Maximizing UX through content design
Effective content design is crucial for digital product success. Learn about its key elements to create content that maximizes the user experience and your business revenue.
Have you ever landed on a website and immediately felt overwhelmed or confused? Chances are, the content on that website was not designed with you — the user — in mind. In today’s digital landscape, it’s more important than ever to prioritize content design in the user experience.
Imagine you’re trying to buy a new pair of socks online. You search for socks on Google and click on the first website that looks promising. But instead of a simple list of products, you see long-winded paragraphs about the history of socks. You have to spend several minutes scanning the text to find sock options to purchase. When you finally find them, the descriptions are vague and unhelpful and your size is not available. Frustrated, you leave the site and look for another retailer.
Sounds familiar? This is a prime example of how poor content design can negatively impact the user experience and drive your customers away. Let’s explore the benefits of content design and principles for creating effective content that maximizes the user experience and drives business results.
The benefits of content design
So what is content design, exactly? According to Kristina Halvorson, a pioneer of the content strategy movement, “it’s about making sure that your content is findable, understandable, and usable. It’s about creating content that serves a specific purpose and meets the needs of the user.”
Doing effective content design can bring several benefits to your digital product, including:
- Improved user navigation: Clear and intuitive content organization can make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for on your website, leading to a better overall user experience and increasing the likelihood they will continue browsing and potentially making the desired conversion.
- Better communication: Well-written content can help to clearly communicate your value proposition and make it easier for users to understand what you’re offering.
- Increased conversions: By ensuring that users can easily find what they’re looking for on your website, content design can help drive revenue. Simplify the user experience and serve the right content at the right time and you will increase the chances that users will make a purchase.
- Enhanced credibility: Professional, well-written content can help to establish credibility with users, making them more likely to do business with you. By providing clear and accurate information about your products or services, you not only build trust but improve the overall user experience.
- Better search engine optimization (SEO): Carefully crafted content that includes relevant keywords and phrases can help to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results, leading to more traffic and potential new customers.
Overall, content design plays a crucial role in creating a positive user experience and achieving the goals of your website or app. By taking the time to carefully plan and organize your content, you can enhance the user experience and drive business results.
Understand the user and its goals
Knowing the user and their goals with a website is critical to the success of the content design process. By understanding what users need (e.g. socks) and want from a website (e.g. buy socks fast), content designers can create content that is tailored to their needs and that helps them achieve their goals.
To research and understand user needs and goals, content designers can use a variety of methods, such as user interviews, surveys, and usability testing. This information can then be used in a three-step process:
- Create user personas
- Form user stories
- Create user story maps
The first step to illustrate your user is to create one or more user personas, which are fictional characters that represent different types of people and their goals and motivations.
For example, a sock company might have two fictional user personas: Samantha, a busy working mom who wants to buy socks quickly and easily, and David, a fashion-conscious college student who wants to find unique and stylish socks he can brag with. By understanding the needs and goals of these two personas, you can create an information architecture and content that is tailored to their needs.
Based on these personas, you can formulate user stories that will help inform your own design decisions. User stories are short, specific descriptions of how a user interacts with a product, written from the user’s perspective.
They always follow a specific schema: As a [enter persona], I want to [the needs they have], so that I can [the goal they want to achieve].
A user story for Samantha, our working Mom might be: “As a busy working mom, I want to quickly and easily find the socks I need, so that I can complete my purchase and move on with my day.”
In addition to user personas and user stories, content designers also use user story maps to illustrate the path of their users through the product. Try to start with the end goal (e.g. the conversion) and a potential entry point, like a daily newsletter or a Google search. Keep it simple and stick to a maximum of seven points per story.
A user journey map for the sock website might include steps such as:
- Search for socks on Google
- Visit sock website
- View sock options
- Select socks
- Complete purchase
Pro tip: Focus on the most important touchpoints on the map and don’t worry about getting everything right at once. Why? Because users tend to judge the overall experience by its peak and its end — an effect known as the “Peak-End Rule”. This can be observed in many user tests. Conduct user interviews or trust your gut to identify these touchpoints in your story. Getting those right will pay off more than making the whole flow “okayish”.
How to align content design with business goals
In addition to considering the needs and goals of the users, content designers need to align their work with the business goals of the company they work with. Setting and monitoring hard business goals – like socks sold per month – helps ensure that the content is effective in achieving the desired outcomes.
What does that mean? One of the most important steps in creating a good content design is defining the business goals together with your client. These should be based on the target users you‘ve identified and the business opportunities spotted. Now align the content to one specific purpose. In the end, the content of every paragraph of your page should have a goal in mind you can achieve from it. Document your thoughts and measure these metrics after you’ve launched.
One method to align your content with your business goals is to conduct a content audit. This involves reviewing the existing content on the website or product and evaluating its effectiveness in achieving the business goals. By identifying areas where the content is lacking or could be improved, you create a game plan for improving the content and aligning it with the business goals. There are several good articles on how to conduct your first audit, like the one from Virginia Start, content designer at Shopify: 6 steps to product content audit perfection.
Pro-Tip: A key aspect when aligning content design with business goals is the involvement of key stakeholders in the process. This can include business leaders, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders. It may be painful and yes, there will be a lot of seagulling, but by involving these individuals early in the process, you can ensure that the content you are working with is aligned with its business goals and reflects the overall strategic direction of the organization.
Use workshop methods to facilitate these sessions. Rachel McConnell presents six of these in her piece “Six workshops for all content designers to try” which you should definitely read if you haven’t already.
5 principles for effective content design
Trying new things is difficult and intimidating at first. When starting off your adventure into the content design universe, remember these five principles:
- Keep it simple: Avoid using overly complex language or jargon that may be difficult for users to understand. Instead, use clear, concise language that is easy to read and understand.
- Be consistent: Consistency is key when it comes to content design. Use the same tone and style throughout your website or app, and make sure your content is organized in a consistent manner.
- Think strategic: Think carefully about the goals of your product and always design your content with those in mind. If you want to increase conversions, focus on creating content that is compelling and persuasive and put the big red CTA right on top. If you want to improve SEO, make sure your content includes relevant keywords and phrases. Simple, right?
- Visualize ideas: Incorporate visuals like images, videos or even infographics into your content to help convey your message and enhance the user experience. Visuals break up large blocks of text and make your content more engaging. Be careful though: When choosing visuals, use high-quality ones, that align with your brand and message.
- Test and iterate: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different content designs and see what works best for your audience. Test different variations of your content and track the results. Then use that information to iterate and improve your content over time. Constant testing and iterating is the key to product success.
TL;DR: Content design is one of the most important parts of the design process for digital products. By taking the time to carefully plan and organize your content, you can enhance the user experience and drive business results easily. By understanding the user and their goals, and creating a content strategy that aligns with their needs, you can create content that is findable, understandable and usable. It will make it more likely that users will engage with your website or app. And drive revenue for your customers.
If you’re interested in learning more about our approach to content design, please don’t hesitate to reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you are one of those old school-mail-lovers (like me), you can also hit my inbox here.
I’d also love to hear YOUR thoughts and ideas on this topic. If you have any additional insights or experiences to share, please leave a comment below.
