Why User Experience Matters in Digital Marketing
When your brand customer base grows, digital marketing becomes more critical. Nevertheless, don't forget to consider the other side when designing your promotional messages. There is a direct connection between user experience and digital marketing. It is impossible to have one without the other. A poor UX will prevent even the best social media or email campaigns from generating conversions and customers.
It is best to avoid such a scenario as much as possible. A customer's entire journey is crucial in today's competitive environment. Marketing campaigns are just the beginning, but they don't end there. To maximise sustainable success and ROI, you must understand why user experience matters on your website and your marketing efforts.
Table of Contents
Creating a mobile-friendly UX
Smartphones have changed the way people view, shop, and connect online. More and more digital users are choosing mobile over desktops as the preferred touchpoint for media consumption because of a 504% increase in consumption since 2011.
Today's consumers have become so accustomed to using their phones that they abandon a website if it's not optimised for their devices-and; if you run a business, that could mean a significant loss in conversions or even damage your brand.
Despite this, 52% of users reported that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company. With 60% of searches now occurring on mobile, UX is an important factor in digital marketing to consider.
Even though mobile dominates today's world, the desktop isn't irrelevant. A multi-platform strategy is essential for a successful buyer's eCommerce journey since most transactions occur on PCs. However, many marketers and brands still focus on desktops as their primary area of focus, which is out of sync with today's consumer behaviour.
The basics: Understanding digital UX
At its broadest level, user experience refers to all aspects of how end users interact with a company, its products, and its services. When browsing, reading, or interacting with your website, your audience feels feelings, emotions, and satisfaction.
To put it another way, you cannot generate UX. There is a chance for this to happen, no matter how your site is designed or how your content is created. As your audience visits your website, you can shape the nature of their experience, affecting whether they feel negatively or positively.
It goes beyond merely shaping audience feelings regarding good UX design. Conversions and revenue are also driven by user experience. According to Forrester Research, brands that excel in their Customer Experience Index grow faster and gain more revenue than their counterparts. Your digital marketing efforts should focus on shaping UX, given that trend.
Content is vital to UX
Publishing content that offers direct value while engaging your audience is one of the most effective ways to communicate a message. According to Quick Sprout, 82% of people enjoy reading relevant content on company blogs.
For a successful user experience, well-crafted digital copy optimised for search engines is essential. Additionally, SEO-friendly copy will help your web page rank effectively for relevant search terms on Google and provide consumers with an informative answer to their questions. Ultimately, this approach will lead to conversions rather than website abandonment.
Even though providing search-optimised, engaging, and consumer-focused content may seem evident to online businesses, it is often overlooked – don't make the same mistake.
The five tiers of content marketing and UX
Developing a successful content strategy from scratch yields the highest results. A successful content marketing model consists of five levels:
- SEO: Without SEO, your target customers will never be able to find you in the first place.
- UX: This is where UX comes into the mix. The importance of it is likely well known to you by now, but let's put it into perspective. Two-thirds of people would instead read something beautifully designed than something plain, according to a pivotal 2015 Adobe study. The UX puzzle is much more complex than that.
- Content Strategy: Once your site is SEO optimised and your user experience is top-notch, you can use metrics like visitor numbers and bounce rate to craft your content to meet your target audience's needs and achieve the desired results.
- Content Creation: Once your strategy is in place, it's time to start creating content. Update existing content, write new blog posts, and ensure each piece is formatted for digital consumption.
- Content Distribution: After creating the most acceptable dynamic content, it's time to get it noticed. Please use your social channels and other resources to share them with the right people.
To build a robust content strategy, you must do the user experience properly. In any case, the whole strategy will come crashing down before it even gets off the ground.
Apple's UX Makeover
Apple pledged to enhance its user experience in light of how crowded the smartphone and mobile device market has become. After a growth reduction in 2016, the software juggernaut began tying up threads and connecting its platforms to create a seamless experience across all platforms.
