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How To Design a User-Friendly App For Your Marketplace

To design a user-friendly app is easy if you understand your target users and their pain points. Here's a guide on how to begin.

The mobile market is growing exponentially, with over 7 billion mobile users worldwide. According to eMarketer, nearly 90% of mobile internet time is spent on apps, with the Apple store housing over 1.96 million apps, while Google Play Store has over 2.87 million apps.

Mind boggling, huh?

So, if you want to join the bandwagon of this thriving market, you must design a user-friendly app that appeals to your platform users. That means you have to consider the visual appeal of your app, and how your users interact and engage with it.

When you apply these concepts to your apps, the experience becomes delightfully smooth and rewarding that your users can't help but feel engaged.

That is the power of a user-friendly app, and this article will guide you through building one.

1. Research your target audience

Despite the millions of apps on Google Play Store and Apple Store, only 1% of them succeed in the global market. If you don't want your app to flop, research is key to designing an app that succeeds.

Through research, you discover who your ideal users are, which will help you figure out how to design an app that resonates with them.

Your research will help you develop a persona; helping you define socio-demographic characteristics like age, location, occupation, and gender. You can further uncover factors that influence their decision to download the app.

With research, creating an app that appeals to your users becomes easy. That's because you understand what they like and don't like, which will help you design a user-friendly app.

2. Create an outline for your app

After your research, it's time to lay the groundwork by sketching a wireframe, an outline, or a layout, if you may. It will help you envision how your users will interact with your app, from the moment they launch the app until they take the desired action. You don't have to do this alone. Work with key stakeholders in your company like UX/UI designers, product managers, and others.

2. Create an outline for your app

Then, it would help if you created a user flow, which is a set of actions or processes that a user takes to reach a specific goal. For instance, if you want to design a food delivery app, the main goal is for your user to buy a meal either from a supermarket or restaurant.

With a user flow, you understand how your users will interact with your app, giving you the advantage of creating something friendly and easy to use. In other words, you're visualizing your user's journey, from the moment they log into the app to the moment they accomplish their goals.

3. Initiate UX/UI design

When done with your wireframe, the next step is to get down to the app design. This stage is crucial when designing a user-friendly app that appeals to your users. This stage includes two core vitals: User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI).

UX focuses more on the impression a user gets when they stumble on your platform. It considers how readable your fonts are, your color scheme, and the proximity of your elements.

The key is to design a simple, friendly, and welcoming app for your prospective platform users. When developing your app, first determine how your plan will solve your users' problems. The data you collected on your target market will help you analyse their needs, pain points, behaviours, and goals. The more you know your users, the better you can design something that resonates with them.

4. A heatmap guide

Your design might be top-notch, but your users are different and are prone to interact with your platform in ways you don't intend. A heatmap gives you a visual representation of how your users interact with your platform. This information will help you to optimize for the best result.

The visualization is done using colors, where warm colors indicate web page areas that get more attention, while the cooler colors show regions with less attention. When you identify these spots, you can place essential elements in the hot areas where you want more action, like a subscribe button, a buy button, a call button, or any call to action of your choice.

Doing this is pretty easy with a tool like CrazyEgg or Hotjar. But first, you have to specify which page you want to track, set up the parameters, and voila, you have your results.

5. Use push notifications wisely

Push Notification can make or break your platform if not done correctly. Depending on how you configure it, it can be your user's best friend or worst enemy. For instance, many apps are fond of annoying users with excessive push notifications that often force them to clean their cache.

On the flip side, it can be an incredible tool to keep your users returning. For example, a great use of push notification is the Uber app, alerting you that your driver has arrived. It isn't some redundant piece of information you could live without, but rather one that compels you to take action immediately.

The key to getting the most from push notifications is to use them wisely. First, your app must walk a fine line between sending messages to increase engagement and disrupting users. Unfortunately, there's no rule of thumb for the frequency and timing of your notifications. But if you understand your users and continually test your configurations, you'll find a sweet spot that guarantees results.

6. Integrate when necessary

You don't need to reinvent the wheel constantly. If you need, say, a payment system, a chatbot, a file sharing service, or perhaps a calculator of some sort, use the tool that people are already familiar with.

It makes your app friendly and easier to use since you're using tools that people already love. There are numerous ready to integrate tools like Stripe, Google Docs, and Send birds. If you're going to pay your users for tasks they accomplished, consider integrating Gigapay's payment system to pay your users instantly.

For instance, Memmo, Adrecord, Vembla, TaskRunner, and many others use Gigapay's payment to pay their users instantly. As a result, they save time, effort, and money, without having to disburse payments one after the other, which can be tiring. 

If your platform doesn't already have this integration, you're in luck. Feel free to get in touch with us by booking a demo. And we'd be excited to show you how unbelievably easy it is to use this payment system :)

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