Crayond Blog

Top 5 Bad UX Mistakes that you should Avoid

User experience has become one of the most crucial factors in determining your product success and business growth. 

What separates a successful product from an unsuccessful one is the user experience. If your users are not having meaningful interactions with your product, they might leave unsatisfied. 

If your product needs to stand out from the crowd, make regular improvements and optimize your user experience based on the user’s interests.

Here, in this blog, we have listed the 5 common UX mistakes which you must avoid during your product design! 

Top 5 Bad UX Mistakes you should avoid

A user always expects a good product experience and if your product falls short of their expectations, you will lose them to your competitors. Reduce your bounce rate by avoiding these common UX mistakes in your product.

1. No perfect balance between Style and Functionality

Your product should have a good balance of style and functionality. 

A product that has cool images, stunning videos, and other visually appealing elements will entice the user. But if it is not easy to navigate, the user will get upset and feel annoyed. 

On the other hand, if your product is easy to use but looks plain and simple, the user still feels incomplete.

It is crucial for a product to have the right blend of style and functionality in order to stand out from other competitors’ products. Such products stay in the user’s mind for a longer time. 

 88% of users are less likely to return to the site after a bad user experience.

Having a perfect mix of visual elements and stable functionalities helps build brand loyalty as well. People love products that have good design and usability. They are more likely to recommend it to their family and friends. 

Check out the below screens. In the first screen, the user needs to manually tap the number key to enter the number field. Whereas, in the second screen a numeric keyboard is automatically provided for the user to enter the number field.

Products should have appropriate keyboards for different entries. They should switch between keyboards automatically based on the input types. This should be implemented consistently throughout the product on all functions rather than certain functions. 

Source: Thinkwithgoogle

2. Not understanding user’s needs

The product team performs user research in order to understand the user’s needs. And then, they try to craft product experiences based on their findings. But during the actual process, their focus on the user’s needs might get deviated. 

The product team designs based on their own assumptions which might be different from the actual user needs. So they end up creating a product without user-centricity. The goal of a product team is to design a memorable product experience for the user so that they keep coming back to you. 

The right product should satisfy the user’s needs and make them feel delighted after each usage.

Whatsapp’s delete feature is one such example. When the user deletes a message, it shows the recipient that the message was deleted by the sender and makes them confused on why it was deleted. It just blocks the message from the recipient and doesn’t solve the entire purpose as it shows them the message deletion.

Always keep a check on user-centricity during the design process.  The product feature should fully solve the user’s needs and makes them feel satisfied after each usage.

3. Creating a Norman Door

Your product should have buttons, icons, and menus that your user will easily understand. Placing things that are difficult for them to understand, brings the discoverability problem. 

In user experience, Norman door means any button or menu that does not give proper knowledge to the user on how to use it. When a user finds it tedious to know what a certain button does, they get stuck there. They will not be able to proceed further. Less discoverability means users are not able to find how to use your product/feature.

Don Norman, Director of The Design Lab at the University of California, coined the term “Norman Door” which means a door design that doesn’t clearly prompt about how people should open it.

Some products make use of buttons and features that are not self-explanatory. Include short explanations of complex elements during the onboarding process itself, in order to avoid these discoverability issues.

4. Too many features

A product should be easy to use and clutter-free. 

Users like products that have less visually crowded screens. Products should have more whitespace and proper call-to-action buttons in order to attract the user. 

In UX, simplicity is one of the toughest things to achieve. 

If a product is simple and easily navigable, users will enjoy their product journey. Every product creation starts with market research. 

During market research, you will understand the target market, your customers, their likes and dislikes, and what they actually expect from a product. This helps decide your product features. 

Once you find the core feature of your product, prioritize it over other features. If required, cut down unimportant features and content which might not add any value to your users.

In the below image, the first screen seems to be cluttered with many options whereas the second screen only has the required features which make it minimal yet efficient.

Source: Smashingmagazine

Always keep your product design as minimal as possible. Clutter spoils your user experience. Adding too many features and content confuses the user and makes them disinterested. Add only the relevant features and icons to your product to make it easy to use.

User Happiness Curve

The user happiness curve depicts the importance of having the right number of features (neither too much nor too low) in your product. When you increase the product features, the positive user experience increases, until it hits a place where it starts decreasing and it results in a negative user experience. 

Source: Thecouchmanager

When you keep on adding more features, the user experience gets spoiled at some point and it starts going negative from there.

5. Missing out on responsiveness

Responsiveness is an important factor in user experience. It helps to make your website easily accessible and navigable across a wide range of devices. Your site should adapt to various screen sizes in order to provide an optimal user experience.

Nearly 8 in 10 consumers would stop engaging with content that doesn’t display well on their device. — Adobe

Go for the mobile-first approach to know what’s really necessary for the user to reach their primary goal. Avoid unnecessary clutters that will not help the user in any way.

When you start building tablet and laptop versions, focus on the secondary goals and flows, CTA’s that make those goals achievable. 

For example, the primary goal can be to sign up for a product’s free trial. The secondary goal can be subscribing to your newsletter which later leads to your product purchase.

Use images exported to all the resolutions used by today’s devices. Test your design prototypes on different devices, work on feedback and collaborate with your team to figure out layouts that work in all scenarios.

Importance of UX

Seamless user experience is an all-time need of any software product. 

With a good user experience, you can keep your users engaged in your product for a long time. The attention span of a human has reduced much, it is important to attract users in that short span of time. 

When users get satisfied with your product experience they will stay loyal to your brand.

Top companies put a lot of time and investment into crafting their products with a great user experience. Airbnb attributed its product success to a good user experience which made them become a billion-dollar business. 

If you want your business to reap such growth benefits, you should double-check your product’s UX and fix things that spoil the user flow. 

>50% of people say they won’t consider purchasing from a brand that has a poorly designed mobile site. ”

You don’t want to lose that 50% do you?

Bottom Line

Would you buy a movie ticket if its trailer is bad? That’s how your product is when your UX is bad.

User experience is an integral part of product success. In the growing landscape of digital products, it is important for a product to serve the user’s exact needs and remain valuable.

Avoid these 5 UX mistakes in your product design to offer a seamless experience for users. You may not get in right the first time, but with consistent efforts and improvements, you will get it done right one day.

Mistakes are bound to happen! That’s how you learn, grow and make your UX win.

Avatar

Nandini Vijayakumar

Add comment