digital products have been making our lives easier for years. And with the recent AI explosion, you never know which new revolutionary technology will become a mainstay for your users.

In our bustling digital world, simply adopting a new technology for your latest feature or functionality isn’t enough. You need solid research and strategies to ensure it’s appropriately implemented and works for your target audience.

This is obvious to us UX designers — as we NEED this testing and validation to guarantee we’re not investing time and money into something useless. What’s less obvious is how to measure the impact of our efforts.

Key performance indicators (which we’ll call KPIs for brevity) are qualitative or quantitative insights into how your product or feature is performing. When starting a UX project, you define KPIs around your business goals — so they can look different depending on the product.

There may be some overlap in KPIs between the initial launch and subsequent features. But whether your goal is to raise consumer awareness, generate leads, or boost revenue with new functionality, the goals must be clearly defined, closely monitored, and adjusted to keep your business on a profitable track.

How Many Different Kinds Of KPIs Are There?

A lot…Not even joking. For every project goal, there are probably several performance indicators and even more tracking tools to measure your product’s efficacy.

But for the sake of this article (and probably because you don’t want to read about 20+ KPI categories), we’ll narrow it down to four critical components within the digital ecosystem.

Stakeholder KPIs

These are the metrics that everyone should care about. But more accurately, they’re the ones stakeholders (clients, CEOs, investors, and other bigwigs) will hone in on.

Stakeholder KPIs give your colleagues visibility into how your design efforts support their larger business goals. They also help them create a benchmark for future product endeavors, ultimately creating a foundation for an ongoing strategic partnership.

• Revenue (how much profit you generate for the company)
• Lead Generation (how many users show interest in the product)
• Attach Rate (how many existing customers buy the product)
• Audience Penetration (how many target audience members buy the product)

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User KPIs

Now for the ones that UX designers care about. Don’t get us wrong, stakeholder goals and KPIs are SUPER valuable in the grand scheme. But User KPIs help us gauge how well we solved the problem we set out to answer.

In UX, it’s about more than just selling a product. It’s about creating a solution for an everyday thing and creating an experience that users love returning to. And these user-centered metrics show us that we fulfilled our purpose in creating a product that builds customer trust and loyalty.

• Activation (The percentage of users that sign up and become active users)
• Retention (The percentage of users that remain active over a given time frame)
• Net Promoter Score (Customer experience insights, usually gathered from surveys)

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Usability KPIs

Sounds similar to the last category, right? You can’t have an excellent experience without being able to actually use the product.

These KPIs are tracked when a company wants to fix or optimize their user experience. But when you’re incorporating a new technology or AI feature, it’s essential to monitor usability KPIs to ensure your product isn’t crashing.

• Cross-Device Responsiveness (How well your product performs across devices and screen sizes)
• Performance Optimization (Load times, crash rates, and error rates)
• Learnability (How quickly users can learn to use your product efficiently)

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Brand KPIs

These metrics are all about your reputation in the consumers’ minds. While individual perceptions are famously hard to measure, there are a few ways you can quantify your brand’s reach and leverage your findings to set you up for a successful future launch.

• Aided Awareness (How many people recognize your brand when asked about your specific product)
• Unaided Awareness (How many people recognize your brand when asked questions about your industry)
• Intent To Purchase (The number of audience members that express interest in your product and will buy it upon launch)
• Social Media Mentions (How much passive publicity your brand gets through word-of-mouth)

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How To Define KPIs For A New Feature Launch

You might think these KPIs could apply to any product or feature launch — and that’s partly true. Each aspect plays a unique role in the long-term success of a digital product. But depending on how your business is growing, you should occasionally shift your focus to achieve a defined goal.

Intent matters…especially in UX design (and ESPECIALLY when you’re incorporating a new technology in your business model). KPIs are there to make sure you get the highest possible return on investment, showing you where you need to pivot to meet your users’ expectations.

With all this in mind, let’s take a look at some common launch scenarios and discuss which strategic KPIs to track.

Scenario: “We’re incorporating a new AI-driven functionality for an established product to relieve a pressing user frustration.”

• Solution: User KPIs
  
• Why?: A new feature has great power to either help or hinder the user experience. As such, it should be tested thoroughly and consistently evaluated post-launch to understand how your audience responds.
  
• What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
• Feature Adoption: Assess how often and how many users are using specific features within your product.
• Task Completion Time: Measure how long it takes to complete specific tasks or actions.
• Task Success Rate: Measure the percentage of users who successfully complete a specific task or action within your product.
• Error Rate: Track the number of errors users encounter while interacting with your product.
• Abandonment Rate: Assess how many users start a task but do not complete it.

