When it comes to the manufacturing of products, there are two factors that need to have seamless unity—functionality and aesthetics. As to the former, this means it should be user friendly; and as to the latter, it means coming up with a well-designed product. When these criteria are all successfully met, you’re guaranteed to come up with products that sell out, are well-loved by your target market, and will be consistently patronized by your customers.
You don’t just manufacture products without giving it a lot of thought and research. Product development is a very serious process you have to be thorough and careful about; otherwise, you end up with products that don’t sell well. Surely, you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on coming up with good products for your business, only to find out they don’t meet your target customers’ needs. This rule applies whether you’re designing your products with your own team or by outsourcing to design agencies in London or wherever you’re from.
With that said, here are four tips you can apply, to create a consistent, user-friendly product design:
Factor In User Expectations
A product will always be user friendly when it matches your target market’s expectations. How do you decipher what these expectations are? By sending out forms, questions, and surveys, from time to time. Listen to what your customers have to say. Ask about what products they want to see from you. Perhaps you may want to ask about any pain areas they may have experienced with your previous products so you can launch better and improved versions of those.
When you factor in your users’ expectations, you’re guaranteed they always stay happy and satisfied with every item you release. This gives you a steady flow of loyal customers supporting your products, each time you launch a new one.
Remember Your Product Vision
Your product vision should be able to answer the question of what you’re trying to build and why you’re building that specific product. This keeps the entire product development team guided by your core vision. In every stage of your manufacturing process, keeping your product vision in mind ensures the end result meets the purpose you’ve intended for coming up with that product.
Otherwise, when you deviate from your product vision, your products lose function and focus. You come up with finished products which your target market won’t even like to purchase.
Keep Your Products Simple
A simple product doesn’t necessarily mean a visually displeasing or less useless product. In fact, the simpler your products are, the more user friendly they become, which means your products can easily be used by a wider range of users—even those who aren’t too well-versed with the latest technology.
However, having a lot of advanced features for your products is quite nice too. But these should never be at the expense of user-friendliness. Remember, not everyone has the same learning curve, and all the features you put in will be useless if your target customers won’t even know how to operate your products and use those features to their advantage.
Make Your Labels Clear
Your product packaging also plays a huge role in ensuring you come up with user-friendly products. If you take the time to go through products you have in your home right now, many bottles and boxes come with directions for use. By reading those three to five sentences, you immediately know how to use the product.
Don’t forget to include important details on your labels. If you’re selling products which need more specific instructions, be sure your instruction manual and booklets are very clear. It also helps to add QR codes that redirect your customers to video tutorials on your website, YouTube, and social media accounts, which they could go through, should they encounter any difficulty using your products.
An extra step in making your labels clear and more effective is also by providing instruction manuals in at least some major languages of the world. Or if you’re shipping globally, include directions with the language of the countries you’re shipping your products to.
Conclusion
With the tips in this post, you can significantly increase your products’ user-friendliness. A part of a pleasant customer experience is right after they open the packaging, they immediately know how to use your products. Amid putting in the best features and designs, never take for granted user-friendliness. If not, no matter how many features you put in and how well-designed your products are, your sales will suffer, all because your products serve no purpose to your target market.
What a great blog! really loved it.