Why should I use a User Experience Agency?

To find out precisely what a user experience agency does,
If they could help you with a project or problem you’re facing,
If there’s any value to the research and the results they can bring to your organisation.

The good news is that you’re on the right page as well as on the right track.

We’ve compiled a quick overview (below) for those looking for more information about how a UX agency like ours operates. However, you’ll also find a wealth of information throughout our website that should answer almost every question you have. If not, we’re happy to answer any specific questions or arrange a quick call or meeting to explain the ways we can help.

From the information on our website (or from our handy e-guide, ‘Involving your customers in digital transformation‘), we’re confident that you’ll see the value of employing a UX agency to strengthen and streamline existing products or uncovering the essential building blocks for new projects.

In the areas of web design, web app development, mobile apps, custom software development, user interface design, and more, attaining value from UX research has never been so crucial to your operation’s ROI. How users engage with digital products (and also physical spaces and products) is the difference between good, bad, and great and between surviving, excelling, or crashing out.

What our global clients have to say about our UX research

Don’t take our word for it; if you want to see just how essential the work of our UX designers and researchers is, head over to our client case studies page. We don’t want to brag, but we’ve worked with some of the biggest global businesses and high-street names, including eBay, Roku, Indeed, Shopify, Samsung, Meta, Adidas, Moonpig, NatWest, and VMO2.

As a global UX design agency, we don’t just work with such notable clients—we’re integral to their success.

So, having made our case for why user experience is so valuable to any digital design agency, here’s our quick guide to recap all things UX design and how a user experience agency like ours delivers the upgrades that make your digital products sing.

What does a UX agency do, and how can it help me?

The definition of user experience and its core purpose

According to the Nielsen Norman Group:

“User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

UX—user experience—is a lot more than just making a website’s user interface or mobile apps look attractive to their users. UX design is more about function than appearance, yet strong graphic design and presentation are still crucial to how the best digital platforms perform.

User experience is customer-centric. It’s about understanding and exploring how the people who use your products think and feel and what you can do to make their experience seamless, simple, intuitive, and enjoyable. If, through user testing, for example, we find friction and sticking points in user flows, user interfaces, or content, it’s that essential user feedback that drives us to find creative solutions that don’t just appease the user’s need but provide a smooth and enjoyable alternative.

Why is that so important? Well, if your users don’t enjoy using your digital products or become frustrated by poor-performing UX design, they’ll leave to find one where they do. Even the smallest issues can impact your digital presence; just look at how impatient users and our fast-paced society judge products and branding. It’s more crucial than ever to satisfy their needs at every point of your digital strategy if you want to retain them as spending customers.

Key services of a UX agency

While user research sounds simple at first glance, a vast array of methods and practices are available to explore the physical and digital processes required to examine business practices and products. That’s why choosing an experienced and expert dedicated team is so important.

You’ve probably heard of many of the common UX practices: user research and analysis, usability testing, prototyping and wireframing, information architecture, and exploring visual design, but it doesn’t stop there. We carry out long-term analyses, such as diary studies, ongoing and quickfire studies in the form of rolling, rapid, and continuous research, and so much more.

Dig a little deeper under the UX/UI design hood, and you’ll find everything from global and cultural practices to qualitative and quantitative research methods, auditing, agile testing, sprints, long-term studies, taxonomy, rolling research, eye-tracking, journey mapping, moderated and unmoderated testing. Deciding which practice is best for each study takes experience and expertise.

Design thinking and UX strategy: Understand, perform, and accelerate

At UX24/7, we follow three steps: understand, perform, and accelerate. By exploring in this way, we uncover the details you need to feed your web development team, graphic design services, digital marketing, and UI design teams to deliver greater UX design, user interfaces, and stronger products.

Understand – Clarity about your business case, product development process, and competitors.

Evidence-based business case – We help product managers and owners establish an evidence-based business case for product development.
Reduced product guesswork – We help reduce the guesswork from the product development process by involving customers.
Competitor product benchmarking – Whether competing at home or entering a new market, reliable, actionable insights about your competitors and their products are vital.

