UX design is thriving.
And the reason for that is very simple;
Competition.
Nowadays, there are numerous products with similar features that solve the same problem. To get ahead in the competition, businesses try to create products that users fall in love with.
The only way to do so – offer a great UX.
When offered with a good UX, customers enjoy their time with your product and they become satisfied with your business. Increased customer satisfaction means it is much easier to attract new customers, convert first-time users into regulars, and retain the existing customers.
In order to design products that offer great UX, you must see the best and the worst examples of UX design.
Here are the 6 of the worst UX examples out there, including one from Whatsapp.
And without further ado, here are 5 examples of great UX design from products we use every day:
1) Google keeps it simple since 1998
Google, officially founded on the 4th of September, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin is the world’s biggest search engine without a doubt.
Over 3.5 billion searches are made every day with Google, which translates to 1.2 trillion searches per year.
Also investing and researching in web-based technologies, machine translation, artificial intelligence, and various other fields, Google is a massive business that is among the top 5, if not the first tech company that comes to mind.
Their most loved and most widely-used product, however, is the subject to our article today:
Google Search Engine.
Why did Google become this successful? Solely because of their marketing campaigns or their investments in tech?
The answer is no. Perhaps the biggest reason behind this success is the great UX Google Search Engine offers.
It is the most simple and fastest tool ever created. It doesn’t require a tutorial or a tooltip of any kind.
Just type in what you want to search for and hit the Enter key, done.
The product has always been like this, and it seems like it will only get easier, simpler, and faster in time.
Here is a really early version of Google Search, does it bring back any nostalgia?
Although they have a few additional links at the bottom, the tool stays the same, fast and simple.
In over 20 years, all they have changed with Google Search was removing the additional links and making it simpler and faster.
Here’s what Google homepage looks like today.
A good UX is where you deliver on your exact promise in a simple and enjoyable way, and that’s what Google has been doing all these years.
2) Grammarly’s onboarding emails are a huge success
I use Grammarly a lot.
Whether it is for writing an academic document, a blog post, or a message to a customer. I’ll be honest, I don’t want to make any mistakes.
Grammarly is an outstanding tool for that if you ask me. It doesn’t just fix your spelling mistakes, it corrects you in many other ways such as wording, tone, etc., as it clearly tells you what you did wrong.
It’s not just a spelling checker, it’s a tool where you can learn grammar.
But I am not going to praise the tool itself in this article, instead, I will focus on these interesting emails I have been receiving since I first started using the tool.
Grammarly does a great job of sending onboarding emails to its users. They don’t just send premium offers and product updates, they regularly send you your stats and achievements to encourage you.
Here are the latest emails I have received from Grammarly.
I genuinely love these emails, I used to open every single one of them until they started to appear in the promotions folder.
They send genuine emails that offer value, make sure you understand your statistics and approach their users in an extremely friendly way.
Here is an email they have sent me when I switched to another computer and forgot to install Grammarly:
And here is the email they have sent me when I was on a vacation:
As you see, even a couple of carefully written emails can make your users fall in love with your brand.
UX doesn’t have to be in-product, as it refers to the overall experience your business provides to your users. It can be improved via non-product methods such as Grammarly’s case.
Here’s all there is to know about onboarding emails.
3) LinkedIn offers one of the most useful onboarding checklists
Can you imagine how your business life would be without LinkedIn?
How could you search for jobs or hire new employees?
Well, it wouldn’t be hard when you think about it but LinkedIn actually makes our lives so much easier.
I remember taking my first step into professional life by creating my LinkedIn account. The first thing I have noticed was, how the product kept suggesting to me things to do to improve my LinkedIn profile appearance and ability to use the product.
And I remember doing them all, because it felt necessary, and was enjoyable.
When a new user winds up inside of your product with a freshly created account, you have to provide them with a sense of what they must to next. LinkedIn was successful in this instance.
