Don't Sit On Your Ideas…

Building Web or Mobile Apps?


Hire Vetted On Demand Web and Mobile Development Teams On The VenturePact Marketplace.

Post Your First Project Today!

Get Personalized Updates


Top 4 Common Mobile UX Design Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs – Guest Blog

Randy RayessRandy Rayess

There are several ways you can go about improving your custom application. One of the most reliable methods has always been providing an outstanding user experience.

If you know a few things about UX, you shouldn’t find it all that complicated to design a sophisticated UX solution for your app. Unfortunately, there are also many things that can cause failure. In order not to learn the things the hard way, you should gather more information on the topic, for example, by reading various informative articles like this one, or consulting with development companies like Mindk.com in order to hire the best one.

Top common mobile UX design mistakes

In the core of your app’s success lies the difference between a good UX and a bad one. It’s as simple as that. You might have a great idea for app development or you might be already owning a popular website and may now need to create an application based on it.

All in all, the advantages of the background you are coming from simply doesn’t matter if you have made a few mistakes in your UX mobile design. In fact, working on mobile UX/UI can be particularly hard if you are coming from the website background, since there are more chances to go wrong.

So, let’s see what UX mistakes you should avoid when designing a mobile app:

Mistake # 1: Having too much going on.

The number one factor that will keep users away from your app is that you will have too much going on on-screen. When, from the very first seconds someone has opened your app, the user finds themselves attacked by countless amount of ads popping up after each tap. If the same is happening with the different permission settings, notifications or sudden windows opening, etc., it can really make the user switch off your application way before he gets to the core of its functions.

Of course, having ads in the app enables you to get your profit from it without charging money for the download. Ads might be vital. But don’t put ads in inappropriate places when it’s blocking the important features of your app or when it’s very inconvenient for your users. Many startups make such mistakes in order to gain more profit for their business. But please, take care of the users by putting ads wherever they fit. Make them more modest and less obtrusive.

Center the work around the most essential features. Keep your application simple but efficient. Cluttering your app makes it look cheap. Having too much going on, your users may leave the app without purchasing or delivering other needed results. Lots of forms, pop-up alerts and ads can often cause a drop of engagement level, making the entire experience of using the app quite unpleasant and annoying.

Mistake # 2: Having bad navigation.

When it comes to the top common UX mistakes, there is one that stands out among the others. It happens much more often than we’d like to see – when applications have confusing, poorly managed navigation. Such mistakes make the work quite inefficient since, people are losing too much time on unnecessary actions.

This mistake may appear when an app is developed based on the website’s design and it wasn’t optimized for smartphones. If it takes more than three taps to get what a user is looking for he/she is more likely to lose interest in using your app.

There is only one exception: they may have really high motivation or need for using your app. Even if this is the case, we are sure you don’t want to annoy the users. In both cases, your aim here is to make navigation less confusing and more user friendly.    

Mistake # 3: Taking too much from the competitors.

This mistake is actually a little bit tricky. On one hand, there is no doubt that implementing features which proved to be beneficial for applications is genuinely a good idea. It can be rational to base your app development on the experience of your competitors. On the other hand, taking too much from your competitors’ products may lead you to step on the slippery road.

By copying someone’s work, you might blindly take their bad features along with the good ones. The best thing to do here is to put more effort into researching and analyzing competitors’ work, reading app reviews and comments. Make your own conclusions on what is working and what is not.

With the extremely wide range of applications we have now, they all are pretty similar. It’s ok if you would like to have something from your competitors’ concepts in your project. But nobody needs another clone on the market. If you like some features of other applications, then there is no need to copy them. Take the main idea and then improve it in a way that will specifically suit your product.

What is more useful is to think about what problems are not solved by their apps and try to bring the solution of these problems to your application’s functionality. Finding a sensible balance is your chance to go further than the rest of similar applications.

Mistake # 4: You stop working once you finish V1 of the app.

There are still few of mobile UX mistakes we haven’t mentioned yet, however, they can be united under this one – a general large misconception people have is stopping the development process once their product is out in the market.

The goal is thought to have been achieved once your app is on someone’s iPhone. To stay in this constantly growing market, though, you shouldn’t stop the process of improvements.

You should provide the users with all the necessary contact information so that they could send their feedback to you and can help you in constantly improving your product. There are no better UX experts than real users of the app. Here are some common mistakes to avoid as well:

  1. Missing contact information or putting it somewhere where it is hard to find.
  2. Not listening to the feedback your users are giving.
  3. Not making updates as fast as it is required by the market, competition and the users.  

How to avoid mistakes in mobile UX design: wrapping up.

Please, do not stop to experiment in order to not to fail with UX. Always remember about your target audience and the fact that each app is created to help people fulfill their needs. Therefore, every improvement should keep the app useful and understandable. Give the mobile UX design a look over once and see if there’s anything that you can do to optimize it.

Build a strong communication process with your development team, since their services don’t finish after the first release of the product. Make sure you hire an experienced app development company that suits your preferences and vision of the future product. Together with them, you should work on constant improvements, making frequent updates and turning the UX of your app into something engaging and somewhat unusual or unique.

 

Oleg Nesterov is a Founder and CEO of MindK, an IT-company specializing in web- and mobile development in B2B market. You can follow him on Twitter.

CoFounder at VenturePact Passionate about software, marketplace startups & remote work. Previously at SilverLake Partners, Ampush and Wharton.