Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Justin Ramedia

How great UX engenders brand loyalty

I’ve been working on a deck for my executive team that talks mainly about user experience. I discuss what it actually means to work as a User Experience professional. I talk about the difference between design and UX because lately those terms seem to be used synonymously when they are decidedly not.

As I finished up the deck and got it ready to present to a room full of leaders within the Loyalty industry, I realized that none of my rational would matter unless I tied it back to loyalty.

That’s when I realized that loyalty is just a function of great user experience. Every touchpoint of a product is part of its user experience, but at every single one of these touchpoints, there is an opportunity to create a moment that matters — Something that can delight a user or offer them exactly the assistance they need at exactly the right moment.

I picked up an amazing way to map out user or customer experiences from some of the supremely talented designers at Lego, one of our former clients. This example takes us through the pretend user journey of a coffee-drinker and provides us with insight on where we can deliver a moment that matters — sticking with the user long after they have left the cycle or experience.

Experience map for coffee drinkers

This map is a powerful tool in user experience (and loyalty experience) design. When creating a loyalty program, website, marketing plan or app, we can easily see and anticipate where to deliver the most impactful moments.

How does this create loyalty?

When the world first touched the iPhone, they realized that something had been missing for their entire lives. The interactions felt so native to their already-existing patterns that there was no need for a learning curve. Apple delighted users the moment they touched their product. This planted the idea in the minds of individual users that Apple cares about them specifically. Because they had such a personal connection with that product, they didn’t distinguish between interactions of other users and other iPhones, only their own. They saw this delightful moment as something deeply personal to them.

When you think about a user as an individual, instead of a group, you can pinpoint specific moments to replicate this personal feeling of delight. These simple moments can often become the backbone of loyalty.

So use the experience map. Think of your users as individuals. Research what they are really doing and don’t assume anything. Putting in the time and effort to really understand your users will pay dividends down the line and will increase their brand engagement and brand loyalty. When you think about user experience you’re already thinking about loyalty.

As always, for more information on experience mapping, brand loyalty, or UX design, reach out at hello@justinramedia.com

A Loyalty Experience was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Loyalty Experience

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