Cloud technology has been on the move across several businesses and industry verticals. In addition to offering convenient and secure data storage options. The cloud also brings many opportunities to develop cost-effective processes and enhance productivity. Thus, small organizations and businesses are realizing the value and transitioning to the cloud.
The cloud has immense potential to influence business goals and shape organizational growth. But shifting an application from physical to the cloud or virtual to the cloud can be a tough task.
So, to simplify the transition process, it is vital to develop an approach that has consistency and spontaneity. Here, having a good user experience design can be of great importance. As cloud technology offers a good return on investment as well, more companies are migrating their applications to the cloud.
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Impact of Cloud On User Experience
A noticeable move into cloud-based software and services was made by Adobe Systems. The software company now offers all its software on its online suite called the Creative Cloud to be sold through a licensing model and marketed through a subscription model.
The concept might seem easy to execute, but it’s not. For the applications to work on the cloud, the user interface and experience have to be completely redone.
Today Enterprise users expect their applications to work seamlessly and offer the same performance across multiple devices.
While creating a UI design, one needs to make sure that there is transparency in the actionable items, and their functionality is clear to the users. Use of relevant icons, informative and incise content, along with easy-to-use navigation.
It’s also essential to focus on enhancing the user journey by analyzing all the interactions. You need to find out what your users plan on doing as a part of their initial and long-term goals.
2) UX Boosts Up Customer Acquisition and Loyalty Programs
As the world continues to turn customer-centric day by day, your major focus should be on the target audience. Delivering a matchless customer experience is an integral part of the customer acquisition and loyalty strategy. There’s one more aspect to customer acquisition that shouldn’t be taken lightly – user onboarding. On average, more than seventy percent of users partially or entirely stop using the apps within the first three days.
If your cloud app works on a freemium model or uses trial offers, you have to ensure that the design and structure are set in place to avoid any resistance and get them up and running. Enhancing your onboarding design will help retain existing customers and attract potential customers trying to use your app. Delivering the right UI and UX is essential to make a great first impression and make it last with your customers.
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3) Employee Productivity and Engagement
Redesigning the app to improve its value can increase user engagement and improve employee productivity. It can also reduce the occurrence of errors and decrease user onboarding timeframes. Companies have to deal with a few upfront costs at first, but they will eventually realize that redesign investments will bring in more ROI year over year.
As many companies rely on apps to train their employees, apps with a good flow and onboarding design will help reduce the training expenses. Employees wouldn’t have to seek help from others to use the app, and companies can eliminate their spending on third-party trainers, which can be a cost and time expensive process.
4) Making Your Legacy Systems Adapt to The Modern Norms
There’s no doubt that companies have to overhaul the UI and UX of their existing apps to ease the cloud transition. But they certainly don’t have to abandon their legacy systems.
Making changes in the existing design of legacy systems and introducing an entirely new UI can hamper the productivity of the organization. That’s because employees who are used to working on them for many years will have to relearn and adapt to the different Best UI Kits.
What organization can do instead is to make their legacy software to adapt to modern standards. This will ensure that the fundamental elements of the system stay intact while making room for improving the standards.
As a result, the learning curve won’t be too high for the employees to grasp, and the organization won’t have to invest in training or compromise on productivity.
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UX Principles to Take Care for The Cloud
There are a set of principles that should be kept in mind to create a high-level UX design.
- Simple design goes a long way. Instead of filling it with clutters of elements, you can include only important things.
- Make sure that your design offers easy usage and consistency. A good design should also have transparency and be efficient.
- Navigation menus can be supported by using icons, graphical cues, and breadcrumb links. Users are benefited by the additional context it adds.
- Nothing can replace a seamless user flow. There should be a logical progression in the design and structure. It must also focus on creating value.
- You can add video tutorials and documentation to facilitate a good user journey.
- Have a solid and well-organized information structure.
- Users will generally prefer to access your platform from their mobile devices. So, work on fast loading times and optimization.
Conclusion
UX design is a critical process to consider while migrating a desktop application to the cloud, especially when there’s an old software developed a long time ago.
Investing your resources in UX can help enterprises go ahead with their goals by diminishing training costs, retaining employees and clients, and improving employee productivity.
