Mike_Gualtieri_ForresterHave you ever driven in Boston?  If you have, then you know that the streets are very difficult to navigate. Why? In colonial Boston someone built a house. And then someone else built a house. Then they built a path between the two houses. And so on and so forth. As a result, Boston’s layout was accidental and the result is a convoluted set of streets that frustrates both residents and visitors.

Similarly, application development shops achieve poor results when they design without a plan, leaving user experience to chance. They:

  • Hurt conversion rates. A well-designed site can have up to a 200% higher visit-to-order conversion rate than a poorly designed site. And visit-to-lead conversion rates can be more than 400% higher on sites with a superior user experience.
  • Alienate customers. Retained customers become an annuity to your business and are ambassadors of your value and brand. Well-designed sites have page abandonment rates up to 41% lower than their inferior cousins.
  • Run up development costs. Upfront user experience design can greatly reduce the need for extensive redesign and redevelopment that may be necessary to fix a poor user experience.

Wow! App dev shops who are not doing user experience design have a great opportunity to substantially increase their value to the business. Our latest research on user experience (UX) design shows application development professionals how.

Mike Gualtieri

Senior Analyst, Forrester Research