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Scenario: “Our client wants to target a new audience with their latest product update and new features.”

• Solution: Brand KPIs

• Why?: Whether you’re creating a brand new product to reach an established audience or vice versa, you need to ensure that your design, sales, and marketing efforts are landing in front of the right eyes. Tracking brand KPIs will help you evaluate the strength of your brand assets, value propositions, and long-term viability in your new consumer base.

• What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measure the rate of users clicking on a specific element, like a button or link.
• Conversion Rate: Measure the percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as signing up or making a purchase.
• Content Interaction: Track how users engage with various types of content, such as articles, videos, or images.
• Session Duration: Measure how long users typically spend in a single session.
• Social Media Mentions: See how awareness for your product is generated through the audience’s preferred online platforms.

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Scenario: “We’re helping our client expand their product suite by creating new products and features geared towards different industries.”

• Solution: Stakeholder KPIs

• Why?: Ultimately, what your client is trying to do here is open up a more profitable avenue for their business through digital products. While it’s important to track other KPIs, lead and revenue generation are the metrics they’ll be focusing on. This will help them identify the best paths for long-term growth and sustainability.

• What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
• Revenue: (Duh…) Measure the profitability of the new business venture and determine if further expansion is worth the investment.
• Lead Generation: Track how many users indicate interest in the product or feature and complete the sales flow.
• Return Users: Track how many users return to your product after their initial interaction.
• User Churn Rate: Calculate the percentage of users who stop using your product over a given time frame.
• User Ratings and Reviews: Monitor ratings and reviews on app stores or review websites to assess user sentiment.

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Scenario: “Our client is updating their onboarding flow with a new integration software to reduce their abandonment rates.”

• Solution: Usability KPIs

• Why?: We touched on the risks of new technology earlier but from a user adoption standpoint. Every technology can crash and burn, leaving your new feature completely useless and bogging down the experience. Luckily, the efficiency of your tech-driven strategy can be verified with the quantitative data from usability KPIs.

• What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
• Page Load Time: Assess how quickly web pages or screens load within your product.
• App Responsiveness: Measure how responsive your application is to user interactions.
• Crash Rate: Track the frequency of crashes or technical issues affecting the user experience.
• Error Rate: Track the number of errors users encounter while interacting with your product.
• Task Flow Completion: Evaluate how easily users can navigate through your product and complete multi-step tasks.

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Some Things To Consider

We know, it’s SO easy to take these KPIs and use them as a guide for launching your new product or feature. But to make a real impact, you need to be strategic when defining KPIs.

Each product, business, and user has unique problems they need to solve. While your list of target KPIs may look similar to the ones listed above, it could also be an amalgamation of metrics from every category.

Always keep these factors in the back of your mind when you and your stakeholders are establishing success metrics:

• Alignment with Business Goals: Ensure that your chosen KPIs directly align with your overall business objectives.
  
• Specificity: Make your KPIs as specific as possible. Vague or broad KPIs are difficult to measure effectively and may not provide actionable insights.
  
• Measurability: Define the proper tools to measure your chosen KPIs accurately. Consider the availability of data and analytics tools.
  
• Relevance: Focus on KPIs directly related to the success of the product launch. Avoid measuring metrics that may be interesting but do not directly impact your goals.
  
• Time-Bound: Set clear timeframes for achieving your KPIs. Establish both short-term and long-term goals to track progress over time.
  
• Benchmarking: Take stock of baseline measurements or benchmarks before the launch to compare post-launch performance to the pre-launch state. This helps in assessing the impact of the launch.
  
• Cost-Efficiency: Factor in the costs associated with achieving your KPIs. Ensure that the resources and efforts required are reasonable and justifiable.
  
• Realistic Targets: Set targets that are challenging but achievable. Unrealistic goals can demotivate teams and lead to frustration.
  
• Contingency Plans: Develop contingency plans in case KPIs are not met. This may involve adjusting the product, marketing strategy, or resource allocation.
  
• Ethical Considerations: Consider the ethical implications of your KPIs, especially if they involve user data or behavior tracking. Ensure that your metrics respect user privacy and consent.
  
• Long-Term Impact: Think about the long-term impact of your product launch. Some KPIs may focus on short-term gains, but it's also important to assess how the launch contributes to the product's overall growth and sustainability.

