There’s no shortage of acronyms in the marketing world, from CTA and B2B to CAC and CMS. While it can seem like there’s a new one popping up every day, learning about the difference between important web terms, like UI and UX, can help you ensure that nothing is being overlooked when it comes to your site.
UI and UX design both play a pivotal role in the engagement and effectiveness of your site. They refer to how your website looks and runs, but they aren’t the same. UI stands for user interface; UX stands for user experience. In this post, we’ll discuss the main differences between them so that you can be sure that your site is checking every box needed to boost your SEO success and conversions.
The basics of UI and UX
Before we dive into the comparisons of the terms, we should start off by covering the basics of them.
UI design, or user interface, refers to what people see when they visit your website. It boils down to the aesthetics of your website, including:
- Icons
- Navigational menus
- Layouts
- Checkboxes
UX design, or user experience, has to do with the big picture of your website. It’s about how well people engage with your site to move along the customer journey. The aspects of UX design include:
- User-centricity
- Consistency
- Accessibility
- Value
3 differences between UI and UX design
The definitions of UI and UX are pretty straightforward; however, they tend to be often confused with one another. Even though both types of design are essential to a website, comparing the two can help you see how each one contributes to your growth online.
Here are three ways that UI and UX design differ from each other:
- Role in online experience
- UI — If the interface of your site isn’t aesthetically pleasing or doesn’t reflect your brand, it can affect your credibility, reputation and engagement. If a person doesn’t like how your site is set up, it’s likely that they won’t stay around long enough to explore it.
- UX — User experience is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and for good reason. If people have a hard time navigating your pages, finding the information they’re looking for or seeing the value in what you can bring them, they may get frustrated and click off to find an easier-to-use site.
- Scope of aspects
- UI — There are many little details that add up to an effective user interface, but UI only covers the look of the site. While UI refers to things like typography and color schemes, it only sums up one part of the entire website. It’s important to consider the look of a site when you’re building it; even so, there are other aspects that require attention.
- UX — Creating the right user experience for your website is much broader than UI, as it takes every step of the user journey into consideration. It’s not only about how easily people can engage with your site, but also about how they perceive your business overall and the emotions that it may bring, such as hope and curiosity.
- Impact on mobile users
- UI — We’ve all opened a website or app on our phone that doesn’t look good. Pictures might be cut off, the font might be odd, or you can’t find the button you need to fill out a form or call the business. That’s why the user interface on a mobile phone is essential. When the user interface doesn’t look good on a smartphone, which is often where a site is being looked at, it makes the business look low quality and untrustworthy.
- UX — The whole point of UX is to make sure that people can easily move around your site and find the information they’re looking for. These should be priorities on both desktop and mobile UX. When a person on a smartphone can’t find your navigation menu, the pages take too long to load or they aren’t able to smoothly move through the conversion process, it can cause you to lose a potential customer, regardless of the UI.
You need to consider both UX and UI design when you’re building or updating your website. At BURG+CO., our UX/UI auditing services can help you see things that may be slipping through the cracks and strategize for each aspect that is affecting your traffic, engagement and conversion rates.
Want to attract new visitors to your website with UX and UI design? BURG+CO. can help
Increasing traffic to your website plays a role in increasing conversions and leading to new clients. However, it’s difficult to attract visitors to your site when you don’t know what to do. Fortunately, this is what we specialize in at BURG+CO.
Our team has years of experience in helping businesses improve their digital presence to attract new leads and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more visitors to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help. Contact our team today for more information about digital marketing or to schedule a complimentary consultation.
