A UX Consultant is an expert in evaluating and improving user interactions with your products, systems, or services, aiming to boost user satisfaction, customer retention, conversion rates, and brand loyalty.
A UX Consultant is an expert in evaluating and improving user interactions with your products, systems, or services, aiming to boost user satisfaction, customer retention, conversion rates, and brand loyalty.
In this article, we'll talk about what a UX consultant does, the benefits of hiring one, and how to figure out if it's the ROI for your business.
In short too, UX consultants can help you:
Why there's a need for UX consultants?
Because “we are not the user”.
We could bring our assumptions, our own biases, and hasty generalizations to projects.
We make quick decisions based on what we know and like. Not the users.
iPhone users may forget what Android users want. The abled person will assume what the disabled person wants.
So, this is why we need UX consultants.
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Without them, companies risk putting out products that are hard to use, hard to understand, and don't meet real users' needs.
This can cause you to lose money, get bad reviews, and hurt the reputation of your brand.
So, let's get started and find out if your business needs a UX consultant to take the user experience to the next level.
We love how Jaime Levy detailed what is a UX consultant in his UX Strategy book.
According to him, a UX consultant must help you solve the 4 tenets of UX strategy.
UX Consultants understand the challenges that businesses face in designing and optimizing websites and digital products.
They have the skills to help you identify the right business goals for your organization and create a website or digital product that supports your business strategy.
With their support, you can create a website or digital product that meets your business needs and exceeds your customers' expectations.
Youtube underwent a lot of UX revamps to ensure its business stay relevant.
Pic credit: thedesignership
A UX consultant can help you validate your user research. They can help to turn the data into actionable insights that can inform design decisions.
Validating user research means ensuring that the research accurately reflects your users' needs, preferences, and behaviors.
UX consultants use a variety of techniques to validate this research by using the best methods to do UX research and using the right UX tools.
For example, suppose in your product development process, your UX research indicates that users prefer a certain feature.
In that case, a UX consultant can conduct usability testing to verify this finding whether to use the feature in a way that is intuitive and effective.
5 factors your UX consultants focus on to test. Pic credit: guru99
By doing so, UX consultants can help you avoid costly design mistakes that could negatively impact user experience and hurt your business.
When it comes to creating a great user experience, UX consultants are experts at crafting killer UX designs.
They help firms analyze customer wants and design new and improved features to improve the user experience.
While building a fantastic user interface design, UX consultants' hands-on experience and practical expertise help them grasp users' wants and preferences.
Airbnb utilized its UX designers a lot to achieve this fantastic design. Pic credit: Dorve
UX consultants collaborate with product teams in workshops to ensure their designs fulfill corporate goals and are user-friendly.
They collaborate with the team to build compelling, intuitive user experiences. UX experts can construct prototypes to test and improve designs.
UX experts work hard to ensure that every product feature meets your user needs.
Lastly, UX Consultants can help your business create value innovation by focusing on the user experience.
Even if your stakeholders or you want your product a lot, that doesn't mean that anyone else will.
Most new businesses fail because the market doesn't really need what they're selling.
And you don't want this to happen.
So that's why UX consultants can help you in creating not only innovation but profitable innovation.
For example, a UX consultant working with a company that sells furniture may identify a common pain point among their customers: difficulty visualizing how the furniture will look in their home.
Exactly what IKEA UX designers did: virtual furniture placing. Pic credit: space10
A UX consultant can then work with the company to develop a virtual room design tool that allows customers to see how the furniture will look in their space.
This creates value innovation by solving a problem for the customer and improving their overall experience with the company.
UX consultants can work independently or as part of a larger consultancy firm.
They may work with a variety of clients across different industries, or specialize in specific niches such as healthcare, finance, or e-commerce.
They can also focus on a specific aspect of user experiences such as information architecture, interaction design, or visual design.
Scroll down to see how to best choose the right UX consultant for your company.
The role of a UX consultant can vary depending on the client and project, but their responsibilities generally include:
UX research and analysis is a crucial step in creating successful and effective user experiences.
