People have high expectations for the performance, design, and usability of websites and other digital products.
But those expectations shouldn’t just be on the user side. Companies must also raise the bar when designing and developing digital products to provide customers with the types of experience that not only meet those expectations, but are memorable, differentiating, and help move users seamlessly through their brand interaction.
User experience in and of itself reflects the expectations of today’s website or application users. Consider how you interact with a website. When a user experience is good, the website behaves exactly the way we expect it to and makes a positive impression on us. When a user experience is poor, you might find you have a hard time navigating the site, finding what you need, or completing a task, which also makes an impression – but the wrong kind.
Where to Start When Planning Your UX Strategy
Implementing a solid UX requires an understanding of what type of user experience is going to be best for your website or application – and your audience. There are a couple of ways you should approach this effort.
1. Look at past metrics. Understanding what does and doesn’t work for your company provides great insight into what your focus should be in implementing a user experience methodology. How has your audience behaved? What part of your digital product do they spend the most time with? How are they using your website or application? This information will allow you to improve upon the aspects of your digital product your audience already likes, thus creating a user experience truly based on them.
Even if you’re starting from ground zero and have no existing digital product to use as a baseline, you can still assess audience behavior and engagement with your brand and use those insights toward the development of your UX.
2. Follow best practices. When it comes to UX, you’re not doing anything in a silo. There is a large community of UX designers and a wealth of information and tools available. In addition to metrics and user testing, UX designers also rely on the multitude of studies, reports, books, articles, and design awards that illustrate best practices. Some of these best practices include:
Creating a good user experience is about knowing your audience, being able to anticipate their needs, and providing them with the appropriate tools to take their desired action.
3. Determine strategic goals. When planning your UX strategy, you should select one or two specific goals to focus on for UX development. These goals could include any of the following:
Putting the “Experience” into User Experience
User experience is composed of several elements that all must be taken into consideration during the entire planning process, and incorporated into the final product.
Usability: User experience refers, of course, to how easy a website or digital product is to use, but it also refers to the ability of a digital product to resonate emotionally with a user. The two are inextricably tied together. Can a user easily navigate to the information they need without being overwhelmed with options or crowded text? Are the layout and organization user-friendly? Only then can the user experience be successful and leave someone with a positive experience.
Accessibility: Your site or digital product should be functional on multiple browsers and devices to ensure users can experience what you have to offer, no matter how they choose to get there. Depending on your audience and the type of business you’re in, you may also need to make your website or digital product ADA accessible to ensure everyone can use it regardless of disability.
Performance: Users notice right away if website elements load slowly or don’t appear correctly. Be sure your digital product performs each and every time a user accesses it.
Design: The aesthetic design of your website or application is a significant part of the overall user experience. It helps differentiate your brand with eye-catching or innovative features and helps familiarize your brand by incorporating the visual design elements that define your brand and drive recognition.
Content Marketing: A solid user experience takes users through the sales funnel with strategic calls to action for valuable content. When you provide the right content at the right time to the right person in the right way, their user experience is more valuable, and your brand becomes more valuable to them.
Human Interaction: A key part of user experience is personalization and familiarity. Brands that implement chat features, use highly personalized content or make contact easy and pain-free are providing the human interaction necessary for a positive user experience.
User Experience is a Team Effort
Users today are savvy, and can immediately identify when a website or application is going to be easy to use or more trouble than it’s worth. Ensuring that your digital product makes a good first impression begins at the initial conceptualization and involves everyone on the team.
Creative directors: As the overseers of the creative work being done, creative directors know the overall goals of the project and ensure what’s being done is meeting those objectives. They must apply their knowledge of design, content and the brand to effectively sign off on the final product. This role is critical in ensuring the design and content provide a seamless user experience that reflects the brand and messaging.
Information architects: Sometimes known as a UX designer, this role is responsible for creating a meaningful presentation of information using an organizational structure that results in the best possible experience for the user. IAs or UX designers must be highly knowledgeable about the brand, target audience, customer behavior, and the competition. They combine this knowledge with the visual identity of the brand and any other elements that would make the overall user experience unique.
Content strategists: Writing for UX requires content strategists to understand how a user would digest the information on a website or interact with an application. Content writers should be aware of best practices but also be familiar with audience personas and their needs, pain points, and behaviors to understand what content resonates and in what format, as this will differ for every brand. They would ideally work closely with designers to ensure the flow of the final product is intuitive, actionable, and tells a resonating story.
Content teams also should be applying search engine optimizations (SEO) to the content on any website or application to ensure it gets found online. If your product isn’t searchable, your user experience makes far less of an impact.
Visual Designers: The role of a visual designer is to creatively execute the vision of a website or application based on the target audience and overall structure for UX determined by the IAs and UX designers. A designer will focus on the appearance of the product, understanding where different elements should go and how to incorporate imagery within the overall structure.
Developers: The development side of UX requires an understanding of how to implement the features and functionality that will bring the design work and content to life. Developers are creating the functionality on the front- and back-end with which users will interact. It’s critical for that functionality to work, as one of the biggest detriments to a brand experience is a website with broken links or elements that don’t load properly.
Quality assurance: While there may not be a dedicated QA role on your staff, it is critical to run any website or application through a quality assurance process to ensure everything is working properly. Broken links, 404 pages, content edits, and other errors must be caught before the product goes live to ensure superior usability and an overall great user experience.
Here are some key elements to consider as a team:
UX Benefits Your Users–and Your Business
Outside of the experience you’re creating for your audience, a successful UX should also translate to ROI for your business. Investing in a seamless experience for your audience will avoid costly problem resolution during design and development, or–even less favorable–following the release of the digital product.
It’s important to set forth and track key performance indicators, such as page views, time on page, and click-through rate, to understand how your user experience is impacting ROI.
Without an effective user experience, your digital product won’t have the desired impact and could significantly impact your brand reputation. That is the harsh reality of today’s fast-paced, online world. But the good news is that crafting a successful user experience is a fun, creative way to elevate your audience’s engagement with your brand and, in the process, learn more about who your audience is and what they want.
Related Blog Posts:
Our Director of Design, Sean, and our Designer, Bianca, share insights into their world as marketing agency designers. First and foremost, let’s talk about what “marketing design” is, because it’s definitely more complicated than it may seem from the outside. The...
Wondering about B2B social media marketing best practices but don’t know where to start? We have the tips and tricks to get you rolling.
