Important Mobile App Design Considerations That Deliver Results

In this article, we explain the importance of good UX design for apps. Here we highlight some important principles and tips to create a good and engaging UX design for Mobile Apps. 

Today, Apps make the digital footprint of many companies worldwide. Mobile apps emerged as the most effective avenues for businesses to stay connected with their audience. According to the latest report by Flurry Analytics, in the US, around 90% of the time spent by consumers with their mobile devices is on their mobile apps. But, while the apps are at the forefront of mobile use time, only a percentage of apps are successful by garnering continuous user engagement and business conversion. This is where the difference between great engaging app user experience (UX) and an underperforming UX comes to the forefront.

While the app developers work to make an app that works perfectly, the job of the designers is to make the app look great. So, both design and development together make a successful app that engages the audience and converts business. A good app design that works well should equally perform well and look beautiful and engaging.

Here we are going to explain some of the key design principles for engaging app UX design that works for converting business and making a user base. Let’s have a look at these key tips and principles one by one.

The Basics of Creating a Great UX design

So what is it that you need to do when you start designing a mobile app?

Let’s start with the basics. For creating a great UX, the app designer should first learn about the users and their preferences, pain points, and desires. Based on this knowledge, users can further shape a user-centric UX design. To create a highly user-focused app design, first, the designer should empathize with the users. The design thinking approach, which focuses on knowing the user first, should focus on fulfilling the five stages mentioned below –

• Empathize: The first step is to learn about the users in-depth.

• Define: Now define the principal point of view of the app that your app is going serve based on the user needs and insights.

• Ideate: Now, based on the basic point of view, brainstorm a lot of app ideas appropriate to fulfill the user needs.

• Prototype: Now, build a variety of app prototypes based on the app idea.

• Test: At last, make all the prototypes available for the users to give you feedback about each of them.

With this design thinking approach, you can build an app product that specifically addresses the user preferences and needs. As design thinking primarily tries to orient the app concept with the user needs, there is seldom any chance of design fault.

Making an App Strategy

For a great app that continues to convert business and engages the audience, you need to have a clear strategy from day one. This needs clearly defining the use cases corresponding to the app on the basis of a customer journey. The use case will ultimately guide all your design and development decisions for building the app.

A use case can be segregated into a specific user role and the system that interacts with the user. In business apps, the buyer mostly plays the role of users while the business interacts with them through the app system. Instead of addressing too many use cases through a single app, the most effective strategy is to use one or two use cases with optimum perfection.

While designing the user journey based on the use case, the app designer must focus on the happiness of the users, fulfillment if the user intent, alternative paths of action and scope of testing the actions. In this context, it is important to note that for designing a user journey and addressing use cases, the app, first of all, should have a clear idea about the target audience. It is advisable to use Buyer Personas to define the audience with all particular aspects.

The second most important thing for designing a user journey is to figure out the most effective metrics. The key app performance metrics must be aligned with the business KPIs to ensure proper evaluation of the user journey and UX design in relation to the app objective. Some of the crucial app performance metrics include app revenue, cost reduction, market share, app rating, new user acquisition, usage and sessions, customer retention, repeat customers, user lifetime value, etc.

Most Important Principles and Tips for Successful App Design

Now that we have explained the basics of UX design and building a strategy that really helps an app garner audience, let us provide some useful and effective tips for successful app design. Here we are explaining some of the effective app design tips.

• Maintain minimalism and simplicity while insisting on smooth user engagement. Don’t overdo design elements and ensure optimum ease of use throughout.

• Make sure your app design doesn’t encourage creating a lot of visual distractions and cognitive load. Make it look lightweight, clean, and instantly attention-grabbing.

• It is advisable to have a design budget so that you can work with a professional app designer who can address all your design requirements while maintaining the norms and principles that are important for the design to stay stand out.

• Give particular importance to the navigation design, which ensures steady engagement. Smooth and user-optimized navigation is the key to successful app design.

• Always choose the colors and fonts for your app mindfully. Maintain a design coherence and make sure they use of font and color only helps your app to get the message through.

• Lastly, always make sure the design looks thoroughly consistent and visually engaging. Over time, the design consistency of the app will help your app to be integrated into your branding elements.

Embrace an MVP Approach in Design

These days app developers and designers want to figure out their steps cautiously. Instead of shaping an app design all at one piece before the app launch, many publishers prefer coming with a basic design with the focus resting on the key user experience. This always gives them further opportunities to fine-tune the design and add more elements based on user feedback. This approach has already been popular with mobile app developers, and now even designers consider it important. This approach is referred to as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Which basically focuses on releasing the basic app design and then improving it further.

Here are the key aspects that designers should keep in mind when embracing an MVP approach to design.

• The app will come with a stripped-off design with only the most important and basic design elements.
• The MVP approach doesn’t mean your app will look like an unfinished product.
• The MVP design will focus primarily on the principal use case and will allow the users to get their things done in the simplest manner possible.
• MVP design will always leave scopes for future improvement based on user feedback.

Conclusion

Any mobile app development project involves considerable costs. Naturally, you need to look at it as a business outlet instead of just a digital feather in the wings of your business brand. Since design decisions are crucial for a mobile app to get steady business conversions, you should follow the time-tested design principles that already worked for too many other apps.

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