By conducting research and analysis, UX consultants can gain a better understanding of the users and their needs, which can then inform the design process.
For example, a UX consultant might conduct user interviews or surveys to gather insights into how users interact with a website or app, or they might analyze website analytics to understand how users are currently using a product.
These UX researches can be quite technical and hence, having a specific UX consultant to lead and analyze research findings is helpful.
Creating user personas and scenarios is an important part of the UX design process.
User personas are fictional representations of the ideal users of a product or service.
They help designers understand the needs, goals, behaviors, and attitudes of their target audience.
Scenarios, on the other hand, are detailed narratives that describe how a user might interact with a product or service in a specific context.
For example, a UX consultant working with a mobile banking app might create user personas for different types of customers, such as a college students, a small business owners, and a retiree.
They would then use scenarios to describe how each persona might use the app to perform tasks like checking their balance, transferring funds, and paying bills.
Your UX consultants will now use their knowledge of user needs and behaviors to develop user-centered design solutions that meet those needs.
They may create wireframes, prototypes, and other design deliverables to communicate their ideas and recommendations.
They might lead workshops with your product teams to gather insights and prototype new features that are aligned with user needs.
By putting users at the center of the design process, your businesses can develop more effective outcomes that address real user needs.
For example, if your business is based in San Francisco, it's really helpful to create a product that is specifically designed to solve a common pain point for local people.
This user-centric approach can help you build a strong brand that is focused on delivering value to customers.
As we have designed the UI or wireframes, UX consultants would test and evaluate whether your final product is easy to use and meets user needs.
They may use various usability testing methods such as A/B testing, eye-tracking, and heuristic evaluation to identify usability issues.
From there, they can make recommendations for improvement.
This role is important as this can help you make sure the product is solid and will totally be used by people.
Lastly, an important role to have is UX consultants need to skillfully collaborate with stakeholders.
Stakeholders can be product managers, developers, marketing teams, or even your customers. Collaborating with these stakeholders helps ensure that the final product meets business goals and objectives.
They may also provide training and support to help your stakeholders understand user-centered design principles and methodologies.
By working together, stakeholders can provide valuable input that can improve the design and help achieve the desired outcomes.
Not only that, they can create a better understanding of the project's bigger picture and align everyone on the same page.
There are several benefits to hiring a UX design consultant, including:
UX design consultants have expertise and experience in user experience design and research. They can provide valuable insights and recommendations based on their knowledge of user needs and behaviors.
UX design consultants can bring an objective and fresh perspective to a project. They are not as close to the project as internal stakeholders and can provide unbiased feedback and recommendations.
Hiring a UX design consultant can be cost-effective compared to hiring a full-time UX designer. A consultant can work on a project basis, which can save money in the long run.
UX design consultants can help improve the user experience of a product or service. They can identify user needs and behaviors that may not have been considered and develop solutions that meet those needs.
There are several situations where hiring a UX consultant may be beneficial, including:
When developing a new product or service, it is important to consider user needs and behaviors from the start.
A UX consultant can help ensure that the product or service is designed with the user in mind.
If an existing product or service is not meeting user needs or is outdated, a UX design consultant can help you
identify areas for improvement and develop solutions that meet user needs.
If a business does not have internal UX design resources, hiring a UX design consultant can provide valuable expertise and support.
With so many UX consultants and agencies out there, it can be overwhelming to find the right fit.
To help you, you can ask these questions:
If you have any issues with these four, so, it's totally recommended to find yourself a UX consultant.
When looking at potential UX consultants, review their portfolio and case studies.
Look for examples that showcase their UX design and usability testing skills.
Additionally, read reviews and testimonials from their clients to get a sense of their working style and approach.
Their portfolio should also speak to what you want to achieve for your businesses. So, you should take a look beyond the finished products and design.
Look at their processes, prototypes, and methods to achieve their final outcomes.
Some UX designers even share their portfolios for new business opportunities via Youtube
To start, think about your business goals and objectives for the project.
