Have you ever seen a website where you want to buy something, but the button is in a different place every single time you come back? Or you want to start a new course, but the next button you see isn't clear?
This happens because the design of your page doesn't tell users what to do next.
We've all used apps where we scroll through hundreds of pages to get to the information we need. That's because there wasn't a clear path.
And we've all had sites where we've gotten stuck in an endless loop of redirects and forms.
These problems have a common cause - the designer was focused on telling you the details of the service rather than helping you complete the process.
To solve this problem, we must start thinking about user experience from the beginning. Every time we design a webpage, we must be sure to follow certain rules. These rules are what I call "user stories".
When we talk about user stories, we are describing three steps:
What happens after clicking the button?
Who does the work?
Why does the work matter?
When we write our user stories, the first thing we have to decide is what happens next. This will determine how users navigate the site and where they go from there.
Next, we have to identify the users and the actions that they need to do. The more clearly defined these two are, the better our designs will be.
Finally, we must decide what makes the work we've designed valuable.
Let's go through an example. Imagine that we want to create a shopping cart. We can think about the steps like this:
The customer clicks the button
The user fills out their information
The user places the item in the cart
But what if we rewrote the story like this?
After the customer completes the form, a confirmation screen will appear.
After the customer confirms they want to purchase the item, a message will display that says "You have entered the requested details."
The customer then proceeds to checkout and is taken to their final destination
I think it's easier to understand what steps happen next, even if they happen in different orders.
This is why when we're designing our websites, it's so important to follow the three steps of user stories.
This approach is not only good for UX, it also helps us design for conversion and revenue. The more clearly we know the user, the better we can focus on making things happen.