What is the UX? And does the User Experience Matter?

What is the UX? Well, it depends who you ask. User Experience means different things to different people.

A marketer will tell you that the User Experience is the process by which an anonymous user embarks on the journey from:

• being just another Joe/Joanna – entirely ignorant of your brand
• to being someone with “brand recall” so they can remember your name and recall/remember your logo – ideally they’ll know something of what you do and represent as well
• to being a customer, making a purchase or engaging with your services
• If you’re really good a this, the user becomes an advocate for you, converting more Joes and Joannas to your cause.

Mapping the User Experience is the process by which this journey happens. 

Building brand awareness comes through a series of exposures, or “touches”. Touches can happen through any media including TV advertising, newspaper advertising, magazines, billboards and outside advertising, radio and internet and the myriad of digital channels. 

This process performs best when touches couple through as many media as possible. 

A brand is a powerful thing. Picture some harassed young parents with fractious toddlers (us, some years ago), in an unknown town (Buxton) on a cold, damp November afternoon. Parent 1 catches sight of a purple sign. Instantly, cognition sets in, shortcutting all rational thought:

• There’s an experience we understand
• There’s food we know the kids will like
• There’s pizza we’ll like
• There’s respite in the familiar

The brand is so powerful that as soon as Parent 2 is aware of the sign, the accord is reached, and the pizza is bought. The whole process took moments.

What is the UX? The UX is what sold a meal for 4 in 5 seconds flat.

Brand Awareness Coca Cola champion this as 94% of the world’s human population can recognise their distinctive red and white logo.

Humans literally recognise branding – the same way as we recognise a face. Cognition is far faster than recall and far more accurate. Until recently, the monarch’s face was the most effective security feature on a UK banknote. The slightest distortion or inaccuracy and the face didn’t look like the queen.

Most of the time, we don’t even need the words …

From Brand Awareness people then enter the Consideration stage 

In the consideration stage the objective is to give people more attention to go from “I have heard of this” to “I like this” And to provide them with specific features and benefits and show further the solutions you offer to their problems. 

They consider which solutions might work best for them. They won’t be ready to make the purchase yet at this stage, but they will carry on to evaluate and narrow down their options and all the ones they like are still in the mix. 

After Consideration comes Desire, where “I like this” progresses to “I need this,” after which you provide a Call to Action so the ideal customer persona can easily determine the right course of action to move them along the user experience/customer journey. 

This process is known as AIDA and is the process by which people move from Top of Funnel (researching and discovering) to Middle of Funnel (further consideration and making a decision to buy) to Bottom of funnel (ready to buy).

User Experience (UX) stands as a cornerstone in website design. Why is it so pivotal for your website’s success?

UX, at its core, is about the holistic experience a user has when interacting with a website. It’s not just about how a site looks (that‘s more in the realm of visual design and the UI, or User Interface), but rather how it feels, operates, and responds to the user’s needs. The goal of good UX design is to make the website not only functional and easy to use but also engaging and effective at meeting user expectations.

1. User Satisfaction: A website with intuitive navigation ease of use, fast loading times, and accessible content leads to higher user satisfaction. When users find what they’re looking for with ease, they’re more likely to return.
2. Conversion Rates: Effective UX design directly influences conversion rates. A well-designed path through the site can guide users to take action, be it making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting for more information.
3. Search Engine Ranking: Search engines like Google consider user experience factors, such as mobile-friendliness and page speed, in their ranking algorithms. A good UX is crucial for SEO success.
4. Reduced Development Costs: Identifying and solving user experience issues in the design phase can significantly reduce the need for costly fixes after the website has launched.

• Usability: The website must be easy to use. This includes simple navigation, clear calls-to-action (CTAs), and a minimal learning curve for new users.
• Accessibility: Your website should be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. This means implementing features that support screen readers, ensuring keyboard navigation, and using sufficient contrast ratios.
• Mobile-Friendliness: With the increasing use of smartphones for web browsing, your site must perform seamlessly on mobile devices.
• Content Strategy: Relevant, clear, and valuable content is essential. How information is structured and presented plays a crucial role in UX.
• User Feedback: Incorporating mechanisms for user feedback helps in continuously improving the UX. This can be through surveys, contact forms, or usability tests.

Web designers need to build the customer journey in miniature. A website typically has moments to convince a casual visitor to stay and move down the sales funnel.

1. Create specific objectives for the map – identify Ideal Customer Personae (ICPs) and SMART Goals – work out who you want to do what on your website 
2. Pick you niche – narrow the focus to one or two at most
3. Conduct a resource and content audit (content matrix/posting schedule) and tailor content to help nurture the desired outcome for each visit. 

Certain pages within websites need to have a carefully laid plan which follows a tried and tested model so that they can ensure the optimal conversions of clicks on to the page to the highest conversion rate into leads and sales as possible. 

This is typical of landing pages for PPC advertising campaigns because the client has paid for every visitor to that page and so they want to see as high a Return On Advertising Spend as they can and so it’s good practice to apply the AIDA model here in a more micro application. 

• Attention Grabbing Headline – “Better than Bacon!” – This goes “above the fold” which is the hero section of the web page. It’s called that because in the days of newspaper advertising, it was at the top of the page above where the pages were folded and directly in the most prominent part of the page which was going to instantly grab the attention of the reader. 
• Interest – This is going to then pad out the main body of the article and add all the features, advantages and benefits to ensure “I like this happens”
• Desire – and goes on to add solutions to all the problems that a personal researching this may typically be experiencing and will refer to testimonials of how well it’s worked for other people too. So again, “I like this” becomes “I need this” and there they are given a Call to Action.

It’s a big topic UX, there are reams and reams of articles about it. But the principles are simple. Apply them wherever you got and your website will work for you.