If there’s one challenge every business faces, apart from customer acquisition, it’s creating user experiences (UX) that lead to purchases and customer retention. While there are many strategies you can use to achieve that, one of the most important is a simple two-word concept.

Flowchart

Whether it’s a website or app, it takes good flowchart to create an exceptional UX. A UX that will keep users fulfilling the goal of your website (or app) and even coming back for more.

What is Flowchart?

In it’s simplest form, flowchart is a visualization of the journey a website or app user will have to take to complete a certain action.

A flowchart breaks the journey down into simple steps, allowing the design team to better reduce any friction the user may encounter at each step by creating the most efficient route to the finish line.

5 Effective Hacks to Creating a Good Flowchart

Now that you understand what flowchart is and its importance, let’s quickly look at 5 hacks to creating a flowchart that results in exceptional UX.

1. Answer the Right Questions

One of the first steps in designing an effective flowchart is to answer the right questions - questions that will help you create the perfect journey for users. Typical examples of questions you can ask include (but are not limited to):

• What is the end goal?
• How is the user supposed to accomplish it?
• What elements can you include to give them the confidence to see the journey through?
• What barriers need to be eliminated to reduce friction?

Answering these questions correctly will help you lay a perfect foundation for your flowchart. It will also help you discover unique approaches that you can take to differentiate yourself.

2. Understand All Your Entry Points

An entry point simply means the “doorway” to your website. Examples include:

• Landing pages
• Social media posts
• Email
• Search results on Google

Understanding these entry points is critical to designing a great flowchart. This is because each entry point essentially means starting the buyer journey from a different level. As such, in order to create fluid flowchart, you will have to understand every entry point and how to ensure that each user transitions into the customer journey smoothly.  

Another reason to consider entry points is that some users may be first-time visitors while others are recurring customers. You’ll have to create personalized journeys for each group to ensure that they have a smooth flowchart. Understanding the various entry points will help you do just that.

3. Create User Personas

A user persona is simply a representation of the different types of users who use your platform. Understanding each persona that visits your website or app is crucial to understand what they are looking for and how they want to achieve it. This knowledge will help you understand the elements in your design that your users will find necessary and those that are redundant.

While creating flowcharts for multiple personas may seem like a daunting task, it’s actually easy with our User Flow Tool. Creating flowcharts for each different persona will greatly improve your UX and, ultimately, increase conversions.

4. Minimize the Steps Users Have to Take

No matter how beautiful your website design is or how irresistible your product may be, a flowchart with unnecessarily too many steps will discourage some users. This is why, when designing your flowchart, try as much as possible to keep the number of steps to a bare minimum.

Every step a customer has to take requires more effort, thereby increasing friction.

Two simple tips for cutting down the amount of work a user needs to do before reaching the finish line are:

• Only ask for the most important information
• Auto-populate as many fields as you possibly can

Reducing the number of steps required will ensure that users remain engaged throughout the process.

5. Incorporate Visual Feedback

When people navigate through your system, one thing they’ll always look for is feedback. Each step on their journey must be accompanied by a visual (or audio for the visually impaired) response. Good examples of feedback that improves UX include:

• Pop-ups. Affirm a user’s actions and encourage them to take the next step by using popups. These also work well in letting users know that their input has been recorded.
• Progress bars. By letting users know how much they have progressed on their journey (and how much of the journey is left) is a great way to keep users engaged. It also encourages them to complete all the steps as they know exactly where they are on the journey.

Feedback is crucial to flowchart as it helps encourage users to take the next step. Without feedback, users may hesitate (this is a form of friction), repeat the same action (leading to frustration) or drop off altogether due to uncertainty.

6. Don’t Ignore Heuristics

Heuristics simply means the rule of thumbs in designing a user-friendly system. While it is tempting to be innovative and break the norm, sticking to flowchart and usability best practices is the surest way to provide users with an exceptional UX. A few heuristic factors to keep in mind as you design your flowchart include:

• Error prevention. Eliminate error-prone conditions or provide users with a confirmation option before they go ahead with such a step.
• Easy user control. Users need to feel in control all the time. And when they make a mistake, make it easy for them to go back to the previous step.
• Consistency. Never use the same word or visual elements to mean 2 different things. The use of any one element should be consistent throughout.
• Keep designs simple. A simple design or UI is the best gift you can give your users. This is because it will save them the time they’d otherwise spend trying to figure your system out.

When it comes to UX, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Stick to the best practices and you’re bound to make life easier for your users - thereby eliminating friction.

Bonus Flowchart Hacks for Exceptional UX

Creating a flowchart that results in an exceptional UX takes a lot of strategic planning and combining of different elements.

• Label all interactive elements clearly. UI elements such as links and buttons should be clearly labeled is such a way that users will know exactly what will happen when they interact with them.
• Test your flowchart. Before launching, make sure everything flows smoothly by rigorously testing your flowchart. This will help save you and your users from some nasty surprises.
• Keep users focused. Eliminate all distractions and unnecessary elements in your UI. Only use elements that will help the user achieve their goal and give them a great experience while doing so.

Giving users an experience to remember is critical in this day and age - after all, you’re not their only option. Because of this, do everything it takes to design an exceptional flowcharts that will help you nail your UX.

Creating Effective Flowcharts - The Key for Creating an Exceptional UX

With the competition to attract and retain customers becoming fiercer by the day, you have to pull all the stops to ensure your system succeeds in its purpose. To do that, you have to nail your flowchart as it determines the experience users will have. And as you well know, in today’s world UX is everything. Give users a great experience and you can bank on them being hooked.

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Shahid Abbasi is a growth marketer and CRO specialist at Cruzine. He helps individuals and agencies in digital transformation by improving their products; user experience, bringing them traffic, sales, and revenue growth. He blogs about SEO and content marketing and marketing on Marketer Search. Connect with him on Twitter @ShahidAbbasy.