The Importance of User Experience (UX) in Marketing: How to Improve Customer Engagement
People like using the internet for several purposes, whether they are shopping, booking flights, checking in with friends, or simply looking up information. The effectiveness of user experience has a significant impact on all of these different online functions.
The simplicity with which a consumer may search, access, evaluate, or purchase goods and services is a crucial component of that experience. User experience (UX) is essential for organizations that want to draw customers and turn that interest into profits, and in many situations, it’s even vital for survival.
UX is frequently disregarded when creating and implementing contemporary digital marketing tactics. When you consider that 74% of consumers will visit a website again if its user experience is optimized for mobile, it’s astounding that just 55% of firms are actively engaged in user experience testing.
A user-friendly website that combines frictionless navigation, a clear purchasing process, dynamic and digestible content, first-rate customer care, and mobile device compatibility creates the ultimate online consumer journey. A company can build a digital environment that can help a brand stand out from the competition by fusing these aspects together.
Why then do businesses frequently overlook UX when it comes to interacting with customers?
What is user experience in digital marketing
The user’s overall experience (UX) when consuming or utilizing a product is referred to as digital marketing. It refers to the overall perception that a user has of a product as well as the attitude that they grow to have towards it.
User Experience (UX) is still frequently neglected when developing digital marketing strategies, even though much is written and said about SEO, Google Ads, other Pay Per Click Advertising, content management, email marketing, and social media marketing.
Mobile phones are increasingly the preferred touchpoint for a constantly growing number of digital users due to the rise in their use and development in media consumption since 2011. 60% of internet buyers only use their mobile devices to make purchases. Regardless of the desktop experience, people will immediately leave a website that is not responsive and mobile-friendly.
When a user interacts with a digital marketing touchpoint, such as a piece of content, a website, or a landing page, UX is about creating seamless encounters and cultivating favorable feelings.
The importance of UX
1) User experience is a qualitative foundation for all marketing
Throwing darts in the dark is how marketing would be if UX didn’t exist. Instead of hoping to hit a target, use data to comprehend context, emotion, and needs to guarantee a bullseye.
Also never assume always make sure you question (then test). Concentrate on assisting users in achieving their goals to maximize the completion of your business aim. How do you want your users to feel? Do they want to feel what way? What facts are necessary for them to decide? What information is lacking or unclear?
2) Good User experience leads to clearer marketing messages
All we’re attempting to accomplish as marketers is to describe how our good or service moves a customer from a certain before-state to a desired after-state. There are three ways to accomplish this, as smart marketers are aware of:
1. Target the appropriate audience to expose your message to them at the appropriate moment.
2. Create a compelling offer
3. Explain that offer in a way that is compelling, straightforward, and brief.
UX fits into the third category. Although we must rely on words to explain concepts, a copy is only one part of the user experience that can inform and persuade visitors to act. The design of our pages and the use of on-page components are crucial to our marketing initiatives (and our success).
3) Great experiences work toward conversion
One does not exist without the other.
UX has always been a significant component of marketing, not just because it directly affects sales and conversions but also because it affects how customers feel about a company or a product.
Creating memorable experiences that influence brand perception, return visits, or purchases are also an important component of user experience (UX), which goes beyond readability and font optimization. Additionally, UX offers priceless insights into user behavior and psychology that improve marketing strategies.
People frequently claim that UX and marketing have nothing in common and that it solely works to give users the greatest, most seamless, and most intuitive experiences possible. However positive encounters inevitably lead to some sort of conversion.
Simply put, marketing and user experience must coexist. A website with good UX and poor marketing is like serving microwave cuisine in a luxurious restaurant, whereas the opposite is true for a website with good UX and strong marketing.
4) Positive gut feelings about your brand come from good user experience
UX must play a significant role in your organization’s brand strategy if your brand is defined by what others say about you while you’re not around.
Your website or app is the starting point for establishing credibility and confidence inside your company. Nonprofit organizations, institutes of higher learning, and even government organizations are beginning to adopt digital marketing techniques from the private sector, but only a top-notch user experience can create the type of visceral trust that fosters fulfillment and a solid reputation.
Your purpose, leadership, and values will come off in a negative light if your website doesn’t convey quality and attention to detail or if it frustrates users in any other way. Any company that wants to be successful at branding must involve UX experts.
How to improve User experience
After all, it is part of the way that a customer engages with your company and/or your brand. It’s important to get it right so that the customer has a positive experience. Without a good experience, you can lose customers and that can hurt your bottom line in the long run.
Here are some helpful ways to improve UX:
1) Ensure customers give information only once
Consumers today don’t mind handing over their personal information, but they detest having to do it twice. The top service providers take care to carefully manage each piece of data they get from customers, linking it to their master record and delivering a seamless user experience at every touchpoint.
2) Consider customer touch point mapping
Review the interactions between consumers at each location on a map of the organization’s customer touch points. Develop strategies with the stakeholders for those touch points to relate to and impress customers throughout these interactions. The process of creating experiences combines human values, commercial objectives, and technological advancements.
3) Get immediate feedback
We’ve all had the experience of utilizing a product or service and wondering, “Who thought of that?” Ideas for what could be done to “improve” it start to come to mind right away. Sharing insightful criticism with the provider is secondary under certain circumstances. The key to developing user experience improvement techniques is to create chances to collect and reward quick input.
4) Respond to public feedback
Users’ comments are widely available on official websites, Twitter, Facebook, and app reviews. The fact that too many businesses disregard these platforms essentially gives customers authority over your brand’s reputation. Even if it is unable to resolve the problem, a swift public response demonstrates the company’s concern for customer feedback and appreciation for their input.
5) Don’t ignore the human touch
Businesses must enable staff to deliver better client experiences while enhancing the human experience of technology. Customers demand more human interaction because it’s essential to providing seamless, unobtrusive service. Additionally, for automated experience solutions to advance, technology must learn from human interactions.
6) Be transparent
When communicating with customers online, be just as open and honest as you would in person. In the same way that you wouldn’t conceal the fact that a customer was signing up for a monthly credit card subscription in person, doing so online is unacceptable. To make sure that your buyers get the nature of your product offering, use video as a form of internet communication.
7) Adapt content for multiple devices
Create content that is easily customizable for every size of the device. Customers now use PCs, tablets, and smartphones to conduct online searches. It is crucial that business applications, websites, or information can be viewed on all types of devices. A user-friendly app will draw more customers because it will provide a better experience and increase their likelihood of returning.
8) Eliminate redundancies in your process
Redundancy reduction requires ongoing attention. You should aim to have clients complete laborious, time-consuming tasks that demand documentation and verification just once. Customers, for instance, should only need to confirm their identification once throughout each interaction with the system.
In general, in the past, user experience design and marketing were seen as two distinct fields whose paths did not cross. Designers concentrated on developing and comprehending user experiences, while marketing experts concentrated on acquiring new clients and increasing conversion rates. The situation has now changed with UX design now at the core of the top