UX design means taking your users needs into account at every stage of your product lifecycle. From usability of your websites home page, to adding a product to your cart and receiving the email invoice. UX is the difference between a good & bad website.

I find this User Experience Honeycomb developed by Peter Morville to be a useful way to help clients understand why they must move beyond usability.

Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need
Usable: Site must be easy to use
Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation
Findable: Content needs to be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite
Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities
Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them

This is a great tool for advancing the conversation beyond usability by helping people understand the need to define priorities. It also supports a modular approach to web design. Let’s say you want to improve your site but lack the budget, time, or stomach for a complete overhaul. Utilizing the Experience Honey Comb for a partial site redesign will define user needs and requirements.

So why not try a targeted redesign, perhaps starting with evaluating and enhancing the credibility of your web site? Or simply adding accessible improvements? These would be an agile approach. Redesigning a site in short steps or stages allows for a cost effective, scaled back redesign. In the end, you quickly get an immensely improved site that users want to visit and interact with.

Learn more about areas related to building the user experience.