The Power of User Experience in Digital Marketing

Graphic storytelling is the best marketing strategy in the coming years. This amalgam form of interactive content will always win the race in promoting a brand or service to the customers. The interactive story opens the way for new forms of transmedia storytelling via seamless integration from inscriptions and still images to interactive graphs and animation.

Businesses can use the idea of including visual experiences to dig deeper and enjoy some control over their customer’s experiences and interactions with their brands that are changing the face of digital marketing for better experiences. Investing in visual experience will result in developing and sustaining a positive user experience for your customers.

UX Design is one of the subjects a marketer can’t ignore because it has deep roots for online brands. According to Econsultancy, ’88 % of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience,’ This explains why brands invest big in UX design. Once you frustrate a user, they probably never get back again. As a result, this impacts the profit margins. The objectives of the UX design are as follows:

• Make a positive first impression with users and create a pleasing experience that people associate with the brand.
• Increase lifetime value
• Decrease bounce rate and abandonment
• Increase the percentage of users who come back to your website

 “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works – Steve Jobs.

The customer experience (CX) echoes the emphasis on connections and interactions with customers with an increasing focus on digital. User Experience (UX) is a subset of CX. Useful user experience has become critical as digital communications take on a pivotal role. UX has gained attention, particularly with iOS gaining an advantage over MS windows and google Android due to perceived superior user experience.

Marketing is changing as customers move from selecting brands that offer products and services to brands that provide compelling experiences. In the digital age, excellent quality and service are no longer enough for brands to build sustainable relationships with customers. The design of a practical branded customer experience ensures that brands are engaging and relevant to customers in building acquisition, retention, and advocacy.

When customers land on a website or open an app, they lock themselves into that platform for a specified time. Everything that happens during that time builds a mental image in the user’s mind about the website and the brand. The purpose of UX design is to ensure this experience is a positive one. What makes a good user experience? The answer relies on the kind of website/app businesses intend to market, and the customers it’s targeting.

Marketers Need User Experience

Developing engaging customer-centric brands is a fundamental marketing challenge, and often the customer perspective is different from how organizations think they are performing in this area. According to Bain and Co's research, while 80 percent of brands claimed to offer a “superior experience,” customers say that only 8 percent of companies deliver a “superior experience.

There are several crucial factors to consider when strategizing, identifying, and creating a user experience that maximizes your marketing efforts.

The User Interface

Information architecture and navigation - Information architecture is the structural design of information – Landing pages, content, labels, buttons, icons, advance search options – and navigation is the pathway that connects them all. Mastering these two principles is vital to getting your brand story across and creating sales funnels for users to, you know, navigate. Minute details add substantial value to the large 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 customer what to do next.

Customers Hate waiting for Pages to Load.

According to Akamai and Gomez.com's surveys, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that doesn’t load within 3 seconds. Example of page speed analysis carried out by our software ApolloSpeed and performance in most cases; website performance refers to a website's speed - how long pages and content take to load.

One of the UX design objectives is to decrease the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that leave after visiting only one page). A slow website will increase instantly, discourages visitors. As a result, customers are likely to leave the site and search for an alternative. A surge in bounce rate signals to the search engine algorithms, and hence the page is irrelevant to the search, and the content is not valuable. As a result, they are causing a decrease in in-site search engine rankings. The user experience is drastically enhanced when customers can quickly browse the website and find what they need.

Mobile Experience

According to Experience Dynamics, approximately 96 % of smartphone users have bumped into websites that weren’t designed for mobile devices. It is crucial to develop your digital marketing strategies with mobile in mind. Every time customers interact with the brand, and the content should be uniform and resonate across the desktops and mobile platforms.

UX Powers the SEO Rankings

Search engine optimization strategies have altered the way websites rank. SEO strategies ensure that the user is presented with the most relevant search results. It is necessary to incorporate relevant keywords, backlinks, on-page optimization while creating an immersive user experience. User experience is directly proportionate to user engagement metrics (bounce rate, page dwell time), and SEO is one of them. The website will rank higher on google if you can keep users on your page.

Conclusion

The design of useful brand experience and marketing is a healthy balance of art and science. Business planning, market insight, and innovation come together to build aspiring customer experiences. Experience design allows brands to take advantage of approaches and techniques that improve innovation through customer empathy, brand, and business process. As a result, employees and technology can make a difference in offering comfortable and engaging experiences that form positive memories, leaving customers with a feeling of desire to come back for more.

At Designial, we provide different services, such as Digital Transformation and App Development. Talk to us!