By carefully strategizing the KPIs for your product launch, you can gain client and stakeholder confidence by creating a measurement framework that prioritizes business goals and contributes to long-term success and growth.

Still not sure about your new product or feature’s KPI strategy? That’s a piece of cake for the CreateApe team. Start a project with us today!

Low-effort and high-impact UX improvements sound far-fetched when simplifying an end-to-end experience. But the truth is that minor tweaks can make your product more enjoyable without doing a complete redesign!

You may see many of these simple design elements across websites and apps you use daily. That’s because they enhance what’s already there by helping users orient themselves in the navigation, presenting relevant content, or grabbing their attention with dynamic visuals.

So whether you’re happy with your product’s experience or don’t want to wait until a redesign to start making upgrades, here are just a few low-effort and high-impact UX Improvements that won’t soak up all your budget!

• Populate empty states
• Implement progress bars
• Incorporate localization
• Group users into segments
• Create push notifications
• Customize 404 pages

The Impact-Effort Matrix

Have you ever prioritized your daily to-dos by how easy or difficult each task is? You’re not the only one, which explains why the impact-effort matrix exists.

The impact-effort matrix is a top-down view of all the work your product team has to do to improve the user experience. By breaking this chart down into four different categories (kind of like a political compass test), you can create a scatter plot that helps your team understand how much work each task requires and the effect it will have on the product.

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This model from the Nielson Norman Group illustrates the varying levels of investment and efficiency each task has in the broader scope of the project. When you capture each requirement and place them into their respective category, you and your team can quickly prioritize the best action plan.

Or as some would put it, “Work smarter, not harder.”

The idea behind low-effort, high-impact UX improvements are design elements and strategic effort that fall under quick wins. It’s about creating a win-win scenario for the users and your team: cost-effective, minimally involved features that still engage the target audience.

6 Low-Effort and High-Impact UX Improvements

Let’s face it…building a new platform, improving a user flow, or redesigning an existing product requires a TON of work from both the client and internal team. With as many moving parts as UX has, win-win scenarios are pretty rare. 

But quick fixes aren’t unrealistic, especially if you want to keep optimizing the product post-launch. Iterations and improvements are always possible in the UX design process!

So before you release a new feature or MVP, try implementing these elements to enhance the experience between versions.

Populate Empty States

White space is an easy way to make your product’s interface look clean, sophisticated, and organized…in moderation.

The downside of too much white space is that it can make a design look incomplete. Have you ever seen a website with too much space between elements and thought something was missing? It’s incredibly distracting and breaks up the flow of a scrolling experience.

If you notice too much white space between sections, think of ways to close that visual gap with helpful content for your users. Video tutorials, blog links, infographics, everything’s on the table (as long as it’s relevant to the rest of the page’s content).

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Implement Progress Bars

Whether it’s a kind word from a coworker or a notification from an app you’re using, we all love a little positive reinforcement. But it doesn’t have to stay relegated to email or SMS.

Progress bars serve two purposes in UX: They let us orient ourselves in the user journey and show us how far we are from achieving our goal. They also give the user that little extra reassurance we need to keep pressing forward to the final conversion point.

If your digital platform has an onboarding process or some other multi-step flow, progress bars are a great way to help users gauge how much work they have to do and encourage them to complete their goals. Use this quick fix to give your users the subtle nudge they need through screens.

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Incorporate Localization

Have you ever wondered why some websites have different versions for different countries? That’s localization at work!

Localization is more than just translating your website copy to a different language. It's about adapting your interface to reflect the culture of your users. This is an absolute must if your platform reaches users outside your native country.

If your digital product expands to a foreign location (which is ultimately the goal) or if you’re noticing a spike in users located abroad, think about what’s causing that influx and decide if it’s time to create a new version that represents your international audience.

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Group Users Into Segments

If you’re a frequent reader of our blogs, you don’t need us to go on another tangent about how impactful personalization is (the 75% engagement rate speaks for itself). But grouping users into segments based on their behavior helps you personalize their experience smarter, not harder.

Pretend you’re watching a movie or TV show on a streaming service and you add it to your “Favorites” list. Chances are that the platform will recommend a bunch of new content under a “Because you liked (blank)” heading. That’s because the platform captured your behavior and put you into a segment with other users that took the same actions.

Segmenting your audience saves your users time by finding content that’s relevant to their tastes. Plus, digital marketing platforms use audience segments to help businesses be more strategic with their campaigns, rewarding engaged users and incentivizing casual users.

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Create Push Notifications

Some digital products don’t warrant everyday use (appointment booking platforms, travel apps, and online shopping are a few examples). So it’s on you to remind the user of your existence and alert them to new products or deals they wouldn’t see if they’re not a daily visitor.

Push notifications are super simple to set up and are extremely effective in customer engagement (about 88% of mobile users are likely to interact with them). With some good timing and clever copy, you can grab your user’s attention whenever and encourage them to revisit your product.

Whether you're using them to provide real-time updates about your product or retain your customer base, push notifications should always have a home in your marketing strategy.

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Customize 404 Pages

No one likes running into an error page, but they’re a fact of life. Links break, pages disappear or move to new addresses, and users type the wrong URL all the time. But that doesn’t mean your 404 page should look as bad as it makes the user feel.

Instead, think of your 404 page as an opportunity to lead your user somewhere else. You can use them to provide helpful links, display your products, or redirect them to your support portal. Couple those elements with some fun graphics or animation, and you can make more tolerable errors.

There’s a world of possibilities with your 404 page. If you need some ideas, check out our Creative 404 Page Designs blog for some inspiration!

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Hitting The Sweet Spot Between Low-Effort & High-Impact

Low-effort and high-impact UX improvements don't have to be daunting (heck, that defeats the purpose if they are). It’s all about being strategic, examining your product, identifying pain points and opportunity areas, and finding quick improvements that don’t sacrifice the user experience.

With a few tweaks here and there, you can enhance your product without a complete redesign. These simple design elements can help users navigate the platform, find relevant content, and engage in a more meaningful way.

These improvements offer cost-effective solutions for optimizing your product after its launch. So why not start implementing these elements today? Your design team will thank you (and so will your users)!

Speaking of your design team...Our apes love optimizing products to their absolute peak. If you want us to find low-effort and high-impact UX improvements, start a project with us today!

Let’s face it…You NEED a UI/UX Design Strategy to create a digital product in this day and age. You don’t want to invest time and money on a project that didn’t have a chance.

A UI/UX design strategy is an essential bridge between your business and the end-user. Without validation from the right people, you’ll find your business caught in a loop of misguided designs, frustrated users, and disappointing results.

Our UX design strategy blog discusses the value of UX for both the business and the user. We also point out the components that make a strategy successful. But, if you’re still not sure where to start, aren’t confident in your research skills, or just too busy, we’ve got you covered.

CreateApe’s Jungle Guide is all the power of UX in a single document. Whether you’re a startup bringing a new digital product to market or an established company needing a redesign, we’ll give you all the tools and insights you need to make your project a success!

Behold The CreateApe Jungle Guide!

• Research
• User Interviews
• UX/UI Evaluation
• Product Solutions
• Development Solutions
• Full Project Estimates

Why do You Need a UI/UX Design Strategy?

We hope this isn’t news to anyone, but there’s a lot of risk in running a business—especially in the digital space where there’s a lot of competition.

An effective digital product has three things behind it: research, feasibility testing, and business strategy. Without these things, your investment is one big guessing game. You need a solid base of qualitative and quantitative metrics to create solutions that actually work.

Getting the big picture of what you’re up against will help you shape your business strategy, but how exactly do you find that out?

When you get a Jungle Guide from CreateApe, you get a team of design industry vets that’ll know what to do. We’ll know what to research, what questions to ask your users, and how to take those metrics and build a viable digital product.

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What We’ll Figure Out for You

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What do You Get in the Jungle Guide?

The Jungle Guide is here to protect you and your business from the pitfalls of poor planning. We’re also here to help you come up with ideas and prepare you for any curveballs we may encounter along the way.

Jungle Guide Contents

• Research:
  You would never write a paper without hours of research to support your hypothesis. So why create a website without that foundation?
  
  The Jungle Guide takes care of the preliminary research for you. Whether we’re brainstorming or reviewing analytics, we make our decisions based on evidence (either from case studies with measurable KPIs from our own past projects).
  
  We start by establishing all the important stuff (Who is the company? What do they do? Who are their stakeholders? Who’s their biggest competition, etc.) Then, we dig a little deeper to discover business opportunities and suggest new ideas to bolster the brand.
  

• User Interviews:
  UX is about more than just turning a profit (although it never hurts). It’s about creating long-lasting value for the business through positive experiences. Making that good first impression is everything so the brand can keep growing and improving on its digital products.
  
