Marketing consists of creating a series of touch points that resonate with your audience. That can be in the form of blogs, social media, PR, events, and much more. There are paid and organic strategies, some will deliver results while others won’t. However, they share a common goal: increase brand awareness and drive conversions.
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A critically important aspect that is often overlooked when planning your digital marketing strategy is the user experience (UX). Part of what makes your digital marketing efforts successful is the encompassing user experience. How do people interact with your brand?
From the first time a consumer learns about your brand to the moment they become a paying customer; you should focus on creating a unique experience.
User Experience (UX) Design Impacts Your Digital Marketing
The most important marketing asset for your business is your website. Your content should be visually appealing enough that it drives users to take action. Upon visiting your website, a user should encounter an intuitive and frictionless user experience.
When strategizing and identifying your digital marketing efforts, there’s a number of factors to consider.
The User Interface (UI)
This is the face of your website. How are elements distributed across the page? Which colours are used? What typographic styles are incorporated? These are the elements that will drive your users first impressions.
All of these small details add significant value to the big picture. Whether it’s a “subscribe now” button, paid ad, in-line call-to-action, or a landing page; the design should be intuitive and tell the user what to do next.
The position of elements should tell a story and navigate the user to take the desired action. Don’t overwhelm them with options because it will deteriorate the user experience. Leverage colours to evoke certain emotions and portray your brand’s characteristics. Colour can also be used to create focal points and draw users’ attention.
Your font selection plays a big role in the personality you create for your brand. A conservative font with minimal typographic accents will create a sense of professionalism and seriousness, meanwhile, a more playful font can depict a youthful, relaxed, and easy-going organization.
Speed
People hate waiting for pages to load.
According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds.
A slow website immediately deters visitors and they are likely to leave your website in search of an alternative. When a user can quickly browse your website and find what they need, the user experience is drastically enhanced.
Additionally, a slow website will increase your bounce rate – the percentage of visitors that leave after visiting only one page. A high bounce rate signals to the search engine algorithms that your page is not relevant to the search or that your content is not valuable. This, in turn, will likely cause a decrease in your sites search engine rankings.
Usability
Don’t compromise functionality for aesthetics. Whether it’s your website or a landing page for your next marketing campaign, the end goal should not be simplicity. Although it’s common to hear that your user interface should be as simple as possible, you want to strive for the simplest solution without discarding important features/elements.
Your design should be influenced by the features that are required to achieve the desired results. Your design should not determine which features make it on the page.
It’s equally as important that a user is able to convert from every page easily and quickly. Limiting the number of pages dedicated to driving conversions is hindering your ability to grow.
Mobile Experience
With ever-increasing use and reliance on mobile devices, it is imperative that you create your digital marketing strategies with mobile in mind. When thinking about your website, you can no longer get away with only offering a desktop version.
“A whopping 96 per cent of smartphone users have encountered websites that weren’t designed for their mobile devices.” -Experience Dynamics
To create the best user experience for consumers, your content and any paid advertising should be optimized for mobile and desktop screens. Every time someone interacts with your brand, your content should resonate with them and feel uniform across platforms.
UX Impacts Your SEO Rankings
Google makes updates to its algorithm on a daily basis. The ever-changing search engine landscape has altered the way websites rank, ensuring that the user is presented with the most relevant search results. Creating an immersive user experience has become just as important as identifying keywords, acquiring backlinks, and conducting on-page optimization.
UX directly impacts your user engagement metrics and these user metrics are just one of many SEO ranking factors. If you can keep users on your page, you’ll rank higher on Google.
User Engagement Metrics That Matter:
- Bounce Rate – the percentage of users that leave your website after visiting only one page
- Page Dwell Time – how much time visitors are spending on your website
A high bounce rate is typically a direct result of website visitors who visit your page but did not find what they were looking for or your content was subpar. Users may have left your site because of a confusing UX design, irrelevant content, poor web design, or slow load times.
If your content is not optimized, a user will leave.
User experience matters in digital marketing. Regardless of the content medium or device, consumers will engage with businesses that offer fast, highly interactive, and visually pleasing virtual environments.
If you are looking for a team of User Experience designers, Seamgen is a San Diego based agency with over a decade of experience working across startups and enterprises alike. Their collaborative and consultative approach will help drive results for your business and your customers.
Author Bio – Jonathan Besquin
Jonathan Besquin is the Marketing Manager at Seamgen, an industry-leading custom software development company. His dedication to content creation has yielded fruitful results for the company. He enjoys sharing his strong knowledge base with the rest of the tech community and wants to help you succeed. Being an avid adventurer, he likes to get outdoors and travel around the world.