UX for Millennials: Understanding an increasingly powerful generation of consumers

Screen Shot 2014-01-15 at 4.58.59 PM

The Importance of User Experience

User experience, which is also commonly referred to as UX, is one of the most important considerations when developing anything. From products and services, to websites and even mobile device apps, the goal should be to create an experience that is intuitive for your target user group.

How to interact and what the user is supposed to do should be obvious. The most successful user experiences are often the ones that are simple and make use of universal signs and symbols that are commonly used in society.

Understanding UX for Millennials

When developing new technologies, it is important that you speak your user’s language. This is why it is so important to perform customer research and understand user behaviors and tendencies before developing a product. It is much easier to create an engaging user experience when you know user preferences and how they like to interact with various forms of technology.

When it comes to understanding UX for millennials, the rules for developing an engaging user experience are no different. The important factors are context and understanding. Context drives the user’s experience. The more relatable the experience is to the user, the more likely they will be to engage and complete the desired actions you want them to complete.

Millennials as Consumers

It is also important to understand the buying habits of this generation. After all, attempting to engage users is usually the first step to getting them in the sales cycle. If you don’t get it right and fail to engage millennials, they will move on to the competition.

Millennials are undoubtedly more connected digitally and are more open to complete transactions online while using a variety of devices, but they are also more likely to read reviews and hear what others have to say before clicking the “buy” button.

Millennials are unique in the sense that they trust and care about what other consumers have to say. They care about others’ opinions over the marketing messages of brands. Therefore, when considering UX for millennials, it is important that user-generated content is included in your product development decision. Millennials value testimonials, product reviews and the opinions of other consumers.

Millennials have different buying habits than baby boomers and other generations. This needs to be accounted for when developing a user experience. In only a few short years, this generation will have more spending power than any other group. For this reason alone, it’s time to understand how to maximize UX for millennials.

Bottom Line

Listen to what millennials are saying and take action. Read their comments on your website and through social media. They want to engage with brands, and it is up to these brands to remove engagement obstacles and minimize the learning curve to create an ideal UX for millennials.

 

The CommerceLab

CommerceLab is an interactive place to share cutting-edge digital media research and commercialization in Canada. We connect the business and academic worlds with the information they need to be competitive, to grow, and to compete on a global scale.