Want to drive traffic and engage your audience? Build your brand by creating a web and mobile app presence. Then, apply UX principles to drive development.
Web and Mobile App
Don’t have a mobile strategy? You’re literally throwing money away.
Google already employs a mobile-first strategy for its search engine, penalizing site owners who don’t optimize for mobile. If you’re not targeting these customers, your competitors will.
You can kill two birds with one stone by building hybrid apps, serving up your web content through apps and through your website, but only if your UI is up to scratch.
If you don’t know how to build a good enough UI for web and mobile app development, here are five ways you can get started.
Keep Things Simple for Your Users
You don’t have the screen resolution to waste on clutter. If you want your UI for mobile apps to be effective, it needs to be simple.
No useless buttons. No useless features or content. Less, when it comes to your UI, is often more.
Your users shouldn’t have to click or scroll several times to get to where they need to be. Limit input as much as you can—this will make it easier for you to draw your users to specific content.
Like that all-important purchase button.
Ensure Navigation is Easy and Seamless
A bottom sheet design is one of the most important navigational UI elements for you to consider. This is where users swipe up to gain access to control panels or have access to navigation buttons.
You need to design your UI around that principle because it makes your UI easier to navigate for users. This is important—research found that nearly half of mobile users prefer to use one hand for navigation.
Having your important navigation at the bottom means your thumb has easier access. It could be to submit something, to go back or forth, or to access important settings.
Test, Test, and Test Again
If you want to learn a thing or two about UI changes, look at Snapchat.
When they changed their UI without thorough testing, 80% of user mentions turned negative. If you want to develop your UI, testing should be your mantra.
Use analytics to delve deeper into your user habits. Where are your users tapping their fingers the most? What are they ignoring?
Think about A/B testing to see what your users prefer to see (or not see) in your app. Our guide to mobile app testing should help you optimize the mobile user experience this way
Aim for Clarity of Color and Design
There’s a reason why apps from big developers have a similar looking interface. Thanks to specifications from app stores, like Google’s Material Design, UI design for mobile apps has become more uniform.
The goal is to create apps that have clear and obvious design features for users. That means similar colors and design elements. If you’re thinking about the design for apps, you should consider these principles.
You don’t want your app to stand out for the wrong reasons. You can mix up colors and design, but standardizing your app or site to the principles of Material Design or HIG from Apple can help you provide familiarity to your user base.
Design Finger-friendly Apps
Finger-friendly apps make for a better mobile user interface design. Why? Because you don’t know how big a user’s thumb or finger will be.
If you don’t develop your mobile or web app with that in mind, you’ll be limiting the usefulness of your app to users with only certain finger sizes.
That’s why you need to design your buttons with finger sizes in mind. Apple, for instance, recommends that you size anything that requires a touch to at least 44 by 44 pixels to make sure touches are accurate.
Anything less and you risk frustrating your users. Frustrated users aren’t going to be using your site or app or spending their money on your services.
Make Your Web and Mobile App UI Design Work for Everyone
Having the right UI can make or break your web and mobile app development. If your UI is poor, you’ll lose visitors (and money). If it’s done well, it’ll improve your business brand and develop your user base.
Keep things simple. Standardize your design to app store specs, use simple colors and test your navigation to work best for your users. If your app is fiddly, your users will move on.
Don’t leave your app design to amateurs. We are recognized as a top website design company on DesignRush. Get in touch to discuss what our mobile app development and design services could do for you.
