User Experience. It’s all about your website’s UX. But what exactly is it, and how can it help with your inbound marketing efforts? Since we’re still in the first paragraph of this blog post, you’ve probably already guessed—UX is super important for your company’s online marketing efforts. How? Keep reading.
What is UX?
User experience (UX) design is the process of making a product that provides a meaningful and useful experience for your consumer. It involves numerous aspects of your site, including branding, usability, function and design.
UX design tends to be commonly confused with user interface (UI) design. However, they are not the same and, in fact, UI is actually a subset of UX design. While the user interface focuses on the look of a product, UX encompasses the entire way a consumer feels and interacts with it. Now more than ever, your site’s visitor (and potential customer) has come to expect an optimized user experience as a basic determination of whether or not they’re going to do business with you.
Why is UX important?
Again, UX can make all the difference in converting a visitor to a customer. To keep it simple, UX is important because it works to satisfy the needs of your consumer. It aims to make your users loyal to your product or brand by providing the most positive online experience possible. By providing a meaningful experience for your users, you can better define the customer’s journey in the way you want to.
A study conducted by Forrester Research found that a well-designed user interface could raise a website’s conversion rate by up to 200% and utilizing better UX design could yield conversion rate of up to 400%. That noted, UX design can dramatically change the face of a business. It’s important to note that your company’s product or service don’t necessarily need to change. Your website’s UX just needs to reflect how great your company already is.
What makes a great user experience?
In reality, there is no one correct answer to this question. That’s because the user experience depends on the needs of your unique consumer. On that note, it’s important to keep in mind that you are not your consumer and it can be dangerous to assume their wants and needs.
To create a great UX, you have to understand your consumer. The experience is for them, and you’ll be able to best serve them by catering to their needs. Overall, despite who the consumer is, your focus should always be great usability in combination with beautiful UI.
How does user experience tie into your inbound marketing strategy?
One of the biggest things UX and inbound marketing have in common is their starting point—the buyer persona. As in UX design, inbound marketing requires you to tailor your strategy to how you can best serve your consumer. In other words, both concepts challenge businesses to stop thinking about themselves, and to start thinking about their customers.
This is because both inbound marketing and UX design are about helping the user solve their problems. A properly constructed inbound marketing strategy delivers helpful content while great UX design presents said content in a way that allows users to easily and efficiently satisfy their needs.
At the end of the day, prospects will more likely turn into actual customers once they already feel as though you’ve helped them. You want to gain trust so that when a consumer is ready to buy, they turn to you first. Using hard-sell tactics in combination with poor website usability will only damage your reputation and ultimately hinder your business’s success.
It’s time to start thinking about your site’s UX design
Providing a relevant experience for your users is essential to having an effective inbound marketing strategy that allows you to achieve your business goals. ProFromGo helps our clients by offering inbound marketing including powerful UX web design. Feel free to explore exactly what we mean by checking out our services here.
