The times of passive consumption of business information by users are long gone. Modern digital users are active participants in the chosen brands’ lives. They determine the flow of interactions with digital resources and control the process from the beginning to the end. Thus, giving end-users that control is a vital component of innovative UI/UX efforts.
When you hire UX designers to create a new digital resource for your brand, ensure they know what conversation design is and how to derive maximum value from this UX feature. Here is a quick guide on conversation design and its role in modern UX.
Introduction to Conversation Design
In a nutshell, a conversation is any interactive communicative act between two or more participants. Conversations should not necessarily take place in person and involve verbal cues. A text chat can also be called a conversation, and even passing a handwritten note with a particular message from one person to another can function as an intentional communicative interaction.
So, what is conversation design overall? It’s a UI/UX design approach that presupposes active user interactions with the system. Website visitors should have a chance to talk to the voice assistant on-site or use the live chat to text with the human representative or chatbot. These channels should be available 24/7, informative, and human-like in terms of assistance quality.
To be effective, your website should offer conversational channels where a visitor and a site agent will take turns to exchange information or get some data from one another. It should resemble the way people communicate in real life. If these goals are achieved, you may say that your digital resource utilizes conversation design successfully.
Why Is Conversation Design Critical in UX?
At first glance, you might feel that conversations don’t play a huge role in your web resource’s UX. But in fact, people rely on communication much more than you might suppose. Research says that over three-fourths of visitors will abandon a website that has poor conversation design, with basic chatbots offering no real help.
Thus, it’s vital to include AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants in your resource. You also need to hire a talented UX researcher and designer to develop conversational scenarios depending on your target audience, use cases, and contexts. This approach is heuristic, meaning that you extend the real-life context of human interaction to your digital product harmoniously, ensuring seamless UX and user satisfaction. You can also read this useful article to learn more about cost to hire UX designers or researchers.
How to Improve Your Conversation Design?
There are a couple of tips that professional UX designers use to maximize the value of on-site conversational designs. Try them out to see how it goes. (Ultram)
#1 Mind Discourse Markers
It’s important to create a natural conversational flow during the visitor’s interaction with your agent (a human being or a chatbot). So, it would be best to use discourse markers for naturalizing text conversations, and discourse markers can be of much help here. They add cohesion and remove the tension of talking to a machine.
#2 Use Verbs
Keep in mind that people mostly come to a bot to solve some problem or get an answer to their question. So, starting your sentence with a verb gives it an active voice and prompts a more effective conversation.
#3 Mind Your Tone
The style and tone of the on-site conversation often determine its quality and user satisfaction. It’s all about the inclusion of users in the context and respect for diversity in communicative practices. For example, many young people use slang or contractions in chats. Imagine their surprise and frustration if the bot reacts to their short messages with something like, “sorry, I don’t understand.”
Such an act may isolate some people from the conversation, and this practice will surely result in poor UX for many people. Avoid such issues by including numerous spelling variants and diversity of conversational tones in the chatbots’ programs. Your target customers can come from different backgrounds, and the fact that your bot understands them and speaks their language will become a great plus.
#4 Make It Responsive
Responsiveness is the key feature of the conversational design that makes your resource successful. People coming to your website need solutions, so they expect a prompt and informative response to their inquiries. Giving them that promptness and informativity ensures great UX, while a slow bot taking a couple of minutes to respond is a UX killer.
#5 Maximize Usability
Conversational design can succeed if it is accessible 24/7 and causes no confusion or friction among users. It has to be visible on the website’s page, readily detectable on every page, and accessible without technical hardship or delays. In other words, every user should be able to access the conversation in one click, regardless of their level of competence.
Choose Conversational Tools Wisely
As you can see, including conversational design elements is beneficial for your business. It improves your UX and makes customers happy, giving them responses and solutions 24/7. To maximize the value of conversation design for your web resource, you need to consider various tools and choose the most relevant ones. UX designers typically recommend using:
Chatbots
This tool is the most basic type of conversation support. It can direct users to the needed sections or offer them the needed files or links within a couple of clicks. Chatbots are highly informative and can handle hundreds of requests at the same time. So, their use is highly common in modern digital products.
Interactive apps
The architecture of interactive applications is more complex and intricate than that of chatbots. People use interactive apps for education, symptom monitoring, fitness tracking, etc. These apps offer advanced analytics of the data you provide.
Voice assistants (VA)
The VA technology tops the list of popular conversational UX tools today. It may be used on the go and doesn’t require typing. Thus, many modern users prefer VA to get information or prompts quickly.
Use one of these tools or integrate several types into your resource to give users all kinds of assistance. You ensure that people feel valued and cared for by initiating and sustaining natural, human-like conversations. This way, the UX of your digital product rises manifold, guaranteeing customer loyalty and massive user adoption.