Aside from improving its already successful portable desktop, Apple also opened Siri, its digital assistant, to third parties.
Apple's latest software offering, iOS 16 (its most significant update), has also completely reimagined the smartphone user experience with highly customisable home screens, interactive app widgets, and autonomous organisational features. A testament to Apple's unwavering commitment to UX and a significant reason for its success.
As Apple's forward-thinking proves, user experience is crucial to today's consumer. This fast-changing climate will cause any brand to fall by the wayside without constantly improving how companies interact with their customers.
How UX can tell your brand story
In digital marketing, storytelling is becoming increasingly important. You can build an emotional connection with your audience by weaving factual claims about your brand and product into a compelling narrative. According to one study, stories are 22 times more memorable than plain facts.
The best stories capture the attention of your audience. Visitors must stay and learn more about your brand and its story. Your products and services will be more effective once you have their attention.
Additionally, UX and storytelling have a reciprocal relationship. Storytelling enhances UX on your website, but good UX also increases the likelihood that your audience pays attention to your story and the information you want to convey. All your digital efforts will be more effective if you connect the story on your website with your broader marketing messaging.
How UX builds your conversions
UX influences your conversions in addition to shaping your brand story. Focusing on this aspect builds a more holistic view of the customer journey. You can naturally adjust your strategy toward guiding your visitors in the right direction as you emphasise how they interact with your website.
You cannot improve user experience by changing your website how you think is best. What your actual visitors want to see and interact with is what you need to learn from them. To achieve your marketing goal, you should find a way to marry these desired experiences. UX bridges the gap between your company's business objectives and users' wants and needs.
A good UX also focuses on page layouts and design that make these conversions more intuitive. Even the most engaged visitor may not convert without an opportunity to convert. Simple calls to action can make all the difference when placed at the right time.
How UX can inform your entire marketing strategy
As we've already mentioned, it's worth repeating. The benefits of UX-focused web design go beyond improving your website. A good marketing strategy can inform and ultimately improve your entire marketing plan.
Today, too much digital marketing relies on guesswork. The lessons you learn from industry benchmarks might apply to your audience and current marketing goals if you build campaigns based on general industry best practices or past experiences. However, you do not have the assurance that this will happen.
By focusing on user experience, you can change that—in-depth research into what your audience thinks and wants is necessary. You can use that research not only to improve your website but also to enhance the entire marketing strategy you use. Digital campaigns and messaging can now be built based on real-time insights and carried through to your final conversion points.
How personalised content can enhance UX?
These are all crucial ways in which UX can increase the effectiveness of your digital marketing. Additionally, looking at how you can enhance your visitors' experience while on your site makes sense. Even though many of the tips here will differ depending on your audience research, the need for personalised content remains universal.
You want your visitors' experience on your site to be tailored specifically to their needs. There are several ways to satisfy that desire, some more complicated than others:
- Create a mobile-friendly and responsive website.
- Customise web content based on visitors' location and existing information.
- Communicate specifically about conversions after they have been completed.
- Offer multiple conversion paths tailored to your audience's current customer journey stage, from subscribing to your blog to becoming a customer.
Here are a few examples of how you can improve customer experience. You can significantly increase the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts by focusing on these and other tactics. Combining the two concepts might be the secret to a more profitable digital marketing strategy.
eCommerce UX
Today, eCommerce is the new frontier of digital business platforms, and it has completely changed how we shop and continues to evolve quickly.
It's your job as a business owner to understand and adapt to the latest trends. Nowadays, focusing on the user experience is one of the most critical tasks in eCommerce.
You rarely think about anything beyond the product when you purchase something online.
An eCommerce company's experience before, during, and after a purchase is crucial to its success.
Amazon, eBay, and Walmart have invested heavily in improving their customers' experiences. Competing on the same level has been challenging for smaller retailers.
Searching visually is on the rise
Soon, visual search will become a part of the user experience. Blippar brings augmented reality to a new level in its intuitive way of interacting with brands. People who want to use visual search instead of Google are likely interested.