Here’s what your homepage looks like after you first log in to LinkedIn:
“Complete these steps to get the most out of LinkedIn”…
One can’t simply ignore these to-dos after a sentence such as the one above, because it is honest and right to the point: if you want to be an efficient user, you must do these!
LinkedIn also gives you some tasks on improving your public profile, here is what your profile page looks like at the beginning:
After I have completed these to-dos, I had a decent public profile and a decent knowledge of the product itself. I was fully onboard.
In order to onboard your users effectively, you can integrate checklists into your onboarding process. They help guide your users through their baby steps until they reach their “Aha!” moments.
Create your own Checklists today, without coding!
4) We all love how Facebook cares for its users
There are over 2.5 billion monthly active users on Facebook.
Each second, 5 new profiles are created.
It must be a challenging task to provide a good UX for each of these users!
But Facebook handles this like a boss. It personalizes each user’s experience based on their interests and activity on Facebook, provides every user with a unique experience.
With dozens of elements varying on the user’s location, language, interest, and activity; Facebook becomes your own virtual space to hang out.
Each of these features could be mentioned as a good UX, but now I would like to talk about the value Facebook gives to its users.
Facebook doesn’t aim to be just a social media platform, it seeks to help its users in every way it can.
Like in this example where Facebook gives you brief information on what the weather is going to be like in your location that day:
This may look like a simple thing, but it is not. They did not have to add this feature to Facebook, it is far from necessary.
Since they value their users and about the experience their users go through, they added this feature and people love it.
Here’s Facebook another feature: Safety Check.
Safety Check allows you to mark yourself safe from an incident that has happened near your location, and request your Facebook friends to mark themselves free.
In such hard times where disasters happen, everyone seeks comfort by asking their friends and family if they are safe, and Facebook helps them.
Even though it might not be bringing profits to your business, but providing your users with a valuable feature to improve their experience with the product is a chance to establish a bond of trust between you and your users.
5) Apple’s web store is one of a kind
I was looking for an iPad the other day.
Instead of the popular websites where you can buy tech products for lower prices, I wanted to look at Apple’s own web store.
Although I was just going to check the iPad section, I found myself aimlessly wandering in the website.
It was so smooth to use and offered such interesting content that I was comparing Apple Watches and checking the latest shows on Apple TV.
What made this website so tempting to me?
Its design.
First off, the site was easy to navigate, here’s how the navigation bar looks like.
Along with the names of the categories, subcategories consist of little resembling images to offer easier navigation.
You get more likely to spend more time in an app that is easier to navigate.
Another thing that grabbed my attention was the language they used throughout the website.
Here’s an example section:
The thing about the language on the website is that they are right on point, and they are creative.
Just by reading these sentences you can understand the value proposition of the products.
You might think this is more of a UI example rather than a UX one, but the Interface you offer to your users is also a part of the experience they go through.
Improving the design of your interface, understanding and working on what your users would want to see is a great way to improve the UX of your product.
As your audience grows and you reach more users and you enter the competition, UX becomes a crucial part of the “better product” race.
Working on your product’s design, engaging with users out-of-the-app, providing valuable features, and improving the onboarding experience you provide to your users can be a great way to improve your UX.
UserGuiding offers a wide variety of no-code onboarding elements such as interactive product tours, in-app messages, onboarding checklists, NPS surveys, and more. You can create whole onboarding processes in minutes without any technical knowledge. Click here to start your free trial today!
Why use a 3rd-party tool when you can do all these in-source? Check out this article.
Frequently Asked Questions
✏️ What is UX?
User Experience (UX) is the thoughts and emotions of a customer when using a particular product.
❓Why is having a good UX important?
A good UX means your customers are satisfied with what you offer. When your customers are satisfied, you are likely to experience growth.
⚖️ Is it possible to have good UX without a good UI?
Yes, you can have a good UX without a decent UI but to have the perfect UX, a great UI is also important.