Understanding User Experience and How to Enhance It
Businesses that are trying to attract and retain more customers need a digital marketing strategy. As part of this strategy, a marketing plan should focus on things like content, search engine optimization, web design, and user experience, or UX. If this is your first time hearing of user experience, consider the following about user experience basics and how you can start improving UX today.
What Is User Experience?
As defined by the Nielsen Norman Group, user experience:
“Encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
In other words, user experience refers to all the ways in which a user (a visitor to a website) interacts with a brand on that website, and how the user experiences, including emotions and outcomes, that interaction. Higher user experience ratings are associated with more conversions and higher rates of user engagement, so improving UX is integral to a company’s bottom line.
Tips for Enhancing User Experience
Fortunately, user experience outcomes are something that you can shape with website improvements and upgrades. Here are some tips for enhancing user experience:
- Research your audience. UX starts with deep research into your target audience and target demographics. Until you really understand who your target customer is and what they want, you won’t be able to deliver.
- Improve page loading time. If your website takes too long to load, you can be assured that your bounce rate (the rate of users who leave before taking an action) will be high. Improving load times is one of the most important elements of improving UX.
- Make sure your website is responsive. When a website is responsive, it will display appropriately when accessed on different devices, such as a computer vs. a mobile device. Not only is this important for UX, but also for SEO, too.
- Conduct a UX audit. A UX audit can help you to understand shortcoming in your website, as well as what’s successful. Pull together your team and review your strategy; don’t become complacent with your current approach.
- Educate, but don’t overwhelm. Users come to a website because they want something specific. It’s important that you’re giving them what they want and providing useful (educational) content. However, be careful about overwhelming. Too much text and too little white space isn’t necessarily a good thing.
- Make it beautiful. No matter what your business is offering, eye-catching design will go a long way. It’s strongly recommended to choose a website designer who can incorporate your brand elements to optimize UX.
- Ask for feedback. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask users for feedback! This can be one of the most effective and valuable ways of understanding what users’ experiences are like and making improvements.
Call a User Experience Expert Today
At NUVEW, we are experts in all things digital marketing, including user experience. To learn more about how to enhance UX, call us today or send us a message.