500 million consumers in China now shop on their mobile phones. To put that into perspective, that is more than the total population of the US, the UK and Germany put together. What is remarkable is that this explosion in mobile e-commerce has all happened relatively recently.

Mobile shopping is starting to change habits in China. Chinese children have become used to the idea that to buy something, their parents simply get out their phones, give it a shake and what they bought will arrive at their door the next day.

Trust in e-commerce is high enough that people are no longer afraid of buying items sight unseen; reviews from fellow patrons provide all the validation they need. The convenience of next day delivery is shaping the behaviours of shoppers to the point where they expect everything to be delivered. As people become used to these practices, they no longer just want the convenience, they need it.

“Delivering ultra-convenience is not just something nice to have, it is crucial to make sure your consumer actually buys.”

- Angela Wang

British brands that want to sell to tech-savvy Chinese consumers are taking note of these changes and partnering up with local players who could act as a guide to the changing face of retail, and in this article we will go through some of the trends in China’s mobile shopping revolution.

Burberry Conquers China

It could be argued that China’s relationship with British brands began with the opening of Burberry’s flagship store in Sanlitun — a gentrified neighbourhood of Beijing known for its culture and nightlife — back in 2011. With a massive launch party they charmed millions of aspiration Chinese consumers and helped the brand establish itself with China’s nouveau riche.

Crazy, Rich, Asians

Like the characters in Kevin Kwan’s 2013 novel, a select group of Chinese consumers are providing a lifeline for luxury brands that have reached saturation in the west. These consumers are tech-savvy and adores western brands, either because they’ve lived in the west or because their similarly rich circle of friends flaunt western brands.

In 1978, economic reforms in China allowed private entreprise to operate for the first time, leading to the development of wealthy entrepreneurs and a growing middle class. The first wave of Chinese consumers to shop from western brands were the prestige that came with them to display wealth and social status. One key demographic that formed this luxury consumer class were the children of the nouveau riche in China, also known as the Fuerdai (lit. rich second generation). These youths roughly equates to Gen Y, or the millennials in the West.

Children Of The Nouveau Riche

When it comes to the differences between genders, female consumers in China in the upper bands of spending, behave similarly to their western counterparts. The differences in spending habits of Chinese males is slightly more interesting. Men, more than women, dress in an aspirational manner to express their wealth.

They are often well travelled, especially to European countries. They study abroad in an english-speaking country, this normally means the US or the UK, but also Canada and Australia. This means that they will discover and remain loyal to western brands, even when they return to China.

Their parents are paying for their studies and paying for the expensive tuition fees and equally expensive student accommodation. Their parents might also provide the funds to buy a car whilst they are studying. They often choose German cars, believing in the quality of western brands and the correlation between cost and quality, a belief which extends to apparel and fashion brands.

Because tuition, living expenses and even travel expenses are all paid for, this gives them a lot of disposable income to spend in. Being students, they also have plenty of time to go shopping.

Many have also visited Bicester Village, a popular retail outlet for wester brands, showing that these shoppers are familiar with these brands.

Changing Tastes

After the initial period of conspicuous spending, the Fuerdai were quickly replaced by the first wave of China’s Gen Z, also known as the Z-lennials to indicate their transition from the millenials. The transition was fast; the Fuerdai went from being aspirational role models to a pejorative term derided by a philosophical counterculture within one generation. Stylistically, the blatant materialism represented by western brands is being replaced by minimalist styles more in line with Japanese fashion. These Z-lennials are quickly turning away from conspicuous consumerism, leading to domestic retail giants like Urban Revivo, known for its minimalist fast fashion.

Western brands should take note of this transition, and also consider how to appeal to the Fuerdai who are aging out of younger brands into more mature brands.

Social Is Everything

The main source of brand discovery in China is social media. Much like their western counterparts, Chinese consumers rely heavily of influencers, also known as KOL’s for Key Opinion Leaders. The difference is that celebrity influencers in China are a bottom-up phenomenon, meaning that they became celebrities by becoming an influencer as opposed to a celebrity leveraging their influence. This gives them a more on-the-ground perspective.

In the UK, fashion influencers are also being built from the ground up, with increasing influence on brands and their decisions. As the age of influencers matures, in both China and the west, the influence of traditional media and their top-down approach will only become less relevant. Brands will need to make sure that they do not lose relevance completely by adopting strategies to collaborate with influencers.