Clark Boyd, who recorded a webinar with DMI on visual search, reports that 62% of millennials prefer visual search to other eCommerce technologies. Additionally, 34% of Google searches already return image results. You must keep up with the capabilities of technology to meet consumers' needs. Our ever-growing need for instant gratification has led us to turn to visual search in an ever-busier world.
It is not an optional luxury for competitive businesses to invest in UX. Investing time, money, and resources in the user experience are crucial to ensure success.
Reasons why UX is essential in digital marketing
1 – Maintains customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is an essential aspect of user experience. Customers are more likely to recommend a product to others if they are satisfied with the user experience. A product's quality is also determined by user satisfaction.
The user experience refers to how customers feel and interact with a company's website, products, and services.
The customer's user experience begins when they engage with a brand for the first time and ends when they interact with it for the last time. A company must provide a good user experience to gain and retain customers.
2 – Bounce rate reduction
Digital marketers often discuss bounce rates. A high bounce rate is often considered harmful and with good reason. Leaving your website without exploring it further indicates that visitors do not find your site valuable.Â
How your website feels when visitors indicate something is wrong with your user experience.
However, user experience impacts bounce rates. This encompasses the look and feel of your website or app since it determines how users interact.
Users can also find the information or products they seek more efficiently and quickly if the interface is faster and more responsive.Â
A better user experience will encourage users to spend more time on a website or an app, reducing bounce rates.
3 – Better customer engagement
How consumers feel about your brand is primarily determined by the customer experience. The customer experience is one of your most important assets, from how your staff greets customers to how they perceive your brand on social media.
User experience is not only about the product experience; it's also about how you treat your customers throughout their journey. It's about how happy customers are, how likely they are to stay with you, and whether they tell the world how great your brand is.
Customers will often engage with your products and services if they feel satisfied with the user experience on your website.
4 – Improve conversion rates
An experience design creates a positive user experience.
Additionally, it can affect the conversion rate of a product or service. The conversion rate refers to the number of people who visit your eCommerce website and purchase your products and services.
Businesses can generate more revenue by providing a positive user experience, while businesses can lose customers who don't purchase due to poor user experience.
How to Improve UX on Your Website
To improve your website user experience, you must follow essential strategies such as better landing page design, a mobile-friendly interface, visually appealing images, etc.
This section will discuss quickly improving your website's user experience.
Let's focus on that!
1 – You can customise navigation on website pages.
For any online business to grow, it is essential to have a well-organised website.
In a market, you sell clothes from a physical store. T-shirts, towels, jeans, pants, and towels are mixed up in an unorganised manner when you display your products. When consumers purchase from your store, they will be confused and unsatisfied.
Your eCommerce store will also experience the same problem. In designing your website, keep the appropriate options in the right place according to the product category.
You should design your website so consumers can easily find their desired products. Otherwise, consumers will get irritated and not buy anything from your website. The bad UX is the only thing affecting your sales.
2 – Designing better landing pages.
If you want to gain the trust and satisfaction of your consumers, you need to design well-optimised and attractive landing pages.
Consumers click on your product's ads or links on other websites or social media platforms and are redirected to your website. This is the first thing consumers see when they visit your website.
Unless your landing page provides accurate information and functions, consumers will not be interested in buying products or services from your website. This will therefore have a direct impact on your website's user experience.
To satisfy the user demands, you must improve the landing page design with full functional quality.
3 – Improve user experience by generating product feeds.
Consumers need exact product data to get a better understanding of your products. A dedicated consumer group can only be created by providing flawless products.
As a result, you should create a product feed containing essential information about the products. With CTX Feed, you can quickly generate a WooCommerce product feed.
You can generate a product feed for over 100 channels, including Facebook, Google Shopping Ads, Instagram, Twitter, and Bing Ads.
Creating a product feed will automatically update your eCommerce website products across multiple channels so consumers can easily find them.