Do you want to increase user engagement? Improve conversions? Enhance the overall user experience?
This will help you narrow down the consultants who have experience in your specific area.
Look for a UX design consultant who has expertise and experience in the specific area of user experience you need help with.
For example, if you need help with visual design, look for a consultant who has experience in that area.
Check the consultant's portfolio and ask for references from previous clients.
This can help you get a sense of their design style and approach, as well as their ability to deliver results.
Choose a consultant who has good communication and collaboration skills.
They will be working closely with your team, so it is important that they can communicate effectively and work well with others.
You can look at how they communicate with you while you're connecting from the start, through your trial work process, and from your referrals.
Make sure the consultant is available and flexible enough to meet your project needs and timelines.
You do. not want to halt your exciting UX consulting process if they are not available in the middle.
In summary, choose a UX consultant who has experience in your industry and specific project goals. Look for evidence of their UX design and usability testing skills, and read reviews from their clients.
If you've invested in UX design consulting services, you might be wondering if it's worth it.
How do you measure the ROI of these services?
The answer isn't always straightforward, but it's important to try to quantify the impact of UX design on your business.
One way to measure ROI is through increased revenue.
By improving the user experience, you can increase conversion rates and customer retention, which leads to more sales and revenue.
This one can vary: some may take some time to see the revenue increase; in other cases, it can happen faster.
How to measure this: you can track your revenues before and after the UX change takes place.
However, as profitability can also be influenced by many other factors, we also recommend you measure the other ROIs as well.
Another way is through cost savings - by making your digital products easier to use, you can reduce customer service inquiries and improve efficiency.
For example, a company might spend thousands of dollars on developing a new feature without testing it first.
But if users find the feature difficult to use or not useful, the company will have to spend additional time and money to fix it.
By testing the feature with users early in the development process, the company can identify and fix issues before they become expensive to fix.
How to measure this: You can measure the time and cost you saved as a result of the UX consulting services. This can help demonstrate the ROI of the services to stakeholders.
The second is to measure your user feedback and satisfaction with the final product or service.
This can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of UX consulting services.
One way to do this is by gathering user feedback and satisfaction metrics.
By analyzing user feedback and satisfaction, UX consultants can understand how well a product is meeting users' needs and identify areas for improvement.
User feedback can come in various forms, including surveys, user testing sessions, and customer support tickets.
How to measure this: UX consultants can track customer satisfaction metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
NPS measures how likely users are to recommend a product to others, while CSAT measures how satisfied users are with a product.
By tracking these metrics over time, UX consultants can see how their work is impacting user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
UX consultants help businesses improve user engagement and increase conversion rates by creating digital products and services that meet users' needs.
They can use various tools and strategies to improve user engagement and conversion rates.
How to measure this: You and your UX consultant can measure user engagement and conversion rates before and after the UX design consulting services were implemented.
This can provide insight into the impact of the services on user behavior.
You can also check conversion rates from, for example, cold leads to warm leads, and check whether the increase is due to the change in UX.
In conclusion, UX consultants and UX designers can provide valuable expertise and support to your businesses, if it's done correctly.
It is important to consider their expertise and experience, portfolio and references, communication and collaboration skills, and availability and flexibility.
Measuring the ROI of UX design consulting services can be challenging, but there are several ways to do it, including user feedback and satisfaction, user engagement and conversion rates, and time and cost savings.
If you are considering hiring a UX designer or UX consultant, we hope this article has provided you with the information you need to make an informed decision.
CTA: If you're looking for a UX consultant, feel free to contact us to discuss your project needs and how we can help.
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Fiha is a passionate product designer hailing from Indonesia. With a background as a Frontend developer, Fiha transitioned my career into the dynamic world of product design. Fiha is dedicated to translating conceptual visions into user-friendly interfaces that resonate with users. In meantime, Fiha serve as a mentor, guiding aspiring individuals who seek to delve deeper into the realms of UI/UX.
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