In both China and the West, followers seek authenticity. Influencers in the west, unless they are celebrities who are clearly endorsing a product, have to make the trade between being sponsored or retaining that authenticity. In China, this is not an issue for KOL’s, who are held in a position somewhere between a traditional celebrity and an editor-in-chief, curating products for their followers. KOL’s are seen as experts, and their bottom-up rise to celebrity status means that sponsorship does not degrade their perceived authenticity.

All social media platforms are used by KOL’s and their following, with some KOL’s beginning to translate their influence to retail platforms. Chinese e-commerce companies that have taken advantage of this trend include Mogujie and Meilishuo. They have begun to blend social media with the retail experience to blend the line between social networks and e-commerce.

This new form of ‘social commerce’ is being made into an addictive experience to increase spending. When customers shop on WeChat, their decisions are more emotional and impulsive.

Choosing The Right Network

In China, the three main social media platforms are WeChat, Weibo and QQ.

WeChat and QQ are both owned by technology giant Tencent, part of the BAT grouping, alongside Baidu and Alibaba, of the country’s biggest and most profitable tech companies — the Chinese equivalent of the American group of GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon).

QQ was one of the original products launched by WeChat’s parent company, Tencent, back in 1999. It has since been overtaken by Tencent’s other product — WeChat — in popularity, but is still used by millions, and ranks third at the time of writing.

WeChat has no equal in the West; it is essentially a combination of Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. As it supports around ten million apps, however, it can also be considered a Operating System, much like iOS.

All of these platforms have their own social logins which e-commerce companies can use, and western brands should ensure that they included them in their localisation efforts.

In the West, the main social media platforms have become stratified, the most noticeable being the emerging division of the three top social media platforms into age groups.

Facebook is now popular with older generations, and as older people gravitate towards the platform, it is beginning to alienate other age groups looking for a social network that their parents are not using. As a result, Facebook is now aging relative to the other platforms. Snapchat is the preferred platform for teenagers and young millennials which all fall under the definition of Gen Z. Within that demographic, Snapchat dominates. Instagram, having copied some of Snapchat’s features with Instagram stories, is now firmly entrenched with millennials, or Gen Y. Instagram has now become a more mature version of Snapchat in this age group and serving as more traditional social network for those alienated by Facebook. All of this has meant that Facebook has been able to make up its lost market share both by expanding to new markets by serving as a ‘big tent’ platform for everyone else, which basically means anyone who isn’t a teenager or a millennial.

Some of this phenomenon is beginning to show with the main Chinese social networks, though to a lesser extent. Western brands are advised to choose the correct social login for their demographics, or include all three to be safe.

Death Of The Landing Page

In China, by the time the customer is on a website, they know the brand, they’ve heard others talk about it, seen others wear it and they have an idea what they are looking for. This means that the website is about providing the fastest route to purchase.

Unlike the west, the Awareness, Interest and Desire parts of the customer journey funnel can happen in a vacuum. Brands in China know this, so their websites are designed to serve customers much further down the funnel — at the point of Action. This is the reason most Chinese landing pages have a higher density of information, and place such a high emphasis on search, filters and links.

What appears to be another messy and overly dense landing page from the perspective of western design principles, serves its purpose and is dense by design. Optimisations that do not keep this in mind — creating what feels like unnecessary breathing space, excessive pagination or other decisions that slow down the purchase, or fail to fit in with Chinese e-commerce expectations, are not recommended.

Western brands are advised to move their brand-building content to social media and provide an e-commerce experience that Chinese consumers have become used to; optimising their website for the shortest route to purchase and emphasising peer validation by providing customer reviews along that journey.

Where’s The Proof?

Social logins are even more important than most western e-commerce websites because it allows users to leave reviews and help build social proof. Amazon as a retail platform is known for using social proof as a way to help with purchasing decisions. Other UK retailers can rely on branding and word-of-mouth to create awareness and advocacy but do not incorporate it well in the rest of the funnel. In Chinese retail platforms, social proof is used across the entire funnel from awareness through to advocacy and back again.

Examples of good uses of social proof along the customer journey include customer reviews and user generated photos on Product Pages, as well as peer-to-peer Q&A Sessions.

The iPhone Era

The release of the iPhone in 2008 kicked off the smartphone era but back then, mobile shopping had not yet taken off in the way it has in the past few years. This would soon change, however, as smartphone prices came down. As more people traded in their feature phones for smartphones, it facilitated the rise of digital payment systems on mobile. AliPay, which was launched in 2004 as China’s answer to PayPal to allow digital payments in the early days of e-commerce, would soon be joined by WeChat Pay in 2013. This kickstarted the era of mobile digital payments, just as Apple Pay on the iPhone had in the west. What started off as a social networking platform heralded a period of explosive growth in e-commerce in China.

