9 Tips to Follow for Ensuring Smooth Mobile App Interactions

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A mobile design's quality can be easily measured. Users will definitely be aware of all problems during their mobile experiences and won’t be too happy about them. On the other hand, if the mobile app experience is smooth and effortless, you won’t be hearing any complaints. 

Overall, mobile apps are expected to have a smooth experience so they can effectively be used at all times. The designer's main goal is to create a smooth interface that guides users throughout the app and allows them to scroll through it without any problems. In fact, 62% of users claim that they won’t use an app that is difficult to navigate through. 

In this article, we will be diving deeper into learning more about the nine tips you can follow for creating a smooth mobile app experience. 

1. Increase learnability 

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Every designer has one goal and that is to create a unique product with the best interactions possible. These types of approaches allow you to stand out more from the crowd and be much more noticeable. Creating new experiences might make users confused and keep thinking on how they’ll adjust to it. 

If the interaction system isn’t simple to use and doesn’t follow the needs of the target audience, it will only make users distance themselves from the application. To entirely avoid these kinds of outcomes, it’s important for designers to learn more about the learnability of interactive elements. 

Learnability is all about how easy it is for tasks to be completed during the first time they are used and how quickly users can learn from each of their experiences. In order to increase learnability, you need to make sure your interactions are straight to the point and clearly help users adjust to any changes. The whole idea is to keep the system logical and allow users to repeat each pattern through each mobile app they use. 

2. Choose the right font styles, sizes, and colors 

Typography is all about choosing the proper font style, colors, and size that you should use in the app. Typography plays an important role when it comes to elevating the user experience. Choosing the proper fonts greatly influences your level of professionalism and gives you a better readability level. 

Each font will give a different feeling and mood to users. For example, using bold fonts will highlight the importance of a message. Also, using brighter colors will be more appealing to the eye compared to darker colors. You want to avoid using font colors that reduce text. 

Research shows that red and black combinations are the most confusing and should be avoided at the highest cost. This is because around 5% of people aren’t able to make a distinction between the color green and red. 

3. Figure out who your target audience is 

A great step to creating the ideal mobile app experience is to know who your target audience is. You can’t make your mobile app interactions good if you are presenting it to the wrong audience. It simply doesn’t work out to “hope” everything will turn out good. 

Creating a successful app experience will require you to define specific demographics such as gender, location, age, hobbies, and more. Also, it’s important to know more about the phone brands your users are using. You may wonder why. 

Phone brands differ from each other and it makes you focus on important technical factors of mobile phones such as the battery life, performance, screen resolutions, and more (even more important for IoT apps). 

4. Keep your UI clean to enhance your usability testing 

A challenge amongst many UI designers is trying to fit in a design that has a limited amount of space. Keeping your UI design clean is highly important if you want to have an effective interaction between your users and core elements. 

To create a clean mobile UI experience, we recommend you use icons as interactive components. Copy elements won’t be a good fit for your small screen, so icons are a great substitute for this. It helps save lots of space, but make sure that during your mobile usability testing, you carefully check if the icons are correctly perceived and ensure that you are transferring the right message. 

5. Use recognition patterns 

When an app can be used without any issues, it simply means that the designer has done a good job. To do this, UI design has to have recognition patterns. These are elements that allow users to recognize what they are familiar with and to get slight hints on those they aren’t. When we use an application, we always expect it to be associated with something of the product's kind. 

For instance, when you visit an online store, you expect to see call-to-actions, cart icons, and more. These elements that are associated with the product make people feel confident about the app and drive a better experience. 

Users will always adapt to things much quicker when there’s some similarity between the elements. If you are planning on using any custom interactive elements, always make sure to use standard components as well. In this matter, a new application won’t make the user think it’s a new environment and will eventually help them learn much faster. 

6. Make sure to make it responsive

Trying to create a design that has no flaws in different functionalities and devices. Mobile phones are not like before and come in different screen sizes, so you can now ensure that your content is viewed across different screen sizes. 

Designers will usually separate the web and mobile solutions into two segments, which are: 

• Defining the structure is called “information Architecture”. 

• Using advanced design elements for enhancing interaction experiences. 

These two segments allow designers to simplify their design solutions for mobile use and enhance the experience. 

7. Use fewer actions 

It can be annoying to use a mobile app and have to complete many actions before a task is completed. This usually happens when the interaction system is ineffective. Mobile apps are generally supposed to serve as a solution and solve your problems, so they need to complete tasks in the most simple manner possible. 

The role of designers here is to only apply core functional elements and get users to the point as quickly as possible. Fewer actions won’t make your product premium, but it will enhance the mobile experience and make it a more pleasing one. People will always rate an application based on how simple and helpful it is. 

8. Monitor your app 

Another step to ensuring that your mobile app experience is flawless is to continuously monitor it. It’s important to analyze and collect data from your app’s performance, user, and behavior to understand how it’s performing in real-life scenarios. 

Three important metrics you can use for collecting and analyzing data are: 

• User retention: Allows you to collect data for increasing the app’s growth and engagement rate. 

• User behavior: Helps you optimize the app's functions and features. 

• User satisfaction: Allows you to collect feedback and learn more about your app’s quality and loyalty. 

If you want to improve mobile app interactions and care about your product’s quality, these three metrics will help you do so. 

9. Make improvements over time through A/B testing 

The last step we recommend for a flawless experience is to make improvements. To ensure a smooth mobile app experience, you need to continuously make improvements to your app. You can do this by using the data and feedback you receive to improve user satisfaction, quality, and performance. 

A/B testing is another great way to compare two or more versions of the app or its components to find out which one does better. Roughly 77% of businesses will run A/B testing to learn more about any issues with the design and font. 

Continuous development is what allows you to make changes, and updates, reduce costs, prolonged development and reduce risks. 

Importance of ensuring your mobile app interaction is always smooth 

Getting feedback, conducting A/B testing, and learning more about user behaviors and satisfaction is highly important when it comes to creating a flawless mobile app interaction. Also, don’t forget about learning who your target audience is. You can create the best experience out there, but if it’s targeting the wrong audience, it won’t be as good as you think. 

Make sure to perform all the required tests before any user gets a hand on them. Even after release, take users' feedback into careful consideration. It will always matter. 

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