How UX Helps In Detecting a Website’s Strong and Weak Points

How UX Mapping Plays a Vital Role in Website Success and Failure

UX showcases the interface of a website apart from depicting or representing each aspect of a user’s experience on a website.

What is UX?

UX is something that is experienced from the front of users. It is where users interact with the website. It may also refer to backend where the designers toil to regulate and enhance the website design. According to research, a number of UX factors must be considered, these include significance of visual design and how it is linked with a website’s ease of use. However, a UX map can depict the performance of your website. It can display if the interaction with website left customers pleased or not. The UX map tool aids designers in enhancing UX of a website by blending customer journey map ideas with the layout of a website. This enables readers to access information about website performance and the ways in which customers interact with it. The map depicts the areas of improvements for designers and areas where the functions are performing par excellence. A study of areas where customer is not just satisfied, but also delighted can give an idea on improving other pages of a website.

Categories of Maps:

UX mapping was initiated just after the inception of UX design. It was something beyond the traditional UI. Companies have utilized customer journey maps for a long time to jot down routes taken by customers to arrive at purchase decisions. UX mapping is a technique which brings together methods of creating and applying these maps. It also includes overlaying the methods with maps of UI layout and interaction to result in a completely new type of map. These UX maps possess a great deal of information on interaction of a customer with a website. Owing to the fact that UX maps may contain different types of information, the maps can manifest in a variety of forms. Some are in the form of flowcharts of differing complexity, depicting web design elements and user interactions with them. Other maps might be vague and just show customer activity and give inference about customer emotions and intent.

Those creating us maps will decide on the form of the map; as there is no single way designed to create such a map. UX designers have the flexibility to create a variety of maps to represent their needs and also the functionality and utilization of the website.

During the process of creating a UX map, designers can arrive at techniques used to form customer journey and empathy maps. These map types have high prevalence. Both possess valuable information related to UX maps. However, when it comes to information about web design, they lag behind. This must be added by designers to design maps of website’s UX.

Customer journey maps, record the experience of customers in terms of their interaction with a business. These maps jot the journey through different key points, beginning with the formation of the company and concluding with a purchase (or a different ending point for those businesses who are not involved in the sale of products or services). After laying down these points, questions related to customers are asked to gain an idea about wishes, emotional states, goals, and other things. This results in a map depicting how customers carry out their interactions with businesses. This map contains valuable information about ways to enhance customer experience.

UX designers have a lot to learn, about creating maps for UX, from customer journey maps. Amateur designers learning to create a UX map should gain basic information about customer journey mapping and design a map which brings together the information contained in those maps and information related to customer interaction.

When it comes to empathy maps, they are less involved in comparison to customer journey maps. Generally, empathy maps assume the form of a simple chart using example, a customer in the middle approached by different quadrants having information on their tasks, feelings, influences, obstacles, etc. UX designers can create UX maps, emphasizing customer needs, using the empathy maps.

Designing UX map:

UX mapping is yet to evolve. Study is still on to know about the information that a UX map must contain and the way it must be presented. Though the work is on, the importance of UX maps is not underestimated by businesses.

The steps required to create a UX map differ from company to company, website to website, and designer to designer. As this concept is in the initial stages, the steps used to create a map are not specific. Companies, which have already developed UX maps, follow different steps for creating a customer journey map, changing them to present information related to customer’s journey through a website rather than through the business.

To easily make a UX map all you need to do is take the steps for creating a customer journey map and replacing the term “company” with the term “website””.

• Establish personas for target customers-the data from the site cannot be utilized optimally if there is no information about ideal consumers or factors that attract them to a website initially.

• Jot down the path of the customer through the website. The way a buyer interacts with it, the way the customer will feel on the landing page during shopping and checkout, for instance.

• Make a comparison of customer expectations with what the site actually delivers.

• Segregate areas where customer’s expectations are not being met.

• The turning points; moments where users arrive at a decision.

The map includes all this information in a single layout which can assume the most user-friendly form.

Though the creation of UX maps is in the initial stages, the benefits of a good map are many. The best ways to create our maps are yet to be discovered, but the basics of a customer journey mapping can still be implemented. You can use these to start creating UX maps. A designer has the capability to enhance a website design using such a map by showing strong or successful points of a website. This results in a great user experience and also benefits areas where a website is lagging behind.