Benefits of UX Design: The Cost of Bad UX Design
Kat Dacusin
September 3, 2019
More and more organizations are realizing the indispensable benefits of UX Design (User Experience Design) for businesses, and for a huge reason.
UX Design is the process of heightening user satisfaction through their overall experience of using a product or availing a service. Some of the most common applications of UX design are in mobile applications and websites.
The benefits of UX Design can make or break a business, like in the case of former social networking superstar myspace.com. Once upon a time, Myspace was the most powerful site in the Social Media kingdom. At its peak, Myspace amassed over 110 million users, at one point even becoming the site with the most page views.
But several years later, Myspace was kicked out of its throne. Its user base dwindled while the number of loyal users for newcomer Facebook continued to swell. Now, Facebook is the bearer of the crown as the top social media site, with 2.41 billion users in the second half of 2019.
What exactly happened? Let us investigate one of the biggest culprits of Myspace’s demise: bad UX design.
Elements of Myspace’s Bad UX Design
Several bad UX design factors prompted many Myspace users to shift to other social media sites such as Facebook.
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Disruptive Ads
“We were incentivized to keep page views very high and ended up having too many ads plus too many pages, making the site less easy to use than a site like Facebook”, quoted a former Myspace executive.
Myspace entered a $900m advertising deal with Google, which was a huge windfall for the social media site. But the terms of the deal meant even more ads for a site that already had too many to begin with, negatively affecting user experience even further. Myspace failed to see the long-term effects of such a deal.
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Inconsistent layout
The layout of each user profile was different from each other due to customization. Things such as background photos, background music, font color, and animations can be altered in a Myspace account. This feature was enjoyed by the mostly teenage users who were thrilled to customize the profiles to reflect their personalities and interests.
However, this very feature contributed to Myspace’s downfall. Due to the many customization options, the Myspace sites became harder to navigate, with some even looking downright cluttered. In contrast, Facebook’s design was crisp and clean, even with its eventual customization options like changing one’s profile and banner images.
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Features that users did not want
For profit, Myspace added new features the users did not necessarily want. According to former Myspace Vice President of Online Marketing Sean Percival, publisher HarperCollins paid them to build a new feature called Myspace Books, and not because there was user clamor for it.
“That’s why we had things like Myspace Books”, Percival said. “It’s not because our users wanted to talk about books, but someone wanted to sponsor that. Someone was willing to pay us to build Myspace Books.”
Although the pursuit of profit is understandable, it should not be done at the cost of good UX. After all, bad UX affects customer satisfaction, which could adversely affect profits in the long run.
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Cybersecurity Threats
“The baggage was too much. Users had too many bad experiences”, Percival said. “They would go on there and they’d get hit with spam. There’d be all this weird stuff.”
Myspace was wrought with cybersecurity threats which turned off plenty of users. Besides spam, cybersecurity threats include vandalism, phishing, and malware.
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Crippled Website Speed
Myspace became slower and harder to use. This is mostly because of the deluge of ads and spam, as well as profile page elements such as music and graphics which take longer to load.
Site speed is important to keep the user’s attention: up to 40% of users abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
The Benefits of UX Design
Myspace’s UX design failures led to their ultimate downfall. This is due to the negative effects bad UX can bring to your business. Conversely, your business can gain advantages from a good UX design.
Boost Customer Loyalty
Customers have a higher chance of returning to a website if it has the elements of a good UX design.
For example, page load speed: 52% of users state that their loyalty to the site is influenced by how quickly a website can load pages. Returning customers mean more opportunities for sales.
Gain Profit
Every dollar invested in UX can bring in up to $100 in returns. Also, a good UX design could produce conversion rates up to 400%. This means a quicker return of the money invested in a good UX design, and more profit for the company.
Save Cost
Fixing a problem in an existing website or app is up to 100 times costlier than addressing the same issues during the design phase. This can be counted in terms of more man-hours, and the lost business opportunities from customers. A well-researched, well-planned, and well-designed UX prevents costly repairs.
How to Achieve the Best Possible UX Design
A good UX design is not made through guesswork. It is curated by experts in the field who have the track record of UX design and have delivered transformative results for clients. Let UX Design be customized for your specific needs.
Optimize UX Design and achieve your business goals now. Contact us for a free consultation.
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