5 Tips to Make Your Mobile User Experience Stand Out

Let alone apps, most users already rely on mobile devices to browse the web. Therefore, whether you are a web designer or developing apps, it should be your job to design a stable and usable user experience for mobile users. Of course, due to the maturity of UI/UX design today, various best practices have made it unnecessary for designers to explore some common design patterns from scratch, and the techniques we are talking about today to improve the mobile experience are also the experience summary of such exploration.

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1. Simplify navigation

Compared to the large navigation design that was popular in the past, mobile devices and streamlined navigation are more suitable. When users use mobile devices, their attention and time are usually fragmented. When they open applications and websites, they hope to find the content they want as soon as possible.

Therefore, when designing the navigation of mobile apps and websites, try to retain the most commonly used navigation options based on analysis and actual conditions.

On the one hand, this design can save screen space, and on the other hand, the trigger area of ​​the navigation options can also be designed to be relatively larger.

As for the hamburger icon and pop-up menu, the specific usage is a matter of opinion and can be handled flexibly according to the actual situation. However, with the hamburger icon, a conventional menu symbol, users can quickly understand its meaning and realize that there is a pop-up menu behind it.

The Ebates app uses a two-level menu design. The most commonly used navigation options are made into tabs at the top of the page, and the other is a bookmark menu (heart + hamburger icon) in the upper right corner. The entire design ensures functionality and is simple enough to not make users feel complicated, and they can easily find what they want.

2. Consider gestures and touch

Mobile interactions are completely different from desktop interactions, and your UI and UX designs should be consciously adapted for mobile devices.

In this process, gesture interaction is a very important part. Designers should make full use of gestures to help users complete the interaction faster and more efficiently.

Common gestures include:

• Tap, double-tap
• Press
• Long press
• Drag
• Zoom
• slide

The status of gesture interaction on mobile devices is equivalent to click interaction on desktop devices.

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But when you think about gesture interaction, don't forget to pair it with corresponding tactile feedback. In our daily use of mobile devices, we often use vibration and force feedback to enhance the interactive experience. The essence of this tactile design is to be as subtle as possible, ensuring that users can feel the feedback without being too noticeable. With more and more touch interfaces, users expect to get positive responses from them.

3. Create a conversation

People always want to communicate through language. It is this demand that makes conversational UI and chatbots gradually come to the fore and become a popular trend. So, when your mobile UI allows users to chat instantly, you can use conversational UI to improve user experience:

• Add more touching copy to your interface. Whether it is a paragraph of text or micro copy in the interface elements, you can create a sense of conversation through more touching text. Just like the WTFWeather app, from text to labels, it uses conversational expressions, and tries to create a conversational feeling when pushing information to users.
• Use chatbots and conversational interfaces to communicate with users. Chatbots can be described as 24-hour online customer service. They help users solve problems and can also improve customer loyalty to some extent.
• Integrate voice interaction into the design. Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are almost household names in artificial intelligence voice assistants. Incorporating them makes conversational interfaces more powerful.

4. Animation

If you look closely at web pages in recent years, you will find that animation effects are everywhere. Animation effects can make the page more natural, more beautiful, and more attractive. Animation can not only attract users' attention, but also help users show how to better design and interact.

Google Maps integrates a small amount of motion effects, which are not noticeable, but make the entire application more thoughtful and complete. In a previous article by Nick Babich, he summarized the three key uses of motion effects:

• Present system status: Use animation to display loading status, content refresh, and push notifications
• User navigation and transitions: Use animation to help users understand content switching, visual hierarchy, and changes in presentation state.
• For visual feedback: Use animation to help users confirm that their previous action is complete

5. Make good use of new user guidance processes and forms

Compared to web pages, the new user guidance process in the APP is quite critical.

Because of the unique functions and services of most apps, designers will provide a quick start tutorial when users first open the app to guide users to familiarize themselves with its functions. This is especially common in gaming apps.

If the new user onboarding tutorial is interesting enough, it is easy to improve user loyalty. Make sure the onboarding tutorial is simple enough and can help users. After watching it, it would be even better if users can come back to watch it again.

Mobile websites are different. The biggest problem is usually not new user guidance but registration forms and login forms. On mobile devices, users are very sensitive to the usability of forms. Users don’t like long and boring forms with complex fields. Therefore, simplifying the forms on mobile web pages can better improve conversion rates.

Take a look at GoodRx above, the form design is simple enough.

The registration form should not be complicated. Ask users to enter their email address to register, and bind their username, email address, and password. When logging in, the username and email address are the same, which is much more convenient.

Of course, there is a more convenient idea, which is to use common social networking sites to log in and register, which is more convenient for users.

Conclusion

How to build a mobile user experience is a common problem for designers today. In the fierce competition, the difference between products is often presented through various details. Creating an easy-to-use user interface, combining good user experience, and fine-tuning the details can make users stay.