Have you ever used a mobile app that was so poorly designed it made you dislike the brand it represented?
Great mobile apps make any task simpler, from calling a taxi to ordering a meal. Unfortunately, even if your app delivers a huge amount of value, all it takes to ruin the experience of using it is an ineffective, poorly designed user interface.
Most mobile users have experiences with poorly designed apps. When an app isn’t easy to use, or has an interface that makes the simplest of tasks confusing or difficult, it gets uninstalled in a flash, typically with a negative review shortly after.
This can seriously damage your app’s user retention rate, all while hurting your ability to attract new users. Instead of winning over an audience through word of mouth and popularity, you end up with a failing app that — in spite of its value — never quite catches on.
Luckily, it’s simple to avoid most mobile UI related issues by developing a strategy for your app’s user interface. Below, we’ve listed three proven mobile app UI strategies that will leave you with an audience of passionate, happy customers eager to share your app with friends.
Don’t Innovate Unless You Need To
This might sound like odd advice, but sometimes it’s best not to innovate. While many apps use innovative UIs that stand out from the crowd and work well, far more innovators create apps that are confusing, frustrating and difficult to use.
When you use an innovative UI design for your app, you force users to think about where typical elements like menus, links and buttons should be. As a result, users are forced to experiment to find UI elements that would usually be right in front of them.
It’s fine to innovative with the look of your app, but avoid taking an overly innovative and creative approach to the basics of your UI. Common UI patterns exist for a reason, and working within an established design framework is far less likely to result in confused and annoyed users.
Instead of taking an innovative approach to your app’s UI, focus your innovation on delivering a new experience. Users love getting new, unique value from apps — especially when it’s easy to access via a straightforward user interface.
Keep It as Simple as Possible
The vast majority of users will access your mobile app from devices with small screens, making it essential that you keep your UI as simple as possible. This means stripping away UI elements that don’t add value and focusing all of your design attention on the absolute essentials.
Instead of trying to cram as much into one space as possible, start your UI design process with a wireframe of your app’s essential features. Before you add anything extra, use your app as if you were a real user attempting to complete a real task.
User interface and user experience are often treated as separate things, but both are extremely closely related. Without a good interface, it’s impossible for users to have a positive experience using your mobile app.
Before you start adding anything to your app’s interface, test it using your base essentials UI as if you were a user. After you add something, go through your app again from the perspective of a user to work out how its UX has changed and if any revisions are necessary.
Even the smallest of UI changes can have significant effects on how people interact with your app, especially on the crowded screen of a smartphone. Design for simplicity first and you stop unnecessary features from turning your UI into a crowded, cluttered mess.
Test Before You Launch
If you haven’t tested your mobile app’s UI before release, how can you be sure it’s free of bugs and other problems? Visitors will abandon your app if they run into UI bugs, making it essential to thoroughly test your mobile app before you release it.
From non-working buttons to UI elements that don’t display properly, a variety of UI glitches can prevent your app from working properly. Many of these bugs are device-specific, meaning they’ll only affect users with certain smartphones or tablets.
To find device specific bugs easily and effectively, considering using a crowdtesting QA platform. The larger your test audience, the faster you can find and fix UI bugs that could cause serious usability problems for your users.
It’s easy to view testing as a non-essential part of mobile app developments and skip it to save time and money. Just be aware that the end result could be a buggy app that repels users and costs you far more to repair than it would have to test in the first place.
Is UI Design Your Mobile App’s Weak Point?
No matter how much value your app provides, a bad user interface is all it takes to drive people away and stunt its growth. Use the three strategies listed above to make UI design one of your mobile app’s strengths and you’ll be rewarded with better reviews, retention and usage.