Payments Go Mobile

Digital payments really began to take off with the emergence of domestic smartphone brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi that offered smartphone at an affordable price point for the Chinese consumer. By 2016, smartphone penetration had reached 59% (statista.com).

and digital payments stood at $5.5 trillion (seekingalpha.com). These staggering numbers represent a seismic shift in how people interact with their phones. It was no longer a tool for communication, but also one’s digital wallet. In fact, many people in China leave their homes without carrying any cash or cards.

China Leapfrogs The West

In China, transactions with digital payments are 50 times greater than the US. One fascinating reason for this disparity between China’s digital payments market and the west lies in the lack of existing banking infrastructure. Most Chinese consumers did not have a credit card before the advent of smartphones, leading to a phenomenon known as ‘technological leapfrogging’, describing the process of bypassing a legacy system, which is this case is a legacy of debit and credit cards

Today, the Chinese consumer is much more likely to use a digital payment service than a credit card: western brands should take note of this in their localisation efforts.

Digital Duopoly

China’s digital payments market today is basically a duopoly between AliPay and WeChat Pay.

AliPay has the benefits of the monopoly Alibaba has over e-commerce, and WeChat Pay has the benefits of Tencent’s monopoly in social media. As discussed earlier, the line between social media and e-commerce are not as well defined in China as it is currently in the west. Brand discovery and conversions can happen on the same platform, be it a social network or a retail platform. Because of this, neither sector and their respective monopolies can dominate the digital payment market. As a result, market share between the two payment systems really is evenly split, at least for now.

Both Alibaba and Tencent are software companies, and are not getting in on the act..

For example, in the West, PayPal and Apple dominates the digital payment market. The former did it by its early collaborations with e-commerce giants like eBay, the latter by selling hardware. PayPal is disadvantaged by the fact that it does not have a hardware platform to lock its users into its payment system, a fact that allows Apple to almost monopolise the mobile payment market. Apple’s payment system is far more popular than its closest competitor — Samsung Pay, and by leveraging its expertise in both hardware and software, has managed to create an ecosystem of apps that use it platform, and a payment system based on its platform.

Two of China’s biggest smartphone manufacturers — Huawei and Xiaomi — have followed Apple’s example by releasing their own proprietary mobile payment systems.

Huawei and Xiaomi are gradually developing its own version of the Alibaba/Tencent duopoly in the sort of combined hardware/software ecosystem that Apple pioneered. As more Chinese users buy their phones, their hardware dominance will inevitably lead them to taking market share in digital payments systems.

Their share of the market pales in comparison, however, and the duopoly of Alibaba and Tencent is expected to continue in the near future.

In the meantime, we advise western e-commerce platforms cover their bases by including both AliPay and WeChat Pay, with a view to including Huawei and Xiaomi Pay in the future.

Big Platform, Mini Programs

Although WeChat began life functioning much like Facebook, the chinese social media platform has begun transitioning into something of an operating system. WeChat offers an ecosystem of mini programs much like Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store, and offers a fantastic platform for companies. There are mini programs for various functions and retail platforms are increasingly developing their own mini programs to act as a shop front separate from their desktop and mobile offerings.

UK companies are starting to develop mini programs to ensure they have a presence, with Burberry being one of the first, and Farfetch has just recently launched a mini program themselves.

Burberry’s WeChat Mini Program

Designing For China

As the e-commerce revolution continues in China, some of the developments happening there will begin to make their way to the UK. For now, any designer that is looking to localise their digital products for the Chinese market should keep abreast of these following points.

Make it Seamless

A western consumer journey, whilst efficient and getting more so, still feels more disjointed when compared to a customer journey in China, involving multiple touchpoints that constantly takes the user to different sites. The biggest Chinese e-commerce platforms bring together social media elements such as reviews, peer Q&A sessions and livestreaming under one roof so the user never has to leave the platform.

Make It Fast

“…convenience is really the glue that will make online shopping a behaviour and a habit that sticks.”

- Angela Wang

As a point of comparison, below is the checkout process of a cutting edge UK e-commerce platform compared to a typical Chinese e-commerce platform. These are both fast checkout journeys, but the Chinese one is a few steps faster. A large number of Chinese consumers will have a social media account. For those who don’t, QR codes are used to enable quick account creation and/or login. Users can then confirm the purchase via the associated social media account.

