We’re Not Psychic – It's Experience Design

We’ve all been there: we’re scouring the internet for answers, we land on a site that might have a solution to our problem, but once we’re there, we can’t find the information we need.  This is a problem with far too many websites, yet it is entirely avoidable if the company invests in experience design. 

What is experience design? 

Put simply, experience design is creating online experiences with your end-user in mind. You may want to help them solve a problem, inspire a specific emotion, or simply direct them where they should go to encourage conversion. 

Experience design is iterative, meaning that it is meant to change frequently based on feedback from end-users and data from things like heat maps and analytics. It may involve a lot of A/B testing to find a solution that helps the user find what they need or helps you as a company achieve your business goals online. In the end, experience design can inform not only your products or services, but also your online presence and digital strategies. 

Why is experience design important? 
Your digital presence, planned with principles of experience design, should leave a positive impression on your end-user. They should have a pleasant experience interacting with your brand and find value in the information they are able to discover while exploring your site. 

Without experience design, your website may be needlessly confusing or unable to connect with your audience. Customers will struggle to find solutions to their problems, causing them to exit the site and find what they need with your competitors instead. 

Even the placement of a button that will further guide them on their customer journey can affect their attitude toward your brand. Prominent placement of valuable, well-organized content will lead them farther down the funnel. Failure to make navigating your site easy will direct them to someone else. 

For this reason, it is crucial to include experience design in your site creation process. It will guide your end-user to the information they need every step of the customer journey. 

Anticipating your users’ needs 
A big part of experience design is anticipating each need and action of your end-user. One team is not responsible for this – it must be part of your culture, ingrained in each step of the website design process. 



This includes things like market research (e.g., shifting trends), collecting data, and sharing results across teams involved in the project. Teams can use this information to make decisions based on the step of the customer journey they oversee. 

Five facets of experience design 
1. Get to know your user: Someone on your team must be responsible for creating the personas of your end-users so that everyone else down the pipeline has an intimate understanding of their customers. You should focus on collecting information about not only their demographics, but also their unique perception of the world. 

2. Identify pain points: This should be an obvious step when developing any product or service. You should go into everything considering what problem you are aiming to solve. So, it is imperative that you research your customers thoroughly to identify their specific pain points. 

3. Brainstorm solutions: Once you have nailed down your customers’ pain points, it is time to come up with creative ways to provide solutions, whether that is with your product or service itself or with your digital presence. Your team should be asking themselves, “What is the easiest way to meet the needs of our end-users?” 

4. Test your best: Following your brainstorming sessions, you should have a couple of promising ideas to solve your customers’ problems. Pick a few of your best ideas and test them on your website to see which one produces the ideal result for both your customer and your bottom line. 

5. Reiterate the process: Once these steps are complete, it is wise to begin again and reevaluate at consistent intervals (quarterly, semi-annually, annually, etc.). You should have new data to inform your decisions, which will make the next proposed solution even more effective. 

Without the right approach, experience design can be complicated or even ineffective.  If you don’t have the knowledge or resources to do this yourself, our experts at Hoodoo Digital can answer your questions or help you get started. Contact us to discuss the possibilities.