I co-founded dadpardaz.com - a legal marketplace in Iran - less than a year ago. We've launched the Beta version two months ago and working to improve it's UX and add new features to it and at the same time working on marketing and introducing it to the limited groups of people.
We see the expression in our users that they can not understand the system and what it does very easily. So we think maybe hiring a UX expert would help us.
I am familiar with UX and normally I do it myself but I think maybe having a more professional UX designer would help us. What do you suggest?
What are some of the things users are saying that show you it's hard for them to understand the system? Do you have any consistency in areas where people are having trouble? Are you using any tools to track conversion rates through your funnel, and have those metrics gotten worse since your redesign? Feel free to book time with me if you want to dig in.
How painful is this problem you are trying to solve?
How is it impacting your growth ?
How many users have raised that concern ?
You can do a certain numbers of iterations with your team using Design Thinking Technics, widen your perspective with lightning talks. If you are stil stuck, come back to us.
I ran a design & UX department at an e-commerce company for two years and have been doing various product and website UX since before those things we're codified as "UX".
So there's a few factors here:
* You have a new product that you've brought to market quickly
* You have users telling you they are confused.
Regardless of hiring a consultant or an employee, you likely need someone with UX experience to help improve your customer's experience. What you need to do first is look at your flow and funnel. Where are users abandoning your site? is it before they add to cart? at checkout? at some other point? You will have abandonment, but the goal is to maximize converting the number of people coming in the door through the entire flow.
Your flow may have multiple end points. One might be "sign up for daily/weekly emails", another might be to actually finish a transaction and buy something.
You can hire an expert, but a lot of the basics are covered in a series of reports and checklists from Baymard Institute (baymard.org). A UX expert could help you prioritize and break those into actionable tickets/issues/tasks for your engineering staff.
Another thing to think about is the overall customer journey map. How does your marketplace fit into their daily flow? What are they doing before and after engaging with your website or native app? This is called journey mapping and it can help make the site/app feel more natural.
Regardless of who you hire, you need to do more research with customers and watch them use the site in addition to them telling you where there are problems. Often, they'll gloss over things that are the actual issue.
The goal is to identify the problems, find the ones that will give the biggest ROI on engineering time, and get those fixed asap. That should increase your profit and allow you to fix more issues with that new budget.
Happy to chat further with any questions you may have.
I would recommend that you hire a UX expert. Even if you have experience with UX, someone with that expertise would most likely see something obvious that you're not seeing. If you could fix it yourself, I'm sure you wouldn't be here to ask. It sounds like you don't need someone full-time - maybe only for a few weeks to get a plan or a few hours each month to help you better understand what's not working by analyzing the metrics or doing user testing.
If the site as-is isn't clear, there could be a number of factors happening (why an expert could help - they would see the core issues right away). It could even be as simple as your messaging if confusing/off-target or design/color choices. You may not need to redo the entire experience. There are also cultural factors to consider - for example, what is considered a clear UX in China for example is often quite different than a clear UX in the US. I'd recommend a local UX expert - they'd get you on the right track.
When you meet with the UX expert, make sure you give them information about your target audience. If you have a target market outlined, awesome! If you have personas, even better! If you have other traffic info - that's helpful too. That info will help them focus on what's happening or missing. Hope this helps!
You should hire two UX experts as for IT it is crucial to the Company. The better the UX, the better your product I guess. So spent your whole Marketing budget in it if necessary but hire them on a long-term basis. They don't have to be older than 23 if you're a good leader and know how to present your thoughts, ideas and vision.
I practised as a lawyer and in my experience doing digital marketing, have worked with many UX teams to develop mobile as well as online apps.
The short answer to your question is that there is always value looking at it from the lens of the end user. An experienced UX person would be knowledgeable of how to go about doing this. Translating this to the user experience is the other part of the puzzle.
Happy to talk more with you to uncover what your pain points are and what options you may explore.
I would suggest hiring an expert. They can help uncover these potential problems allowing you to focus on business.
But if you do prefer to do it yourself, I would recommend running a few usability testing sessions, these can really help uncover the core usability problems. This allowing you tweak your design to make it work better with your users.
For me when it comes to UX inputs from experts are priceless. If ever I am working on a project or product I am unfamiliar with I would always try and bring in an "expert" or someone who uses frequently. If you're a reader, read the book "sprint" there are some amazing insights as to the value of experts and why there is no shame in bro gong them in. Hope it works out for you
Are you still seeking an answer to this question? Happy to help. Please let me know. - Scott
