Salesforce Lightning For Better User Experience — AppShark

Any time we visit a website, use an application, electronic device, or any interactive interface what lasts behind as a positive impression is its ease of usability. Today user experience or UX has emerged to be a key differentiator in a seller-dominated market space. At its core, UX is about considering the needs of the people who will be using the product designed with an average user’s intuitions at the center of the design.

What can be a better example than Google- which has been prioritizing fast-loading across devices and efficiency. Google knows if you are a new or returning user even if you aren’t logged in, and hence does not bother asking if you are new/returning or if you want to register/continue as a guest. The entire process is easy and yet tactfully secure. In user experience-centric design, the user is a core focus of the project to create a product that is purposeful and, ultimately, wowing users with great experiences that keep them coming back.

After all -”Good customer experience depends on a clear and engaging user experience. Good UX also boosts employee productivity, empowering them to more efficiently meet organizational goals”. — Forrester

Also Read: What does Salesforce Lightning low coding feature mean for your business?

Salesforce and User Experience Design

Salesforce is now one of the largest CRM platforms available which is very flexible, customizable, and combined with a pretty good out-of-the-box design system and components. The Salesforce ecosystem is so rich that the complete business can run on it — whether it is a Fortune 500 company and or a small business. Salesforce interface offers the chance for the user to understand the value of the system and how it can positively impact their day-to-day tasks. A poorly built user interface can easily increase rates of abandonment and brings down the Salesforce user adoption within the business.

This said an interface designed with users in mind makes them feel like the technology is working for them rather than the other way around. A well thought UX design empowers users with all the information they need in the right place and at the right time.

Salesforce is completely extensible and constantly evolving and provides the scope to innovate for its users. This has given way to Enterprise UX becoming a phenomenon with Salesforce at the center. The “CRM” ( ) part of Salesforce was solely introduced to serve and enhance agility and intuitive features offered by the platform. Emotions can be impactful and a thoughtful UX design can tap into that power. Ultimately, a positive and effective Salesforce user experience can:

• Increase Salesforce user adoption rates
• Transform business operations
• Maximize Salesforce return on investment (ROI)
• Lead to better outcomes for business-operations.

Salesforce Lightning — Redefining User experiences (UX)

Salesforce created an intuitive and smart-thinking platform that accelerated the efficiency of sales teams with ease thus helping them close more deals. The updated look and feel of Salesforce Lightning packs in UI features such as easier-to-read text, icons, and graphics that provide a better and clearer overall business snapshot. The application also provides updated dashboards gives improved visibility into the metrics that matter most to specific business teams while being able to grasp the big picture for all teams and customers. Note the following developments-

Salesforce transitioned to the Lightning platform over 5 years ago with companies slowly migrating from Classic to Lightning Experience (LEX)

1. According to Salesforce, LEX is specially designed for a superior, mobile, laptop, and desktop experience.
2. It is a completely new CRM experience with a growing adoption rate and value-add for every end-user.
3. The initial focus in designing LEX was to improve the core sales features salespeople used every day.
4. Lightning was built as an application that enhanced the regular core sales features drives new levels of efficiency, versus just a database for tracking contact information.

On the Lightning Platform, the UX is greatly improved by drag-and-drop functionality, and the ability to make Salesforce implementations more secure with increased security settings. Lightning is an AI tool, meaning it intelligently learns habits and patterns in the existing Org and makes smart recommendations for the business as the tool gets used. It facilitates faster access for sales-users to Contacts, Quotes, and Proposals and reduces clicks and out-of-system work, making sales-users more efficient. Field workers obtain a lot more detailed insight into new or improved features such as knowledge articles, intuitive dashboards, case histories, and custom profiles.

The Salesforce Lightning platform Experience for the end-user includes-

1. A completely redefined home page experience
2. A Kanban view for opportunity or a visual summary of all the opportunities for a particular sales path.
3. Enhanced workspaces, new dashboards, improved search, and dynamic tab navigation.
4. It looks and feels better than Classic with the ability to personalize the Salesforce environment to even accommodate the brand logo and colors.
5. Customized pages allow the user to drag and drop different components onto the page allowing every page to look different based upon the record type or app one can find most relevant to the business.
6. Everything on the Lightning platform from creating records to editing records is faster. For instance, when you are on a record for a lead and you want to call the prospect, Lightning allows you to call directly from the lead page with just a click of a button. If the phone goes unanswered, a pre-recorded voice mails or a message can be triggered, and the agent can move on.
7. Further a new feature, Salesforce’s Quick Actions, allow users to update records faster with the ability to log a call, send an email, or create a task from any page within Lightning.

With the Lightening framework (a structure for building re-usable components and custom apps)-

1. The user has the flexibility to support out-of-the-box Lightning features. Lightning components and required libraries help build custom components.
2. It also executes all the instructions a component exerts within an app acting as a bridge between client-side code and server-side codes
3. It stands at the core of the Lightning platform and translates every user interaction on the screen into action.
4. Component developers can explore its properties to allow the same component to be configured differently in different locations of the app, further enhancing component reusability.

With “mobile-first” becoming a driving philosophy behind deployments, there is a growing demand for responsive user experiences and single-page applications. The tools and technologies provided by Lightning offer a new and modern user experience for both desktop and mobile applications.

Customers today demand more a convenient process throughout the entire engagement lifecycle with a given business. With exponential growth and competition across industries, it is but inevitable for organizations to live up to such expectations and offer customers the ultimate experience. An organization’s customer relationship management (CRM) software needs to necessarily provide a richer, faster, and more efficient user experience, and help bring new, innovative applications to the market for a greater competitive advantage.

Why Appshark?

With over 500 projects completed and a 97% client satisfaction rate, our team of Salesforce certified professionals focuses on business deadlines, budget, and the long-term goals of the business. With a global team of professionals available across time-zones access to top talent at reasonable prices is effortless. We are both a Gold Consulting Partner and a Product Development Partner- a powerful combination that defines our expertise and experience with Salesforce.

Reach out to us at sales@appshark.com or fill in your details and we would get in touch with you soon.

Originally published at https://www.appshark.com on March 4, 2021.