Words like customer experience, user experience, and usability have become pretty ubiquitous for many reasons, including that consumers have limitless choices, and resources to research before buying anything and everything. Businesses need something to differentiate them from all the other options. One way to do this is to think about your customers as users, rather than consumers.

• A Design Management Institute study tells us that companies with a design-centric focus perform consistently better than major stock indexes.
• Forrester claims money invested in UX returns $100 for every $1 spent.
• HubSpot says that dissatisfied web site users are 79% less likely to return.
• Way back in 2012, Google reported that users are 67% more likely to make a purchase on mobile-friendly sites.

Ultimately, every customer touch point needs to be simple and useful. If you don’t currently have the staff in place to ensure these touch points are meeting user needs, and then going a step further to delight your users, working with a trustworthy UX agency like Ramotion from San Francisco can be a great way to access these skills without investing a lot of time to get rolling.

What Can a UI/UX Agency Do?

A UX design agency can help you make this kind of shift and get the most out of your web and mobile presence. There is no secret formula for creating an experience that sets your business apart from your competition. It’s a complex mix of aesthetics, content, functionality, and simplicity. UX firms know how to navigate all of these elements. They can help identify desirable features and services as well as designing them. Design agencies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. There are UX firms for big and small projects, boutique to enterprise, generalists to specialists. UI/UX companies can assist with projects for:

• Marketing
• Web Sites
• Mobile Apps
• Products
• Services

Integrating user experience practices into all of these areas can take many forms. User experience professionals have a variety of skills and specialties.

• Navigation and workflow: Help users get to their goal, finish their tasks, or find the information they need quickly and easily.
• Media and content selection: Serve up the right information, in the right form, at the right time. Speak the user’s language and consider their context and emotion.
• Design themes: Create reusable elements for design and development efficiency while creating consistent functionality for users.
• User testing: Make sure that your users understand the navigation, content, and patterns under consideration for your products and assets.
• Accessibility and SEO: Use standard techniques for creating accessible sites that enhance the experience for all users, simplify development, and make your search engine efforts work even better. Navigation, page structure, mobile friendliness, and careful information architecture all work hand in hand to make people and search engines happy.

Why Use a UI/UX Agency?

Your company can, of course, tackle the user experience of your marketing, product, and service offerings in a number of ways. Hiring in-house staff has the advantage of dedicated resources, increased oversight, and direct interest in the success of the company. There are just as many drawbacks as well, though. The option of using a contractor for small projects could be cost-effective, but may not provide the desired results or quality standards. UI/UX design firms have the following advantages over the other options.

• Staff augmentation: With a long-term relationship, your chosen design agency gets to know your needs and can assign the right resources for each project as it comes up. You’ll still get resources that have your company’s success as a top priority because their company wins when yours does.
• Lower overhead: Pay only when you need resources for a project, not for a permanent team, or teams. This has the added flexibility of being able to get a specialist when required since the firm will likely have a variety of skillsets on staff. You won’t have to pay a large team of highly skilled workers that don’t have enough work to keep them busy full time.
• Efficient on-boarding/off-boarding: No interviewing, assessing, selecting, or training of new staff. The UX agency handles all staffing and project assignments. This is particularly helpful if you don’t have a people manager already on staff that knows who and what to look for in a user experience professional.
• Proven processes: If you don’t already have UX pros on staff, it could be expensive and time-consuming to establish new processes. The UX agency already has established processes and knows proven methodologies.

Conclusion

UI/UX firms are an efficient way to improve your products or services, as well as your online marketing. They can be a cost-effective solution for staffing skilled and experienced professionals just in time. Developing a relationship with a firm that fits your needs and company style can positively impact your profits and lead to mutual success through better customer and user experiences.