5 Reasons Why Data Management Is Essential for User Experience

Delivering an excellent user experience is essential to attracting and retaining customers. And although data management may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about optimizing user experience, maybe it should be.

User experience — or just UX, as really trendy folks put it — has become something of a buzzword at the intersection of IT and business.

That has happened with good reason. In a world where a quarter of mobile users abandon an app after just one use, and where the growth in value of design-focused companies has far outpaced the stock market in recent years, the importance of user experience for driving business value is clear. (On the negative side of things, keep in mind, too, that social media and comment systems make it very easy for a user who has a bad experience to trumpet his or her problems far and wide.)

When you think about how to deliver a positive user experience, things like user-focused software design and rigorous application testing probably first come to mind.

However, the way you manage and deliver data is crucial to providing a positive user experience, too. Consider the following points:

Virtually all applications rely on data to deliver a meaningful user experience. And the best-designed application deployed on the fastest host infrastructure will still frustrate users if the data that it needs to operate is difficult to access because of data availability or integration problems. It doesn’t matter how well designed your user interface is if the data that users want to see through the interface takes too long to load or is difficult to interpret. Data helps you understand what users want Assessing user expectations through anecdotal information, such as online comments, can be one way to understand user desires. But a data-driven approach is another, arguably more effective strategy.