What informs users’ decisions to use one device over another? It could be any number of factors: generational appetites for different screen sizes, the type of activity being performed (e.g., browsing, ordering food, buying plane tickets), or simple physical proximity. No matter which device they use, consumers deserve easy digital navigation. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing or who they are—they should be able to participate in our digital world in the way that works best for them.

by Claire Fang

But there’s another reason why consumers may have strong preferences about which device they use for a given activity; one that should be of great importance to any leader involved in delivering digital experiences. Frustration.

Responsive UX: The white whale of digital

The truth is, we still haven’t gotten responsive UX right. If we had, digital experiences across desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones would be of the same caliber. But they’re not. For instance, compared to desktop, mobile UX is still associated with much higher rates of rage clicks, bounces, error clicks, and dead clicks. Users frequently jump from one device to another simply because it works better for a given purpose.

This problem isn’t isolated. It’s not like a handful of companies are simply bad at building mobile sites and apps; the discrepancy across devices is a systemic one.

Much of this UX discrepancy has to do with engineering. In many ways, we’re reinventing the wheel when it comes to mobile UX. With web browsers, we’ve been able to spend the last 30+ years developing standards and universal protocols like JavaScript and HTML. These standards make it easy for engineers to track down shortcomings in UX and functionality, which, in turn, translates to an overall smooth and error-free experience.

This isn’t a challenge that can be solved by copy and paste. Simply transposing the web experience onto mobile doesn’t lend itself to responsiveness, and it doesn’t do anything to help teams identify bugs and turn them into learning opportunities.

At this point, smartphones are no longer new technology, but engineering teams are still working out the kinks in UX, establishing new standards to set the bar for performance. True responsiveness will take time, persistence, and a keen understanding of how digital users feel when navigating different devices.

There’s no place like phone.

It’s not just that people have different preferences about which devices they use and when—they have different standards, too. Have you ever noticed that you behave differently inside your own home versus, say, a nice restaurant? 

In much the same way, people act differently when they use different devices—and our smartphones have come to feel like home. We carry them in our hands, in our pockets, nearly everywhere we go. Often, they’re the last thing we see before falling asleep and the first thing we see when we wake up. Our phones are ours to access at any time—or, if you’re like the average American, at least 205 times per day.

Since we’re “at home” on our phones, we’re our truest selves when we use them. We don’t hold back from expressing our frustration when the device, the app, or the overall UX doesn’t work as expected. We rage-tap. We rage-close apps. We probably yell at Siri, Bixby, and Alexa, incredulous at their inability to do anything right ever (sorry, Siri, Bixby, and Alexa).

With other devices like desktops, though, it’s different. We don’t feel the same intimacy we do with our smartphones. We feel more like visitors, and we behave differently. Compared to mobile, web UX is associated with fewer rage clicks, lower bounce rates, and longer session durations, suggesting that web users have more patience. On some level, perhaps we perceive other devices as “legacy” tech and, as such, we’ve come to expect some degree of inefficiency.

Digital users simply have higher expectations when it comes to mobile – mobile users bounce more and have shorter sessions compared to desktop. They expect things to work correctly the first time, and they will react accordingly if something goes wrong. Technology teams must embrace this truth as they work to optimize UX across devices.

You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Understanding users’ behavior is key to building responsive UX. After all, the whole point of UX is helping users achieve their goals while meeting their expectations. But doing so is only half the battle.

To iterate toward better, tech teams must also be able to meaningfully evaluate their current UX across devices. This means capturing real-time behavioral data like clicks, taps, scroll depth, and more, then aggregating and analyzing it to identify common problem areas in your UX. Where do users get stuck? At what point do they abandon their shopping carts? Which areas of the app or site tend to break most often?

If this sounds complex, that’s because it is. But it doesn’t need to be overwhelming. The right technology can integrate with your existing stack, capture all behavioral data in real time, structure it, and contextualize it so tech teams gain a crystal-clear understanding of their next steps. Armed with a quantitative analysis of UX across devices, you can begin to understand how your digital responsiveness can improve.

From there, it’s about putting it all together: applying data analytics to UX shortcomings in a way that meets users’ device-specific expectations. That’s the way toward smoother navigation, true responsiveness, and superior digital experiences.

Claire Fang is Chief Product & Technology Officer at Fullstory, a leader in Digital Experience Analytics.

_{Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash}