They say that content is king. 

No longer is it acceptable to just ‘tell’ your audience that your offering is the best, now you need to prove it by educating them on your specialist area. This is where content comes in. 

That is why so many businesses invest time, money and resource into creating powerful content which resonates with their audience. But all too often, these businesses focus all their efforts on the content itself and not on the bigger picture. 

Great content is just the start of great content marketing. Businesses need to understand and act on all areas from getting people to read their content in the first place to deliver their content in a way that is easy to digest. 

In this article, we explore the importance of user experience (UX) and the impact it has on content marketing.  

Is UX Important in Content Marketing? 

Imagine you are looking for something. Let’s say a new car. You know you what it to be fairly large, you want it to as environmentally friendly as possible and you want it to cost a certain amount.

So you turn to a search engine like Google. 

You type in your requirements and start to do some research into the best car to meet your needs. The first result pops up and it looks perfect, you click it and then it all goes wrong. Firstly, the website takes ages to load, then you are inundated with pop-ups, then there is so much content on the page that it is difficult to navigate and you can’t find the information you are looking for. 

You close the page and look elsewhere. 

But the information you were looking at WAS perfect, it WAS the best car for you. That business just lost your custom. This is not because the content was bad, but because your experience with the content was bad. 

This is a hypothetical situation, but one which would never happen. Why? Because a website with such a poor user experience would never find its way to the top of search engine rankings.

The moral of the story? Without good UX, your prospective customer won’t find and won’t digest your content. 

How Better UX Makes for Better Content

We have established that better UX makes for better content marketing. But what does this mean practically? In the next section, we explore some ways you can improve your UX whilst simultaneous improving your content marketing efforts. 

Format Your Content Clearly

A study by Microsoft found that the average attention span was just 8 seconds long, and likely getting shorter. 

Helping visitors find exactly what it is they are looking for on your website will help you grab their attention and ensure they receive the information they need to reach a buying decision. 

Making content simple to navigate makes for a much better user experience and makes it easier for your audience to find the information they are looking for. Use clear headings (H1, H2, H3) to highlight to visitors how your content is laid out and which aspects are most crucial. This format will also ensure that your content is easy for search engines to assess, making it more likely to reach the top of their rankings. 

Many website builders now offer simple ways to A/B test layouts and content hierarchy, making it easier than ever to assess which formats work best for creating a better user experience and driving desired action.

Understanding which keywords you are targeting will also go a long way. It is crucial that you match the content you are creating with relevant keywords, as this will ensure those who come to your content via a search engine are finding the content which is most relevant to what they are looking for. 

Adding relevant images will help further explain your content and improve the user experience. 

Increase Website Speed

Slow website load speeds can completely kill your user experience. It doesn’t matter how useful your content is, if your website takes 5+ seconds to load, it is unlikely that users will wait to see it. 

In fact, one study suggests that a massive 40% of website visitors would abandon a site that takes more than 3-seconds to load. 

So, what can you do to reduce your website load times? 

• Compress file sizes 
• Remove any page elements which are not crucial 
• How videos on an external platform such as YouTube or Vimeo
• Use a better website host

Improve Your Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate indicates how useful the content of your website is. 

Google defines a bounce rate as “single-page sessions divided by all sessions”. Or in other words, it is the percentage of people who visit your website and leave immediately without interacting with any other content. 

Better formatting your content and improving load speeds will significantly improve your bounce rate. To ensure that people don’t leave your page you can also try: 

• Including a strong call to action 
• Use pop-ups sparingly or not at all 
• Ensure your content is highly relevant to what people are looking for 
• Use highly relevant internal links 
• Keep website pages simple and each to search 

Increase Session Durations 

Understanding your average session duration can help you improve your UX. 

Short session durations are a clear indication that the visitor to your website either couldn’t find what they were looking for. 

You can consider both your session duration and bounce rate as users voting for or against your content and the usability of your website. A high bounce rate or low session duration indicates the page doesn’t answer their query. On the other hand, a low bounce rate or high session duration indicates that the content answers their query well. 

UX for Content Marketing 

We have dived into how creating a better user experience is better for content marketing. It is clear that just creating great content isn’t enough, instead, businesses must focus on the full process from helping people discover your content to delivering it in a way that engages and resonates with them. 

Using the tips in the guide will help you get more from your content marketing by introducing UX best practices.