Make It Social

Social proof is incredibly important and should be sprinkled along the user journey.

Make It Digital

Remember that the Chinese consumer does not use bank cards for e-commerce. Most Chinese consumers have a digital payment account like AliPay and WeChat Pay which keeps their bank details.

Partnering Up

UK companies already incorporate a large number of social logins that helps them when they localise for China where they have to work with a large number of social networks. We are also starting to see collaborations between UK fashion companies and Chinese e-commerce platforms. The latest of these collaborations involve Farfetch and JD.com. This gives the Chinese consumer access to Farfetch’s partnership whilst giving Farfetch a popular e-commerce platform that has an incredibly refined mobile experience. With this partnership, Farfetch can learn about how to localise their digital products.

Future Trends

The business models and payment methods developed in China are now expanding beyond its birthplace. We will see further blurring of the lines between social media and e-commerce in China, with some of these developments being adopted by western social networks and retail platforms.

Chinese consumers are so used to paying for things with a mobile phone that they will expect this to be the norm wherever they travel. Since their introduction in 2004 and 2013 respectively, the digital payment giants of Alibaba and Tencent can now be seen in the UK. In London, WeChat Pay has now been introduced to tourist hotspots such as Camden market, and have been seen popping in other parts of the city frequented by Chinese students, leading to faster payments everywhere. It is clear that China’s mobile shopping revolution is no longer just a Chinese phenomenon.

Netflix didn’t always do what it does now. As of writing, Netflix is the world’s largest entertainment platform, excluding user generated content platforms like YouTube. Without revealing my age, I remember when Netflix mailed DVDs through one’s letterbox — yes, that means I am old enough to remember DVDs, and mail, and letterboxes (hardly any of my Amazon packages can fit through one these days). Netflix is a constant reminder that one can change completely, ride out the ridicule of the haters and emerge the other side victorious, and so successful that you can buy out your competitors, as well as enjoying the schadenfreude of watching your old competitors go out of business. In the startup world, it is a concept called ‘pivoting’, and it mostly applies to startups because much like Blockbuster, a lot of big companies are like oil tankers, taking forever to change direction. Netflix is the exception that proves the rule, but it provides lessons that we should all take to heart and attempt to apply to our own lives.

It teaches us to take a risk on the future. Famously, when Netflix first launched its streaming service, internet connections were so poor that the idea of streaming TV seemed insane. These were the days of dial up internet, when you had to make a choice between a good internet connection and a functioning phone line. Broadband was available, but much like colour televisions, it hadn’t become mainstream enough to build a business around online streaming yet. To this day, good internet connection is not exactly universal, but it is very common. That was the risk Reed Hastings and his team had to take, to move in the direction of online streaming before the technology was even available. Today, adopting new technological infrastructure had become so common that there is a general backlash against tech companies overpromising and under-delivering. It’s the inevitable over-correction in light of the success of all these companies that succeeded by making a bet on future infrastructure, like homes and airports that are built before there are even roads and people to justify the investment.

5G has been the core of much overpromising, with a long list of companies making the bet but the timing not being quite right. Tech journalists mock these companies and the smartphones that are providing a limited connection to the future. In a way, we could read the bet that these companies are making as the same one that Netflix made, which eventually proved the doubters wrong. It could be that 5G is just not that useful to everyone — after all, some people are still looking for reliable 4G. The direction does trend towards 5G becoming the infrastructure of the future, and companies would be smart to start pivoting. More importantly, companies need to be able to hold their nerve, because the naysayers are right up until the moment they’re not, and when they are proven wrong, it’s not like they could be reprimanded for their doubt, so there’s actually very little satisfaction for them to be proven wrong.. Instead, all the satisfaction of betting on the future and changing one’s direction is in being successful, rather than being right.

Life is the same, make the change and take the risk and you’re going to get your fair share of backlash, but as long things are trending in your favour, the bet will pay off as some point and you will never look back — others certainly won’t. History is written by the victors, after all. No one thinks of Netflix as a video rental company, as it once was, and those who remember Blockbuster will remember it’s failure with a heavy does of rose-tinted nostalgia, if it is remembered at all, but in the end, only the operating system of our television sets remain, and that is Netflix: the streaming platform, the largest entertainment company in the world, and the only thing keeping us sane during this lockdown.

