
User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) have a complex relationship. On one hand, they are so closely related that many people confuse the two terms or assume they are identical. On the other, they can work against each other, with a focus on UI often coming at the expense of UX. Designers must avoid this trap.
Before diving into how sites sacrifice UX for UI — and why that hurts a brand — it is important to clarify the difference. Put simply, UI is a matter of aesthetics, while UX is one of functionality. Your site’s interface determines how it looks, and its experience influences how it feels.
The two categories overlap in several places. Bold contrasting colours make a menu look nicer and easier to navigate. A graphic that loads and runs faster will look more visually appealing. Similarly, you need both to stand out and drive engagement in a market where three new websites appear every second.
While UX and UI can complement each other, they do not always. Many web designers emphasize UI too much, leading to subpar UX, which is a critical error. Once a site’s visuals start to hinder its performance, they lose much of their impact.
Both UX and UI are essential, but you must prioritize UX in situations where you have to choose between the two. As many as 60% of users today will abandon ecommerce carts because of a poor experience. Similarly, 42% decide whether to stay on or leave a website within just 10 seconds. Trends like this highlight that today’s consumers demand a smooth online experience.
Unfortunately, it is all too easy to hinder experiences in an effort to stand out. Videos, interactive elements and unique visuals will help you make an impression, but only if everything still runs fluidly. It will not matter how attractive they are if they take more than a few seconds to load or if they cause lag. These interruptions will drive users away before they can appreciate your UI.
Sometimes, unique interfaces may not slow your site’s core web vitals but overcomplicate things on the user side. They have gone too far if they make the site less intuitive or require more action for visitors to get where they want. This is what happened in Snapchat’s infamous 2018 redesign, which saw its share prices fall to below $6 — roughly 22% of their original value.
These trends do not mean you must abandon UI entirely. Unique, attractive interfaces are still a crucial part of gaining and retaining users. However, you must balance visuals with a smooth experience. Here is how you can support both needs.
Effective web design starts with understanding your audience’s needs and wants. Both your UX and UI should support those demands.
Building relationships is a common goal here, as 76% of modern consumers say they will keep doing business with a brand they feel connected to. Consequently, it is more important to ensure your visuals align with your image than to make them flashy. Loud colors and unique shapes feel inauthentic for a company tackling serious social issues, and the loss of authenticity is not worth the gain in novelty.
Customer surveys are an excellent way to learn where there may be gaps between user expectations and your site’s interface or performance. Address issues like this before tweaking anything else.
Next, incorporate the user experience into every design choice. After developing an engaging interface idea, ask how the creative choice would impact navigation and load times. Anything that hinders those areas below acceptable benchmarks needs rethinking.
Testing a site’s performance after a redesign will make obstacles like this easier to identify. Creating a UX site map is an excellent first step in this effort. These visual aids help you organize content and simulate site navigation. Better navigation, in turn, encourages users to stay longer and visit more pages.
Remember to get outside input on such considerations. Ask members in different departments to test a redesign and submit honest feedback on how it impacts their experience.
Missteps are still possible, even when you follow these design guidelines. Consequently, you must also reassess your UX and UI to see if and how they can improve.
Conduct user surveys and review your key performance indicators like bounce rate and session length. Sub-par performance in these areas is usually a matter of experience more than aesthetics, but both can influence them. You can find the right solution by creating two or more redesigns and A/B testing them to see which performs best.
Keep in mind that usability standards change over time. Average attention spans today hover around 47 seconds, while they were as high as 75 seconds in 2012. As a result, a good dwell time today likely looks shorter than it did a few years ago. Similarly, expectations for loading times may rise as technology improves. These changes mean you should reconsider your standards at least annually to align them with current trends.
You do not need to sacrifice good visuals for reliable performance or vice versa. In fact, you should not if you want to maximize your web design. Still, errors like these are common among websites and mobile apps today.
A poor experience will render an otherwise solid UI useless. You must balance the two — prioritizing UX when it comes down to it — to make the most of both.
Eleanor Hecks is the managing editor at Designerly. Connect with her about digital marketing, UX and/or tea on LinkedIn.
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