You can easily update product information across multiple channels using the product feed generator plugin.
Your eCommerce website's user experience will significantly improve if you provide the correct product data to your consumers.
4 – Mobile-friendly interface optimisation.
A mobile-friendly, responsive website can help increase traffic and conversions by making the site more user-friendly.
Smartphones are currently used by 6,567 million people worldwide. Moreover, 58% of smartphone users are comfortable purchasing products from mobile apps or websites. To make your website mobile-friendly, you must make it responsive.
A mobile-friendly website features a responsive design, optimised accessibility, and a flexible user interface.
Smartphones have become the primary device for accessing the internet and purchasing most goods and services. The goal of a mobile-friendly website is to encourage visitors to browse it from their phones.
You should also develop a well-designed, mobile-friendly website. Rather than using a traditional desktop or laptop computer screen, users can use smaller screens.
Having satisfied consumers will also improve the user experience on your website.
5 – Make sure your product images are of good quality.
eCommerce, digital marketing, and all types of websites rely heavily on images. A website showcases your products so that consumers can purchase them.
In this case, the images provide a general idea of the products in your eCommerce store. It is easy for consumers to check products in a physical store before purchasing. However, product images create the first impression when consumers want to purchase something from a digital store.
It is also essential to provide multiple angles of an image of a product. Consumers can check products in physical stores in a variety of ways.
In an online store, they don't have that opportunity. If you provide multiple images of the same product, consumers can better understand it.
Customers won't buy from your eCommerce website if they don't like the product images.
Good quality and appropriate product images on your eCommerce store will affect the user experience.
6 – Organise the checkout and payment process.
During the buyer's journey, the checkout and payment processes are the last steps. Your store or products are first introduced to consumers, and then the quality of your products is evaluated.
Finally, consumers decide to buy your product when they are satisfied with it. In this situation, they need payment and checkout methods relevant to their needs.
You decide to include only the online payment system of an unpopular bank on your website. However, most consumers don't have accounts with that bank. This prevents them from making purchases.
Therefore, you may lose some valuable customers. This will drastically impact your eCommerce website's user experience.
In addition, consumers should be able to choose from various shipping methods. Customers may want fast delivery of their purchased products so you can provide this service for an additional fee.
Besides using local and international shipping options, you also make your eCommerce site more user-friendly, which attracts consumers and improves the user experience.
7 – Enhance the speed of page loading.
Nowadays, most people use smartphones to do their necessary work, such as ordering food, making online purchases, etc. In a short time, they can do that through a smartphone browser or app. According to a study, an extra second delay results in a 25% decrease in conversions.
It is always essential for consumers to have a faster process when browsing the internet to make purchases or do other tasks. If the page transformation speed on your website is slow, consumers will get irritated and leave.
In this regard, website page speed is crucial to ensuring consumer satisfaction.
A fast load speed also improves the bounce rate of a website. Large and unoptimised images can slow down page transitions. For this reason, you should compress images in the right size to improve website performance.
8 – Listen to what consumers have to say.
Consumers are the core of any business, whether eCommerce or regular. Engagements, interactions, and reactions are important in establishing a business.
To succeed in digital marketing, you must know your consumers' opinions.
Your website should include feedback options for consumers to express their positive and negative opinions; from here, you can get an idea of what needs to be improved.
Identifying and solving the problems will improve consumer satisfaction, resulting in a positive user experience.
Conclusion
The importance of consumer satisfaction in digital marketing cannot be overstated.
Your business will grow faster if consumers feel comfortable purchasing products, filling out contact forms, or scheduling appointments on your website.
Therefore, you should improve the overall functionality and categories of the website to enhance the user experience.
This is meant to benefit you, and we hope you will find it helpful.
Author Bio: Ulfah Alifah Yuliarso writes this article. She is an SEO Specialist from RRGraph Design. Keep in touch with Ulfah via her LinkedIn.