There is this trend for media people and adults in general to describe young people’s digital landscape in dystopian terms. They talk about how dumb young people just want to be influencers now. They talk about the detriment to their mental health, of growing up in a social media landscape that forces them to be constantly exposed to the public, which forces them to prevent a front, and to create content to broadcast and that’s ignoring the more scandalous content that is often broadcast privately.

I could make a pretty solid argument that the choices teenagers make now with social media will stand them in good stead for the future. As I myself try and struggle to build and maintain a social media profile, I realise, as I should have known, that it is very difficult. The “youths’ are able to do this because they were born in it, or to paraphrase Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, people of my generation merely adopted social media, young people were born in it, moulded by it. So I struggle, but better late than never, I have begun what is an arduous journey to develop a personal brand, because if there is a truism that I have learnt, it’s this — if you don’t exist online, you don’t exist.

The other thing that I had to learn the hard way is the importance of personal branding, and building that brand, whatever it may be. In life, you want to be someone that people have heard of, someone people seek out, and much like earned media for companies, you want inbound traffic to your profile, your services. In short, you need people to approach you because the converse is so, so expensive. At a certain point, it becomes very expensive for all of us to spend our increasingly valuable time to seek people out, to find clients, to reach potential customers for our message and our services.

We all need to build a personal brand because you want people to seek you out, not the other way round, and this is the argument I am making for today’s youths. What is wrong with young people just wanting to be influencers? Influence is just another for of personal brand and gaining followers is just another form of brand building. In brand building, it is really important to have a head start in this, and the “youths’ of today have the benefit of that head start.

A generation before, millennials and people broadly of my generation dreamed of being professional footballers or professional sports people in general, and what’s wrong with that? Professional footballers continue to be paid more and more so financially, at least giving yourself a change to reach their level is worth a shot, and there is nothing wrong with becoming fit and healthy in pursuit of that dream. Being an influencer is, if anything, easier than being a professional footballer, there are more opportunities available, and the personal brand that is built in pursuit of being an influencer is invaluable.

There are many, many careers where the added exposure and a large following would be incredibly useful and I, for one, would not rule out hiring someone just because of the large following. There is a timelessness to personal brand building — it has always been useful, and it probably won’t be any less useful in the future. I only wish that I knew this earlier. So to those who say that the “youths” of today are growing up in a technological dystopia where they just want to be influencers I present my argument that influence is just another form of personal branding, and that will never not be useful.

I haven’t been on a cruise for over a decade, because, you know, I’m not a retiree. Not that cruises are just for old people, there is actually a compelling case for why cruises should appeal to everyone, including young people. It’s like a much more comfortable version of a sleeper train, or the glamping version of backpacking.

Why carry everything on your back when you can just leave everything in your travelling hostel? Why go interrailing through landlocked Europe when you can just go to the nicest port cities around the Mediterranean? It makes even more sense if you’re in America, and you’ve got the ability to stay on a floating hotel whilst travelling around the Caribbean.

So it should come as no surprise that a company like Carnival Cruise will be able to make a case to young people in the long term, and should be able to recover in a post corona world. Yes, at the moment it’s a terrible idea to go on a floating hotel, with narrow corridors and spaces intended to be packed with diners and audience members. but hey, how’s that different to buildings on land?

I know people who works on cruises and it’s a close knit crew, so sure, having so many people working in close proximity is not a good idea, but people staying in their rooms? I mean, there are lots of balconies, after all. So Carnival stock will likely go back up because people will take cruises again. A lot of reputational damage has been done to the idea of the cruise, but I would make an argument that if airlines could recover, and they will recover, then so will cruises.

People will fly again, less people, sure, but it will survive. People will want to travel again, less so, but they will do it. Make sure everyone’s health is monitored whilst on a cruise, make sure only healthy people can get on, but you can’t fly without going through an airport, and security and health checks is not exactly perfect there either.

This is an opportunity for us all to ponder when industries, despite the conventional wisdom, will actually recover, and I can tell you that working in architecture, I worry a lot more about the construction industry as a whole than I do about the travel industry.

