Alice Oh — March 10, 2017 Why User Experience Matters
Marketers today are faced with the challenge of being able to meet consumers’ demanding needs in a highly digitized world where technology is penetrating almost every aspect of our lives. Brands are forced to accept and adopt technology into their marketing mix if they want to stay afloat in the competitive marketing landscape.
One of the best ways in satisfying consumers’ needs is by heavily focusing on creating an enjoyable and valuable user experience (UX). Superior UX effectively drives lead generation, SEO and other essential points of measurement.
Delivering an optimal user experience entails more than just a well-built site design. With the development of new marketing technologies, marketers and brands have a pool of resources they can employ to enhance UX. Here are a user experience agency’s basic tips brands should take note of when strategically developing optimal UX.
Web design
You know what they say, first impressions are the most important. You may be driving an immense amount of traffic to your sites, but what’s the point if your visitors aren’t impressed and decide to leave?
Reduce your bounce rate by optimizing landing pages. This involves implementing easy to navigate pages and quick loading time; 53% of site visits on mobile are abandoned if pages take more than 3 seconds to load. People don’t have the patience nor the willingness to wait for a slow page to load. Your visitors won’t hesitate to leave and seek information from another source or a competitor.
Be consistent throughout your whole site and don’t drown your pages with unnecessary content. Keep it simple and easily accessible. Using just enough white space in the layout of your pages will help direct your viewers to focus on what’s really important, like your call-to-action.
Your company’s website is your digital home base that delivers immense value when built correctly, so it’s important to make sure it’s done right.
Optimize your call-to-action
Don’t overlook the impact a call-to-action (CTA) has on conversion rate. This is the most effective and direct way to prompt a user to take an action.
Details are important when designing a compelling CTA so pay attention! The use of certain colors and text font all factor in the success of your CTA so make sure your CTA is obvious and distinct to catch the user’s eye. CTAs drive conversion more efficiently as they directly guide users toward what you want them to do.
Understand your customer
It’s essential you understand who your customer is, what they’re looking for, and how they’re getting it. Tools like Google Analytics help provide insights into your customers that you can convert into useful information.
Use customer data to better understand the customer journey and which parts are successfully being resolved by your site.
While good site optimization across all devices and thought-out web design are essential in enhancing user experience, it’s important to not lose focus on your customers. Your company’s strategies and objectives should be built with your consumer and end user in mind. Elevate your user experience by understanding the customer journey!
Cross-channel marketing
It’s imperative your brand optimizes your site for cross-channel capabilities, especially for mobile. With Google’s mobile-first index, being mobile-ready is no longer an option for brands if they want to stay afloat in the digital world.
Adopting an omni-channel perspective to create a seamless experience across all channels is crucial. By doing so, you ensure the customer experience is as effortless as possible, in turn driving the rate of customer return and ultimately conversion.
Simplify your forms for mobile. Mobile users look for conveniency and if they’re asked to spend 5 minutes of their time to fill out a form, they’re out. More than 50% of search comes from mobile and if your site isn’t optimized across all channels and devices, your risk hindering your SEO and ranking results.
Content, content, content!
Adopt new and innovative ways to create engaging and unique content. This is essentially the building blocks of your digital presence and what sets your brand apart from the competition.
Integrate engaging content like video into your marketing mix. Video is known to increase conversion by 80% and is the most effective form of visual content.
With your website being your digital homebase, it’s important to make it more than just a web storefront. To create effective on-page optimization, your site’s content needs to focus on user intent and relevant topics. Remember, content is king when it serves the user best.
Creating quality content on your site that is aligned with your users’ needs will help boost your Google search rankings.
Valuable content rules over all and is the most prominent factor of creating a satisfying user experience. Alongside optimal loading time, if your visitors aren’t satisfied with your site’s content, they won’t hesitate to bounce.
Provide support
Optimizing the user experience from start to finish will bring rewarding results. Being there for your consumers from the beginning to the end of their customer journey and beyond is fundamental.
Intervene at all pain points your customer may encounter in the customer journey. Providing help and support during and after their journey is over lets your customers know that you care.
Takeaway
Delivering an excellent UX is no longer an option. Brands have to understand their consumers’ needs and assess how to best give it to them to stay ahead of the competition.
Note: This in-depth guide by MarketPro provides a helpful checklist in evaluating the successes of your marketing performance in 20 minutes or less. Download free.
Create an enjoyable browsing experience your users will come back to by focusing on their needs and how they get them. Your website can have quick loading time and be visually appealing but without substance and value, it means nothing. Without doing so, you will miss out on great opportunities, ultimately sabotaging your brand’s bottom-line.
With good site optimization being imperative in the digital landscape, it’s important brands enlist the help of an experienced user experience agency to help establish an overall coherent look and feel of their digital brand image.
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