  The user is at the core of everything we do, so we go straight to the source of what makes or breaks the business. Their honest feedback, good or bad, tells us everything we need to know about making the product work for them. We also talk with internal stakeholders to ensure we’re supporting the business as much as the user.
  
  We do our most valuable research here by finding out who exactly the user is, what they want to do, and how we can help them accomplish their goals. Then we take their feedback and use it to guide us through the project and validate design decisions.
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• UX/UI Evaluation:
  Our research and interview findings guide our heuristic evaluation as a whole. They help us figure out what to fix on an existing product or how to fill a market gap with a new product. 
  
  With an existing digital product, our goal is to bring the major design problems to the surface. The business needs to put themselves into their user’s shoes and empathize with their frustrations related to the product. We also pick out quick fixes to improve the experience piece by piece. 
  
  With a new product, we show our clients how they can get ahead of their competition from the user’s point of view. We help them decide what features will help them stand out and how to tackle the large-scale project.

• Product/Development Solutions:
  Here’s where UI/UX design strategy comes in. Our product design and development solutions in the Jungle Guide lay out specific actions for the business to take in order to improve their user experience.
  
  This usually begins with us breaking down the project piece by piece. We take our ideas from brainstorming sessions with the client and determine what will work best based on the user’s feedback. Then, we propose our recommendations and break down how they’ll help the user.
  
  We also take a look at the web development solutions that will make the final product function as it should. This includes evaluating the code quality, site speed, and platform integrity—or choosing the right framework for a new product.

• Full Project Estimates:
  Once our UI/UX design strategy is in place, the only thing left to do is map out our timeline. We’ll break down how long it’ll take us to complete each part of the project. Since the Jungle Guide takes care of the initial research and evaluation, we show the client how long the actual design and development process will take.
  
  We start by picking out the low-hanging fruit—or small tasks that can be fixed and implemented quickly. Then we provide a low and high-range estimate of how long each phase of the project will take. This gives our clients a good idea of when the final product will launch and how involved they’ll be throughout the project.

Is it the Same for Every Project?

Well…yes and no. We need to get the full picture of you, your brand, and your market. We look at the same things in every Jungle Guide, but on a different scale depending on the project. Every project is different, so we adjust our hours to accommodate project size.

• 1st Tier: Small-scale projects (informational sites, landing pages, etc.)

• 2nd Tier: Complex websites (e-commerce sites, web applications, etc.)

• 3rd Tier: Complex, large-scale projects (software, native applications, etc.)

How Does This Help My Business?

UI/UX design strategy might seem like a big investment of time and money, but creating an excellent experience right out the gate is more than worth it. The word about digital products gets around quickly, and a strong first impression will give you a better starting point for new services and features down the line.

You may also think that your business doesn’t need the Jungle Guide because you haven’t heard any negative feedback from your users. But in this case, what our clients don’t know could potentially hurt their business. 

In fact, only 1 out of 26 customers complain about bad UX according to this blog from uxcam.com. 91% of unsatisfied users will just leave instead of leaving negative feedback.

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The same blog also shows that 13% of users will tell 15 or more people about a bad experience, versus the 72% of users that will tell 6 or more people about a good experience. The user may be more reluctant to give negative feedback to the business, but they’ll be less shy talking to their friends and family about it. 

We’re here to help you impress that 72% instead of unknowingly driving away the 13%. Our client’s success is our success, and our goal is to establish positive, long-term relationships. The best way we can do that is by fostering a strong client-user relationship.

What Happens After the Jungle Guide?

You have two options after we give you your Jungle Guide. You can have us take care of the rest of the project, or you can take it to your internal design team and use it to guide them throughout the project!

We have a team of 40+ designers, developers, and project managers that can turn our UX design strategy into a fully-functional product. We also have visual designers and content creators who will make the product look and sound as good as the user experience.

But if you’d rather have your internal design team, we’re happy to provide our UX insight so they can work their magic. You can call on CreateApe any time your business needs an all-in-one resource for user experience.

Get a Jungle Guide Today

Your market is a jungle, with tons of twists, turns, and hazards along the way. But with CreateApe’s Jungle Guide, you don’t have to go it alone!

Our combination of research and UI/UX design strategy will show you everything you need to know about the end-user and how to create solutions to keep them coming back for more. Bring us your idea and we’ll show you how to be the king of your jungle.

Need a Jungle Guide? Begin your expedition here!

Want to see our apes in action? Download a sample Jungle Guide below.

andros Jungle GuideDownload