Human beings are endlessly adaptable, and we are able to learn new behaviours and new tools on a continuous basis long into old age. That is why, in this new world of working from home and staying home, we have all learned how to do Zoom meetings. Everyone from workers, family members and podcasts are using Zoom meetings to do what they used to do in person. The question I have, though, is how did this happen? In the past year, I have used about 10 different video conferencing applications. We’re talking Google Hangouts, Slack, Skype, WebEx, GoToMeetings, House Party and several others. This has led me to wonder how this happened, how did we go from a duopoly of Skype and maybe one other video conferencing tool to this fragmented, balkanised, world of video conferencing. There are so many options, and it feels like every month, I’m being asked to learn a new one. Now I pride myself on being an autodidact that enjoys learning new tools, but when even I forget where the screen share button is in the latest video conferencing tool that I have been sent a link for, it shows that there is a limit to learned behaviours. We know how the tool works, but the buttons are all in a slightly different place. The user experience for all these tools are similar, but just different enough to annoy us when we are sent that link to yet another new tool. This is a good reminder that UX designers are really important in the development of a product. An app or a website should be designed in such a way that people can just pick it up because that’s how intuitive it is. So I applaud the UX designers behind Zoom for making it as intuitive as it is, to the point where people of all ages, from school kids to their grannies, are able to use it for everything from classes to weddings; thanks to Zoom and its excellent UX, we are all able to do all these things and more, but please, please, can we just decide on one or two video conferencing tools, and stick with it? If we all know how to use Zoom meetings now, let’s just stick with it.

Quibi has finally arrived! I know it’s funny, but maybe it’s genius, maybe it’s not; maybe, it dies a death without anyone taking notice of it, but we have now. I first heard about Quibi via The Verge, and for those of you who don’t know anything about it, Quibi is meant to stand for “Quick Bites”. I know, that’s a bad start, but stay with me. These “Quick Bites” is meant to be consumed on your commute to work. I know what you’re thinking — how long does it take to walk from one’s bedroom to the living room? This was designed for a time before the coronavirus and our quarantine life, when you know, we went t these places called ‘offices’, a separate building that workers would go to just to be on their laptops.

Anyway, Quibi is a streaming platform for short form video content that lasts for about 10 minutes each, thus creating a headache for content creators who are used to creating what some would say is more traditional long form content that has enough breathing room for — let’s say — a story, or well-drawn characters, or a beginning, middle and end. That’s unfair, I know, short films exists and they are absolutely valid forms of content that tells a story in under 10 minutes. It would perhaps, have made more sense to have Quibi function as a platform for short film makers like myself, in which case this new short form video streaming platform would be providing a valuable service to all the under-appreciated short film makers out there, and I know so many myself. But then again, short films, even in this day and age, is not seen as commercially viable content and so what we’re actually going to get with Quibi are well produced YouTube and TikTok videos. Hurray!

I’m an avid consumer of YouTube content and there are so many talented YouTubers from Marques Brownlee to MrMobile (Michael Fisher) but I have never touched any of the content from the YouTube Original section, because I consume media on YouTube not just because of the production values but for the niche content that I’m personally interested in. YouTube is able to do this because it serves up User Generated Content or UGC. How a platform like Quibi intends to serve content tailored to individual users when all of its content is produced like a normal production with traditional talent and crews, I have no idea.

Apparently all content on Quibi will be filmed in such a way that it works on your phone in both portrait and landscape formats, which again, is a headache for traditional productions but does at least, sound kind of innovative. Maybe we go back to traditional squareish formats like 4:3, so that scenes are framed in such a way it works for portrait, landscape and Instagram, that might be winner. For now, however, we get to enjoy quality content like Chrissy’s Court starring former model Chrissy Teigen in a judge show parody which does actually, sound like it could be quite good, thanks mainly to the talent involved and not because the idea is objectively good on paper.

Then, there is the question of whether it is a good idea to release Quibi when everyone is in quarantine, and everyone has all the time in the world to consume traditional long form content, but that may prove to be the ingenious move of all. When everyone is stuck at home consuming content, suddenly content is a blue ocean where every format has a place. When we are time rich and have no need to choose between different types of content, we are free to try everything — it’s time for us YouTubers and short film makers to try shooting vertical video.

It feels like summer already. Right now, in April, the UK is getting the same amount of sunlight as the summer months, when the sky is bright until the late hours of the evening, and a blue blanket lights the city streets until 10pm. In Hollywood, they call it the magic hour, and in this one and only aspect, London can feel like Los Angeles. Magic hour, or blue hour reminds us what we missed in the winter months, the ability to actually experience sunlight. As many of us have experienced, most office jobs require us to leave the house at a certain time and leave the office at a certain time. In winter, this just so happens to coincide with the amount of sunlight we get. It means that many of us are in the unfortunate situation of going to work in the dark and leaving work in the dark, as the hours of sunlight shrink to 8.30am-4.30pm. It is a horrible feeling that is only tolerable because we have a weekend that allows us to experience sunlight during office hours at least twice a week. In the gran scheme of things, this is a pathetic amount of time, and it is quite sad to realise just how much of our time is spent inside a building, and how half of our lives are spent going to and from our homes in the dark. As the coronavirus shuts down offices, it is a good reminder that we rarely get to feel the sunshine during office hours, and a reminder of the toll on our bodies to spend so much of our lives commuting to and from work in the dark.

