Experience Matters When Designing an App

What you experience can often determine success or failure.

You’re out for a special occasion, if the food doesn’t live up to expectations, or the service leaves a lot to be desired, the experience has been a failure; you’re unlikely to return to the same establishment due to the negative connotations you now associate with that one experience.

The same can be said of apps.

Whether you develop an app for customers, or for employees, it needs to enhance the existing experience. If it doesn’t help, then users won’t return and if the experience is bad, then you could end up with lost business or tainted employee relationships.  

Understanding user experience and applying it to an app which will help the user journey, ultimately provides your business with an opportunity for growth, but there are several things to consider.

What are you trying to improve?

If it’s an app for customers, you need to understand what they want, what are the problems with their existing journey with you?

Use analytics to understand your own trends for cart abandonment, look for requested systems, and talk to your customers. By understanding these, you can begin to look for ways of enhancing the process.  

For example...

... if you are a beauty salon, you might take bookings over the phone, by WhatsApp, on social media or in-person. However, phone and in-person bookings require the clients to find the time to call or drop in when you’re open, and you need to staff the phone or reception. WhatsApp can create a great deal of ‘back and forth’ to find availability and messages can often be lost. A smoother way of dealing with bookings would be to introduce an app which could be based on your website, providing times and details of available slots, making the system smoother for your clients, and you. Enhancing efficiency for the client is likely to result in return business, but the impact on your business is a happier customer, time-savings on your staff and ultimately, better profitability along with peace of mind that the bookings system is looking after itself. No more evenings and weekends spent looking through the diary for available spaces!

Standard booking forms vs web-based app

Let’s stick with the example of a beauty salon for a moment. Many are independently owned, and the nature of the services means there are many variables; preferred stylist, service options... by simply adopting a standardised booking form you may create a new touchpoint for your customer yet not enhance their experience. However, by introducing a web-based app, all questions can be answered at once, requiring no follow up until the actual appointment.

With over 66% of society scared of being away from their phone...

digital transformation is a great investment opportunity for improving your customer’s journey. You can find more about this in one of our blogs from last year (https://www.cariboodigital.com/blog/the-growing-importance-of-user-experience).

But improving user experience isn’t just about customers, it’s important to consider benefits that could be made to your employee’s experience too. Is there room for improvement? If you think your remote-working staff could benefit from an app to encourage communication, efficiency and connectivity, our recent case study might be of interest https://www.cariboodigital.com/blog/case-study-improving-connectivity-and-efficiency-for-field-engineers  

Why build an app?

In life, you hire people to do jobs for you, whether that’s a plumber to fix a pipe or an accountant to file your taxes... you hire someone that can do this because of their skillset, your time restraints, or their resources. The same could be said for an app.

What is the job...

-        Is It being met already?

-        It is being met well?

-        Is it underperforming?

-        Are you satisfied?

If the answer to any of the above is no, there is an opportunity to problem-solve and, potentially, an app could be the resolution you’re looking for.

If you’d like to explore the opportunities available to improve your user experience, give us a call. We can talk you through the options available, along with how we, at Cariboo Digital, approach problem-solving. ( https://www.cariboodigital.com/blog/discover-a-more-rewarding-way-of-problem-solving)  

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