Why User Experience is Key to Digital Marketing Success?
Unlike what some people might think, user experience or UX is not just related to the end-users interaction with the digital interface. But it is the ultimate representation of the end user's experiences with the company, its products, and the associated services.
So, when you think about UX, it includes visual design, information architecture, interaction design, usability, user search, content, logo, imagery, etc., with respect to every aspect of the organization. To achieve the ultimate expression of UX's impact on marketing, the designer has to create a sync between the organization's brand value, ideas, objectives with its aesthetics and visuals.
Ergo, in every sort of marketing design structure, user experience is looked at. More importantly, when it comes to digital marketing, the roots of UX go beyond the product and services.
Describing User Experience in The Mobile World with Data
The 21st Century customer has changed. Today's customer wants quick results in an instant without putting in too much work. In this scenario, if you ask them to see an advertisement in the newspaper, visit the store, negotiate the price, ask for deals, and then bring it back home, good luck selling your product!
GSMA Intelligence shares that there are 5.22 billion people in the world who have a mobile. Out of these, 4.66 billion have access to the internet on their phones. This means that even if 0.1% of this population comprises your target audience, you are looking at having direct access to 4.6 million potential leads.
Still, think that UX is not vital for digital marketing?
Another aspect of UX in digital marketing is giving your end-users the motivation to come back. 74% of the customers will come back to your website if it is optimized for mobile.
Along with this, 61% of the customers think higher of an organization if they get a positive experience. Even after knowing all this, only 55% of the companies leverage the results generated by user experience testing and use them to curate high-impact marketing strategies. Within your marketing campaigns, UX has a stronger role to play than you think. Because bad user experience will hurt you more than the benefit provided by good user experience.
As opposed to the 77% of the customers who will comb back after a good experience, 88% will not revisit if they get a bad experience. The ball is now in your court to decide whether you wish to include UX research while creating digital marketing campaigns or not.
Give User Experience Its Due Share of Attention and Importance
User experience is all about creating an ideal customer journey and ensuring that it is consistent across all the platforms for all users. Things like seamless navigation, a smooth workflow of purchasing, readable and digestible content, effective customer support, and responsive design are a part of UX that must be used in marketing design.
While designing a marketing campaign, it is a standard to look at the product and how it will benefit the end-user. We go through the details, understand the customers, and create engaging content to catch their eyes.
Every UX designer has to go through the same exercise while designing the product itself. They look at things like the Why, What, and How of the Product or Service. So, if the same research is done to create the product design, why can't we use it to design the campaigns to achieve digital marketing success.
So, UX is essential not only for attracting the customers but once you catch their eye, the same UX and its principles will help entertain the customer while making sure that they revisit and engage on a higher level than before. Marketing is done to make people want things with the premise that they have a need for that product. To address the need part, the organizations conduct research on which user experience is a core segment.
Usability is an Integral Part of User Experience
We measure the usability of the product based on different aspects pertaining to the product or service. It measures the level of a product's effectiveness, identifies its accessibility (ease of use) and the learning curve (easy to learn). Added to this, any researcher measuring a product's usability also measures the scope of error.
Usability is just a small but essential part of the User Experience. So, when you are designing a marketing campaign, come out of the usability aspect and look at other things that can lead to conversions.
You can harness the tenets of usability to highlight the product, but only relying on the campaign on usability won't build a conversion-ready campaign. To do that, you need to inculcate other components of the user experience. Apart from usability, there are;
- Adaptability
- Desirability
- Value
This means that apart from the things included in the usability section, your digital marketing success depends on user satisfaction, pleasure, fun, and value proposition. User experience is not only designing a product that a user will like, it is a product that will make the user's life better and convenient.
Having a mix of usability and user experience means you will invite loyal customers to be a part of your organization. Because customers will know that your product works, it is easy to use, and they find it enjoyable while driving value from it. Mix everything up, and you have a long list of customers who keep coming back.
Content is also Pivotal for Digital Marketing Success
Content is important for building a loyal audience and delighting existing customers. With respect to our discussion, content is essential to both UX and digital marketing. Where UX helps decide what type of content is best suited to explain the product, digital marketing is the arena where we can test the content and check its conversion.
This becomes even more important when we hear that 78% of the customers want to know about a company via its articles rather than short ads. Added to this, 70% of customers strongly believe that companies which create and share custom content are more interested in building strong customer-client relationships.
But how does content and digital marketing fit in with UX?
So, we have three things here;
- Content
- UX
- Digital marketing
We already know that content is integral to UX and marketing. So, your approach must be to use the right form of content in framing the digital marketing campaigns that offer a good user experience.
Because good content is optimized for SEO and search engines love SEO-optimized content. So, where good content helps you rank better, good content and user experience help you sustain that position by attracting and retaining the users.
Yes, we needed to repeat these aspects as a part of user experience marketing because marketers seem to forget the importance of content when it comes to designing UX-ready campaigns.
Do Marketers Need to Learn About UX?
Indeed, marketers must receive at least the basic level of training in UX and understand its core constituents. Mostly, marketers address the customers directly, and where they get all the information on the customer's problem, they need to understand how to present the solution in a manner that attracts them.
While a marketer can fabricate the words that will explain the product in an interactive manner, they need to know what kinds of words a customer is looking to see, hear, or observe. You see, user experience is at the middle of;
- Information
- User's needs
- Business goals
This brings the importance of UX out of the earlier context that limited the UX website and application design. If applied correctly, UX has the potential to polish every part of the sales funnel.
Think of it this way, you have published a paid ad to get more customers to visit your landing page. But when they land on the page, bad UX makes them leave. So, you have not only lost the opportunity to convert a lead but also wasted money on attracting it in the first place.
Don't pacify yourself by thinking that the customer will come back, because we have read above that 88% of the customers won't come back once they leave due to a bad experience.
UX helps create better customer experiences and formulate interactive designs that benefit you and delights your customers. Another area where you can harness good UX is effective and robust communication. While drafting marketing campaigns, a UX marketer must think about how the customer will perceive the message as well as the aesthetics.
So, the integral aspect of UX like colors, typography, imagery combined with good marketing content can become the difference between a good UX marketing design and a bad one.
Conclusion
UX and marketing might not have made sense a few years back, but it is pivotal to your product's success today and has to be given its due share of importance. Every single touchpoint a customer can have with your organization can and must include the aspects of UX.
So, do not rely on good marketing and conversions as they are known to deliver a negative UX. instead, integrate them to build user-friendly marketing campaigns and turn UX into an effective as well as a promising marketing tool.
