How UX Design Leverages Technology to Meet Customer Needs and Enhance Experience
On the surface, digital transformation seems synonymous with technology and tools. Yet a more comprehensive and accurate view of DX includes how business processes and tool adoption impact those using these resources.
Two foundational components for incorporating user experience into transformation are digital experience platforms and product information management. Digital experience platforms (DXPs) are the set of core tools that support creating, managing, and delivering optimized digital experiences. Product information management (PIM) is how the information required to sell products is controlled.
A well-developed DXP with a robust PIM system enables companies to create valuable tools and processes that increase customer satisfaction. These include:
- User-centric and responsive design: A UX design team will first want to understand the needs of their target audiences and ICPs (ideal customer profiles). Designers and strategists employ user research, personas, and a digital transformation journey map to develop experiences tailored to user preferences and pain points.
In North America, over 50 percent of web traffic is mobile. Thus, design for digital must shift according to device. Responsive design is part of creating a seamless user experience regardless of desktop, smartphone, or mobile app use, enabling businesses to meet users where they are.
- Intuitive navigation and interactive interfaces: Competition across every industry is too great to discount how important it is for tech to be easy and enjoyable to use. Customers want to find what they are looking for quickly, yet are more likely to stay engaged with the appropriate placement of multimedia elements and interactive communication tools.
- Personalization and accessibility: Since all users are not the same, UX design must account for behavior, preferences, and demographics as well as accessibility needs. Personalization ensures the delivery of relevant content to all users. Accessibility means creating and delivering functionality inclusive to the 13 percent of Americans with disabilities.
- Seamless integrations: In addition to playing nice with a company’s basic tech stack and multi-channel customer experience opportunities, businesses will want to ensure product information management integration that maximizes UX. PIM should present info in a clear and structured manner with detailed specifications for easy product comparison. Consider compatibility with ERP, payment gateway, fraud protection, tax, transaction email, and user-generated content systems as well.
- Consistent branding: Good UX design portrays that a brand and its products or services are a solution to a customer's needs. Branding should be consistent across digital platforms to build trust and recognition that adds to user experience and increases loyalty.
- Feedback mechanisms: Value creation through digital transformation design can increase by incorporating feedback mechanisms into platforms to gather user challenges and insights. This gives companies data that enables continuous improvement, allowing the DXP to meet changing customer preferences and needs.
- Optimization: When it comes to performance and design, consistent monitoring and managing to ensure digital and website optimization is all but mandatory. Load times, responsiveness, and continuous updates enhance end users’ experience.
The Compatibility of UX Design With Agile and Iterative Methodologies
To be successful in the long term, UX design must consider the agile and iterative methodologies inherent to software releases and upgrades. Agile is an incremental approach that breaks development into small functional bits for iteration. Iterations are cycles referred to as sprints, generally following a ‘design, build, test, renew’ workflow.
This means UX design must be agile and iterative alongside software development for the platforms to be compatible. As with digital transformation, however, it’s important to remember that the focus is on the people using the tools rather than the tools themselves. Agile software and UX design prioritize changing based on customer response rather than rigidly sticking to a predetermined plan.
Steps for Implementing UX Design in Digital Transformations
Generally speaking, implementing UX design in digital transformation follows three basic steps: research, creation of wireframes and prototypes, and ongoing optimization based on implementation feedback and testing.
- Conducting Thorough UX Research
Before UX designers implement design changes, they must undertake user research and rely on data analytics. To determine how to solve customer problems and address client preferences, designers must first understand user behavior, needs, and pain points. Thorough UX research forms the basis for a user-centric digital approach designed with intent.
- Creating wireframes and prototypes
Wireframes and prototypes are visual representations of design thinking meant to help customers see how the end product will be used by customers. Rather than fully formed models of finished products, they are blueprints to be evaluated and given input before actual development begins.
- Ongoing Optimization Based on User Feedback and Testing
Just because a concept has been approved, developed, and launched does not mean the work is done. Digital transformation models require ongoing optimization based on user feedback and testing. In this way, DX tools evolve alongside customer expectations and technological advancements to keep companies relevant and maintain their competitive edge.
The Critical Role of UX in Digital Transformation
User experience design is key to ROI for digital transformation. For any digital transformation strategy to be successful, IT leaders must take a human-centered approach that leverages digital technology to create enhanced and agile experiences.
The C2 Group + ACCO Brands: Successful UX Design Integration in Digital Transformation
By partnering with The C2 Group and digital experience platform Optimizely, ACCO Brands used UX design to overcome issues preventing them from scaling.
The challenge: As an almost $2B supplier of branded academic, consumer, and business products, ACCO brands needed a unified content and commerce digital solution to support its more than 20 market-leading brands. Its existing system was built on aging tech, siloed data, and redundant brand and product websites. Customer expectations regarding basic online shopping (account creation, viewing account-specific pricing, checking purchase history, etc.) weren’t being met, nor were they receiving tailored experiences that would allow ACCO to increase loyalty and retention.
The solution: Averse to undertaking a time-consuming development of costly one-off DXP and PIM solutions, ACCO relied on C2 to help create an ecommerce strategy that unified its brands and could scale to support organizational goals.
Together, they created Helix, a rollout-management program that leverages a design system and a code base of templates, blocks, and integrations that drastically reduce development time while meeting individual brand needs. The new brand sites feature optimized product and checkout experiences, dynamic storytelling, powerful personalization, and robust integrations on one platform, Optimizely.
Optimizely allowed ACCO to simplify its martech and ecommerce stack, eliminating redundancies and cutting spend. With its user-friendly design, all brands now manage and make updates without outside developers.
The Impact of UX Design on Business Growth and Customer Engagement
For ACCO Brands, UX design for digital transformation led to over $1M in direct order intake. This represented a 17 percent increase in annual revenue, with average order values for some brands increasing 260 percent.
Since its inception,16 brands have launched Helix, which can be handed off to new users 60 to 90 days after kickoff. With style libraries, atomic design principles, and a shared, reusable code base, Helix can optimize product pages and checkout processes while integrating with PIM, ERP, payment gateway, fraud protection, tax, transaction email, and user-generated content systems. For firms overseeing multiple brands in one portfolio, the Optimizely DXP brings all content and commerce into a single platform.
The C2 Group specializes in creating responsive and accessible web interfaces that improve customer engagement. With development expertise in front- and back-end solutions, including CMS and e-commerce integrations, C2 can help you create secure and scalable systems.
To learn how form can meet function to create value during digital transformation, check out The C2 Group’s stance on UX visual design.
