User Experience in Marketing
User Experience in Marketing
Those new to digital marketing often make the mistake of focusing all of their attention on the contents of their promotional message without considering how this message will actually be perceived on their website. The way a website is set up has a huge impact on the way a business's marketing message is experienced. It is the quality of this experience that determines whether or not a site visitor becomes a customer. This is why all online businesses need to work on the user experience (UX).
What is User Experience (UX)?
User experience is all about understanding how the user feels when interacting with your website or products: Can customers find what they need? Is your website quick to load or slow and sluggish? Ultimately, does the user enjoy using your website, and most importantly, will this experience make them more or less likely to buy your products and services?
Why do small businesses need UX?
The way visitors interact with your website is a key factor in converting them into satisfied, paying customers. Big companies already have a head start with strong brand recognition and deep pockets for the marketing budget. As a small business owner, you might not be able to match their spending but you can create an experience for users who visit your website that is unique and appealing.
How can UX help small businesses?
Let's take a look at some compelling reasons why you should devote time and effort to fine-tuning your UX design to benefit your small business.
Builds client loyalty
A business that foresees its customers' needs earns their confidence right away. Consider this: would you instead go to an online store where you have to search for what you want, or would you rather go to a place that provides you with precisely what you want? It's a no-brainer— great UX can turn the tables in your favor, in no time.
Good UX drives sales
User experience (UX) is also essential for sales. There are two possible explanations for this. Of course, as previously said, brand loyalty contributes significantly to sales. When a client has a positive experience, they are more likely to return. The other factor is more technical in nature: UX design drives sales by predicting what a consumer might want to purchase, making the retail experience you offer more intuitive and appealing.
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Generates more referrals and sign-ups
A well-thought-out UX layout can result in tempting sign-up forms that increase conversions and interaction. It is accomplished by enhancing the form's accessibility and making it simple to fill out, regardless of the client's system. Since the information customers would actually type is small, social sign-in is another excellent way to get coveted clicks from customers.
Your referral program may also benefit from UX design. If you don't have a referral program, you may see an uptick in referrals from word of mouth, social networking, or forwarded email. After all, if you provide excellent service to your clients, they would undoubtedly tell their friends about you.
Different UX strategies
At its most basic level, the right approach to a UX strategy entails:
- Find the points of intersection between how your company evaluates commercial success and the results that user experience can provide.
- Getting a good sense of how the existing user experience is perceived by your customers, as well as how your company's strengths and limitations affect your business decisions.
- Build a metric that helps you to assess the existing and potential importance of the user experience.
- Create a realistic (often clickable) view of the customer experience to achieve the desired business outcomes. Share this with the rest of the business.
- Make a business case for investing in the creation of this experience.
- Make a road map: what tasks must be completed and in what order to get you from where you are now to where you need to be?
How does UX improve sales conversion?
You can assist your portal visitors in moving through the conversion funnel by improving the user experience, ensuring they face fewer roadblocks on their way to completing an order: Prospects become leads, and these leads turn into customers— that’s the power of a potent conversion funnel. A potential customer comes to the website for the first time. He or she might peruse the main navigation pages or read a blog post. If that person has a favourable opinion of your business, he or she will follow you on social media or subscribe to your email list.
You have a lead once you have the prospect's contact details. By offering outstanding value in the form of tips, guidance, discounts, and free resources, you may begin cultivating the customer towards a purchase. However, if you don't take the time to enhance UX, your prospect or lead will become cold. Because of the difficulty he or she experienced while navigating your website and other digital portals, users may choose not to give your business any more time or money.
UX for SEO
One of the lesser-known benefits of UX design is that it boosts your search engine optimisation. What is the reason for this? Well, creating a site that is well-labeled and easy to understand is a big part of UX design. It implies that your users will be able to read headings, titles, and meta-information. Fortunately, this is also helpful to big search engine crawlers visiting your site. The framework makes it simple for search engines like Google to understand exactly what your website has to offer. It also helps with SEO in more advanced fields, such as load time. Simple stuff like making sure the photos are the right size for the web is one example of UX design.
SMB Tip:
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Key UX concepts
While User Experience is a broad field, the fundamental principles remain largely the same. These are some of the most critical factors that affect your site's UX, and you should think about them when developing a UX strategy.
Customer Personas
In UX design, user personas are a popular tool. They are all about designing products keeping an actual customer in mind, not a generic one. In recent years, the value of personas in identifying and developing digital products has grown in significance.
User Testing
User testing is an essential component of the UX design process. It usually entails testing a product by researching with your target customers (who are hired). You will avoid potential re-design expenses and release a user-friendly product by testing in the early design stage.
Customer journey
The customer journey mapping is a valuable tool to have in your toolbox as you begin your journey into the world of UX. Personas should be identified, and target customers should be highlighted. Classify each stage and its objectives; Make a list of touchpoints; Obtain information and input from customers.
UX as part of SMB Digital Marketing
UX design begins the moment a user engages with your business. It might be through a conventional media commercial, a Facebook contact, or a direct interaction via your portal.
Your UX design can have a significant impact on how your customers view you and your company, as well as whether or not they are going to purchase from you. From the beginning, it's highly critical to provide a decent user interface.
3 Key UX tips for Small Businesses
To help you work on your own website’s UX and boost your sales, here are three classic areas of UX you should look to improve.
#1: Optimise your top menu for navigation
To increase sales on your site, ensure that customers looking to buy from your site can always find what they are looking for via the top menu of your website. Any sections of your site that won’t contribute directly to sales (e.g. jobs section or terms and conditions) should be placed in the bottom menu of a website. It’s good UX design to have a top menu setup that enables customers to get to any product you offer within two clicks.
#2 Keep your menus simple
No site visitor ever complains about a website's menus being too easy to use, so resist the temptation to show off with menus that drop down in multiple directions. Quick and clear menus save customers time and lead to more sales. You also need to make sure that these menus work well on all devices. Remember at least half of all visitors online are using smartphones. These customers also need to be able to find what they want and are often more impatient than desktop visitors.
#3 Short loading times
Pagespeed is another key dimension of UX. In the early days of dial-up, users were patient enough to wait a long time just to see a picture of the set of the new star wars film, but these days 53% of mobile site visitors will go elsewhere if a site takes longer than three seconds to load. Slow Pagespeed is bad for everyone. Even the big brands find it hard to keep customers on their site if they have a slow Pagespeed. A good place to start for anyone interested in testing their site’s Pagespeed and checking Google tips and policies on it is Google Pagespeed Insights. Often site owners can boost their Pagespeed by reducing the size of image files. It's important to remember that Pagespeed can affect desktop and smartphone users in different ways. So look into plugins that can help speed things up for smartphone users.
The final word on UX for SMBs
UX is a key part of Digital Marketing. If you want to improve the rate of sales conversions on your site, UX is a great place to start. Taking the time to see how your site's messaging is actually perceived by visitors will also improve the quality of this message. As well as helping in these areas, improving your site’s UX also makes it a more pleasant place for customers to visit which is also good for your search rankings.
SMB Tip:
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