When a digital product fails to meet expectations, its owner starts desperately looking for an explanation. The site looks good, all the functions are there — so where are the active users? The high conversion rates? What went wrong?

Before shelling out on expensive testing, consider your website or app through the lens of the 7 Mores. This efficient method is truly magical because it reveals the hidden reasons.

What is “more”? Imagine a group of listless dinner guests pushing their food around on their plates. What’s wrong? Should the food be more delicious? The host more welcoming? The guests more famished? The atmosphere more relaxed?

Sometimes things don’t work simply because there aren’t enough of them.

The guests are not eating because the food is undersalted. The plant is not growing because there’s not enough sunlight. The battery doesn’t work because it needs charging.

By testing your digital product with the 7 Mores, you will immediately see what it’s lacking.

1. More attention

This is about the users’ attention. Is it flowing in the right direction? Does it dissipate on the way to the CTA?

Attention is lost whenever the user:

• encounters an ad;
• is distracted by insignificant design elements;
• switches to premature or intrusive popups;
• gets tired of long texts and forms that need to be filled out;
• is overwhelmed by garish and varied content;
• fails to find visual guides (monotonous design).

Sometimes eliminating just one problem is enough to radically improve user experience of the website and make it much easier for the users to achieve their goals.

User attention can be assessed via heatmaps and user surveys.

2. More value

Make sure your product looks valuable and necessary to the user, not just to yourself. Also make sure it showcases your company in the best possible light. Trust in your company will automatically apply to your product and add more value to it.

More value means that:

• your offer is presented in an impressive, aesthetic, and attractive way;
• users can immediately see the product’s advantages;
• users can easily grasp how to use the product (simple instructions, clear examples);
• the company and the product inspire confidence (social media reviews, photos, videos, your partners, certificates and other documents if applicable). An important way to build confidence is to have Contact Us and About Us sections. Other confidence-building methods include showing the company’s location, displaying photos of employees, offices, and work process;
• there are no hidden delivery costs or other charges; payment options are simple and transparent.

Creating value is a process, not just a onetime job. The market is constantly in motion, the users and their demands change all the time. Make sure your company and product are on top of the game, your offer is relevant, and your design is not outdated.

3. More motivation

Users leave when they are not motivated to stay and perform the required action, which is a serious omission on part of the project’s creators. Attractive triggers are not enough. A trigger is just a call to action. Only real motivation can make the user want to actually perform that action.

There are three stages of motivation: curiosity, need, and desire.

More motivation means more curiosity, more need, and more desire. The bigger and more informative your digital product, the more affirmative triggers it requires: more emotional and logical appeals to solving the user’s problems, more motivating content.

More motivation does not mean you should keep hammering away at the same point. You can reinforce the main point with supportive incentives and motives. Any of these can be used:

• business motivation;
• learning motivation;
• self-improvement motivation;
• recreational and gaming motivation;
• validation motivation;
• communication motivation.

Motivation can be strengthened by awards: gifts, points, social incentives, etc.

CBH — Dashboard Design

What does insufficient motivation look like in UI/UX design?

• triggers are not highlighted (unattractive design);
• triggers are not engaging emotionally (untargeted design);
• too few or no additional triggers (weakening interest and attention);
• too many triggers (intrusiveness is irritating);
• motivation is not reinforced visually and emotionally;
• too few or no stimulus points (conceptual or visual motivators);
• incentives are absent or not interesting to the target audience;
• visuals start out strong and go downhill from there.

Read more: Designing for User Retention

4. More involvement

• activity

Many websites and apps are geared toward passive consumption, and this can result in low conversion rates. It’s really up to designers and developers. The more you can do to encourage user activity, the more likely you are to see user loyalty. Involvement is not merely emotions, microinteractions, gamification, and filling out forms. It’s a lot more than that.

• points of contact

First and foremost, involvement is maintaining contact with the user. Points of contact need to be deliberately generated; you can’t simply expect someone to be excited by an image or entertained by a game. You must foresee and channel the user’s feelings and reactions at every point of contact; you can’t leave them unattended. The points of contact must correspond to both the project goals and user expectations.

More involvement does not necessarily mean more points of contact. If they are too numerous, they can get exhausting and irritating. If they are too few, the user will get bored and leave. So more involvement means quality over quantity; it’s about the depth of involvement. Strive for more emotional visuals, more user participation, more enjoyable interactions, and a more responsive interface.

More impressions always equals more involvement. Designing impressions is the best kind of design.

• control and investment

Sometimes, more involvement means more control (when the user gets a domain of activity where they can do whatever they want) and more investment (the user stores photos, videos, feedback, achievements, etc.).

When you are creating points of contact, it’s worth keeping in mind that the user’s time is a value that should be saved. So all information should be served in quick, efficient, and delicious bites, like flambé.

The user must never feel abandoned. It’s an essential part of interactivity and interface responsiveness. You must always take care of the user at every step of the way. Providing fun animations to liven up the waiting times or designing a colorful 404 page are good examples of this care.

404 — Web Design with Illustration

5. More usefulness

Your product is useful and you have tried your best to make users see it. But did you use every chance to make it more helpful?

A website or app can only triumph over the competition if it offers something useful besides its core content. It can be a free video lesson, a consultation, a short entertaining game, useful information, a nice calendar, and so on.

Sometimes even a tiny little thing can be enough to make the user choose your product over a similar one. Remember: in design, every little thing counts.

6. More freshness

Oh yes, a digital product can become as stale as yesterday’s pastry, and just as unappetizing. And it’s not just outdated design that kills freshness. It’s also any information that’s no longer relevant. Make sure your data aren’t getting moldy. It’s important.

The best way to influence user involvement is staying fresh. This means current content and trendy design. Regularly creating useful and user-relevant content generates three times as many leads as search engine ads and banners, according to the Content Marketing Institute. If you don’t do content marketing, then simply try to “live here and now.” Incorporate new info into the website or app or use holiday-themed designs, even if it’s just a handful of “festive” elements. Change the color scheme depending on the season. There are a lot of things you can do; the important thing is that the user must never feel like they’ve fallen through a time warp and ended up with the same old thing they’ve seen a hundred times before.

7. More ease

When an app or a website is too hard to use, people go looking for alternatives that will help them solve their problems faster and easier.

The main factors affecting ease of use are:

• time;
• money;
• cognitive load;
• physical load;
• behavioral patterns.

You would need to test the potentially vulnerable points to find out what exactly makes your product hard to use. However, some problems can be obvious: long loading times, visual or informational clutter, overcomplicated fill-out forms, exhausting user pathways. Use every opportunity to make things easier as much as possible.

Give your users MORE: more care and attention, more comfort and usefulness. In return, you will get a lot more than you expected.