There are many times in life when life turns down your best laid plans, your best intentions, your best wishes. The coronavirus has presented one of those times, and it forces us all to examine those plans. Do we recover by being the same person we were before, or do we emerge a different person. Do we change our plans? None of my plans have played out as I intended and the crisis threatens to erode them completely, but what if that’s the point? When all the doors you wanted have been slammed in your place, what doors are left opened? For years, I have wanted to make a website to store my life’s work and to create and to write and I did none of it. I always thought that it needed to be polished, to be in the right format, but when TV shows and personalities like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Late Night with Seth Meyers are reduced to looking like amateur YouTubers, I realised that the perfectionist in me had stopped me all these years. This website, the work on here and these words represent my best laid plans being dashed, and in its wake, I actually got to doing what I wanted.

Now is the time to become a better cook. I’ve cooked more than I have at any other time in my life. It’s only now that I realise how often I eat out. The first thing I’m trying to do is perfect my egg fried rice, which I’ve avoided cooking my whole life. I think fried rice is a bit like the chinese version of fried chicken, it’s saddled with racial connotations that belies its simplicity as a dish. For an asian person, you really don’t want to be seen enjoying it as it feels a bit like living up to a stereotype; I’ve recently learned from an episode of David Chang’s ‘Ugly Delicious’ that it’s the same case with fried chicken to black people. In quarantine, however, I don’t really care — it’s really easy to cook.

User Experience (UX) is a modern-day battle fought by brands to help the user win.

While the battle might involve many strategists, the final judgment is passed only by the end-user.

This makes the quality and usability of your product two of the most important deciding factors that make the user choose you over your competitors.

Well, that’s just one side of the coin. Flip it and you will know how UX also impacts your organization!

To elevate and give the right shape to any business organization, the employees have to make sure the processes, mindset, and ambition work together to build a great product.

How UX-Led Companies Design their Products?

Did you know that user experience design-driven companies have been outperforming the S&P 500 by 228% since the last ten years? Well, businesses that are investing heavily on UX are leveraging the market advantage and elevating their brand significantly.

• Go Further than Just Aesthetics

A beautiful sports car is useless if it doesn’t have the engine to pump up your adrenaline. A UX-design led company does not just focus on the looks but also on whether users are getting the desired satisfaction and enjoyment during every customer-product interaction. If you have to go through the manual to start driving a car, the design must be flawed.

• Product is Just a Medium to Sell Experiences

UX-Led companies press on providing more and more value to the customer. A company has truly imbibed a UX-first philosophy when its customers start valuing the experience more than the product itself. People buying from brands like Apple and BMW don’t just pay for the product, they pay for the experience; they pay for the identity; they pay for experiencing the exclusive.

• UX Design Culture

Ever wondered how big brands like Apple, Nike, Audi, Lamborghini, and IBM design their products and experiences inch-perfect? Well, they do it by creating the whole company on design i.e. creating a UX Design Culture. For example, every Apple employee is responsible to make every product or service designed at Apple user-friendly.

• Understanding the Customer

All these companies are hypersensitive when it comes to providing a positive user experience. Therefore, they invest heavily in understanding customer culture and user behavior. This helps them significantly in the area of user-experience. It’s important as the UX designers in the company will be able to make informed decisions not just at the strategy phase, but also at various intermediate phases of designing a product.

What are the Basic Steps to create a Good UX Design?

The goal of UX design is simple. It is to help users do what they want to do, whenever they want to do. You should know how the user feels about your product. When you keep the customer behavior and emotions on a pedestal, you can create a strong UX that make your potential customer stick around, engage, and convert.

• Take Action

Taking action requires to you think like your potential customers. The UX designers should ask what are the actions would a potential customer like to take when it lands on the website or have a product you are designing. Getting all these insights and rearranging them in a workflow is how you get started with a good UX design.

• Get Emotional

Your customer is in the spotlight here. Every action you take must map to his feelings and emotions. So, leverage different product characteristics like shapes, colors, navigation, content, sound, feel to evoke the desired feelings. A lot of this will be dependent on your brand’s identity and customer preferences.