Perform – Product-led growth in your markets.

Prioritised product roadmap – A key driver of product development cost savings, allowing you to invest in the right areas.
Product innovation process – Uncovering opportunities for innovation by talking to your customers transforms your product development process.
Market-tailored products – Delivering global products that work in target markets requires understanding your audience’s local needs and behaviours.

Accelerate – We’ll become your partner with global UX capability to help you scale and grow.

International project team – When your internal team doesn’t cover all your target markets, you need a trusted partner who can provide high-quality support.
Embedded researcher capability – To grow your team quickly or bring in new skills and capabilities, embedded researchers, supported by international research operations and principal consultant oversight, are the solution.
Customer-centric DNA – We help build capability and understanding of how to involve customers throughout product development.

Our typical UX project workflow

We iterate our UX design services over four stages, a UX strategy initially set out by the Design Council’s Double Diamond approach: discover, generate, evaluate, and optimise.

Discovery research involves researching the problem space. The discovery stage involves your customers and target audience to define problems. It identifies their wants and needs and moves the problem from the tactical space to the strategic.

Generational research involves customers exploring how the solution should be framed. Whilst discovery defines the problem, generative research defines the experience to be delivered. Without generative research, the project can stall or, worse still, go straight into the design. It helps us understand what people are thinking and why they behave the way they do, incorporating their responses and reactions into the design. It’s about the person rather than just the product.

Evaluative research. This stage considers concepts and prototypes as they evolve toward the final solution. Evaluative research ensures that the original problem space is addressed, that the defined experience is delivered via positive user feedback, and that it works.

Optimisation. Once live, the solution should be optimised to ensure it delivers the maximum ROI.

UX practices and methodologies

If you’d like to learn more about our methodologies, we’ve listed sample selections on our approach page and services page.

They outline how we’ll work with you to attract and retain customers and learn a little more about some of our key practices, including remote research, diary studies, persona development, user journey mapping and more.

Benefits of hiring a user experience design agency

Unrivalled expertise

The top UX design agencies have the widest range of experience and expertise. For example, we work in multiple sectors, bringing different ideas, methods, and practices from each, which are often transferable yet not always evident for those confined to their own industry. Whether you work in financial, healthcare, eCommerce, travel, education, or retail, we bring a cross-discipline of sector understanding to your industry.
The same goes for global and cultural expertise. We deliver UX design and research all around the world, with local UX teams providing the cultural understanding required to ensure a perfect fit. You can explore the various markets we cover on our global reach page.
Top UX designers have extensive experience across all kinds of projects, so they know which studies will work well and are most likely to deliver on your product strategy. They’ll also offer custom solutions specific to complex studies.

Enhanced user satisfaction

UX improvements lead to better user experiences and happy customers.
Greater user engagement delivers an improved brand reputation.
Happy and satisfied users lead to customer loyalty, repeat sales, and higher conversion rates.

Increased conversion rates

You’ll observe a direct relationship between UX/UI design and conversion rates.
Improved metrics show short, medium, and long-term success.
Investments in UI/UX design deliver exceptional ROI.

Cost and time efficiency

UX design practices, such as user testing and prototyping, help get the design right the first time, avoiding costly redesigns and waste of valuable time and financial resources.
Streamlining development processes saves time and money that is better spent in other areas.

Conclusion

Working with UX design agencies ensures that your users are central to the decisions and direction of your project or product design. Removing the guesswork from design thinking delivers the digital experiences your target audience wants and needs. Enhanced UX and digital delivery will excel with the updates, amends, and features that user interviews, observations, and continual product testing reveal.

High-performing products speak for themselves, and choosing the right UX design agency will help you achieve just that

Our user research experts are available to help you get closer to your customers. If you would like to arrange a no obligation call, get in touch by emailing us at hello@ux247.com or share your requirement using the form below.