Mark Miller — July 11, 2017 — July 11, 2017
Have you been on a website recently that wasn’t mobile friendly, or struggled with a frustrating ecommerce experience?
While not an entirely new concept, user experience continues to go without the needed consideration and care from too many businesses. If you’re one of them, you’re losing new customers and revenue.
Many organizations still fall behind on user experience because they’re too tunnel-visioned on short term results or lack the creative innovation necessary to thrive in a digital world. But in today’s competitive business environments, the only consistent winners are those that focus on delivering a consistent, convincing, memorable customer experience.
A user-focused approach will be reflected in long term results. It conveys to your audience your brand’s trustworthiness and value. Failing to strategically incorporate UX (and UX staffing) in your brand will turn off potential customers and leave more room for competitors to surpass you.
Before a visitor even considers a product or service, they will often judge your website and user experience. You have about 3 quick seconds to make a positive first impression or lose the potential customer. Make them count!
Reinforce Your Talent Base
Better user experience begins and ends with better UX talent. If you don’t have the strategic leadership on hand to craft a vision for the ideal customer UX or the internal capacity to execute on that vision, then you’re stuck treading water while the competition speeds ahead.
Start from the top. If your organization lacks that senior leadership and strategic understanding of customer UX, it might be time for a digital marketing executive search to bring in some much-needed perspective. Some businesses have even begun innovating new positions like the ‘Chief Customer Officer’ or ‘Chief Experience Officer’ specifically to monitor and optimize customer and user experience at every touchpoint.
From an execution standpoint, nearly every facet of your marketing program can impact user experience; from creative to App and web development to automated workflows to social and email engagement and beyond. It’s important to have UX top-of-mind for all your marketing staff. Digital marketing staffing, UX consultants, or a proven user experience agency can all offer a fresh injection of new talent, experience and skills needed to bring your marketing to the cutting edge of modern UX best practices.
Discover What Your Customers REALLY Want
If you want to know how to please your audience, ask them! You’d be surprised how many people are willing to give actionable feedback, especially if you give them a fair incentive. Directly asking users what they want can save tons of research and time.
Marketing executives can find out what features trip up users the most, what content is falling short of expectations, and other invaluable feedback to better your brand’s UX. Designers, developers, and manager can utilize user feedback to develop smart design and usability features
Minimize Data Entry
Customers don’t want to spend their precious time filling out forms, and are understandably reluctant to give out personal information to strangers.
Only ask visitors to answer questions when necessary. If the user is bombarded with a bunch of questions, they’re highly likely to exit your site (and visit a competitor who is less nosey).
If you do need information from the user, make it beneficial to them. Have an incentive attached to the form that reads something like “Sign up now to get a free consultation and site audit.” Customer experience should be centered around simplicity and delivering value. Make site navigation and content access easier for your audience and they’re more likely to respond to the CTA.
Update Your Old, Stale Videos
Nearly all marketing executives, especially in the B2B space, will be familiar with explainer videos. They’re a staple marketing and sales tool for many startups and service-based brands.
To improve your organization’s UX, convert the hallmark explainer video into “persuader videos.” Redirect your creative team to develop a video of real people saying real things about your company’s product or service.
Authentic video combines social proof with an opportunity to highlight features and benefits, helping you overcome common objections and move your visitor to conversion. Users are more convinced to try a product or service when they’ve seen testimonials from real customers.
Gamification
One powerful marketing trend that’s been accelerating in popularity is the rise of marketing gamification. Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists, like a website, and integrating “game mechanics” into the site to motivate participation, engagement and loyalty.
Successful gamification can prove to be a helping hand to businesses in many ways. It incentivizes users to engage with your brand by satisfying their competitive nature. For instance, Domino’s Pizza has recently integrated gamification into their new pizza delivery service to great success
How did they do it? Domino’s asked its customers what they hated most about their brand and changed their product and delivery service in response. Domino’s discovered they needed to appeal to the younger demographic and integrated gamification into their new delivery process. Locating nearby stores, tracking pizza delivery and electronic coupons are all features sought by the younger demographic.
Now customers can order pizza online, check the delivery status and even see in real time when their pizza has arrived at their doorstep. It’s an innovative move from an old brand that contributed to their digital platform comprising 30% of sales.
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