• Start Sketching

Now, it’s time to put pen to the paper and ideate. Use the workflow to figure out each challenge and create solutions that treat your customers well. Brainstorming with a dedicated team of UX designers will help your brand include everything that’s required to produce an all-around product.

• Test Early

So, now you have a product designed and ready to go. But, hold on! Answer this — Have you really created a good UX? What if there are further revisions required before the product hits the shelves? That’s exactly where a prelaunch comes into play. Use the opportunity to prelaunch your product using a well-designed A/B Test. Figure out if the customers are able to reach their goals.

As per Userzoom, some of the major issues users have with online shopping apps and websites are –

What it takes to create a Memorable Brand?

Standing out from the crowd comes with its own set of risks. But, to be the lone wolf, you will have to risk it all and let go of the ordinary. Creating a memorable brand will require you to think differently and act differently. You will have to take every shot that can help your brand get closer to your audience.

• Start with a Sense of Humor

You want your customers to relate to your brand. So, don’t be afraid to have fun with your brand. Not just the brand, have fun with your followers as well. Go ahead and share interesting stuff about your brand and even push the envelope sometimes. As a brand, you don’t just want to be a company that makes products. You want to be a brand that is alive!

• Use a Relatable Language and Tone

There’s a reason why we preach the 80–20 Rule when it comes to branding and creating content. When you create a majority of the content that’s entertaining and engaging, your reach in the market will improve significantly. Believe us, your customers run away from age-old jargons and industry-specific language. Your customers are your brands best friends. Treat them that way.

• Blend In-Store Experience with Online One

Your online branding strategy and offline or in-store branding strategy should complement each other. In other words, it is important to install an in-store experience that mirrors your brands online (website, social media, etc.) experience. If you provide your customers with similar user experience at both the business fronts, your brand will surface in the minds of your potential customers as a solid entity.

• Make it Personal

Personalizing every interaction your customers have with your brand is important to make shopping more convenient and make the processes involved dehumanizing. Interact with your customers on every online front they are found. If they can find you on all the important venues, it will be easy for you to be more personal and transparent with them. The customers will begin to trust your brand more easily since they’ll have an idea of the amount of efforts you are putting behind reaching out to them.

• Own All Your Mistakes

Yes, don’t run away from the mistakes you have committed. Own them and be proud of them. Why? It’s because you are trying hard to create one of the best user experiences your market has ever seen. And that will involve challenges that you’ll fail. If you are making mistakes in the process of figuring out how to provide the maximum value to customers, so be it.

What are the Common Misconceptions of UX Design?

• Personalization Knows No Boundaries

Ask anyone in the market and they’ll tell you how important personalization is. Delivering a unique experience is a top priority of most modern-day businesses. But, in the process brands usually forget about the users. Personalization is important, but only to some extent. A user doesn’t want to answer tons of questions (a process of personalization) before he can start using the product. Personalize, but keep simplicity on a pedestal.

• Customers Never Change

Oh, this is a classic one! There are people in the market you pontificate and make judgements by looking at the technology and not looking at the customer. Let us set it once and for all — ‘Customer Behavior Evolve Incessantly’. You just cannot create a great UX design and sit. Users are not predictable and that should very much keep your team on the edge. We highly recommend regular user testing to get a better understanding of your potential customer’s needs and expectations.

• UX Design is Just About Users

Your potential user is an undeniable dimension when designing a product. But, as we mentioned in the beginning, the other most important dimension is your brand itself. Your product’s UX design is useless if it doesn’t bring in the profits. Another important dimension is technology as it decides the boundary of the playground you can test and play your product in.

• Only Experience Matters

Assuming that your product has the exceptional ‘wow factor’ and superb UX design, it is important to figure out what you are going to do with all the positive feedback? With any product, the end goal should never be a ‘good experience’. The end goal should be directing the customer to the conversion point, which by the way, is a consequence of a good UX design. To put in simple words, it is important for your UX designer to attract customers and keep them engaged.

Over to You

UX is not just a trendy term businesses like to use; it is something that leads to a deeper learning of potential customers.

UX is not just a trendy term businesses like to use; it is something that leads to a deeper learning of potential customers.

A good product can only be produced by understanding how a customer can be benefitted at all fronts. That’s where a brilliant user experience works its magic!

That’s how UX design and product design work hand in hand to elevate the brand.

There you have it. We hope this piece of content brought great value to you and your business. Since you are here, don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter as we bring all the latest updates from the world of branding and design.

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