Skills Week: What I learned from a crash course on Digital Marketing
In a matter of days, I had to learn skills from compressed daily courses I had never known of before. Last week was a unique learning experience and I am grateful that I have grown considerably from it.
There is a stark difference between the confidence I have in my skills in terms of digital technology and digital marketing now compared to before. Embarking on this whole journey, I felt nervous and intimidated, because there were many older students going through the same programme with me. I felt like I lacked the experience and skill to be working side by side with them, but I was determined not to let my nerves best me and pushed through. As the days went by, most of my fears slowly dissipated. Although I admit that I am still unsure of certain aspects of digital marketing such as the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), keywording and backlinking, I never thought I would get this far and I am glad that I did! Apart from that, I also feel slightly in awe about the different aspects of digital marketing and all the new things I learnt.
There is always something new to learn
At first, what was written and said in the courses was all Greek to me, and I barely understood anything. But after opening my mind and committing myself to the learning process, everything started falling into place. It was undeniably a challenge for me, but it was worth it in the end. Here are some of my key takeaways:
- Work involving UI, UX and web development must mostly be done from the users’ perspective, to resolve any of their pain points for the best possible experience, and research must thus be done about the users to find out about their experience.
- Many things are happening behind the scenes to improve UX like information architecture in UI and hierarchy in web development, all sending minute signals to the user and subtly increasing the chances of the user’s investment into the CTA.
- Google ranks websites with a Site Score based on their back-linking and their SEO ranking, which affects their performance on Google’s Search Engine. Thus, the developers must carry out keyword research, meta-tags and meta-descriptions to increase their search rankings.
I also discovered tools and frameworks such as the Design Double Diamond, user personas, ‘How Might We’ problem statements, Customer Journey Maps, and the Value-Effort matrix that came in handy when creating insights.
Because of what I learnt, I knew to spend time doing user research including conducting interviews and doing exercises like card sorting and tree testing from the Optimal Workshop website to understand how users would navigate my website.
I also knew to add some very crucial elements to my website, such as the 5 elements of a landing page — CTA, value proposition, social proof, visuals, and keeping the user focused — and to implement hierarchy to control what catches the user’s attention. To improve my website’s search ranking, I did keyword research and plugged them into its description.
Exercising my skills
My website was about selling water as a collectable item, and the target audience was the water collecting community, which (as far as I know) does not exist. I came up with this idea because I wanted to make my website about something silly, something that I would laugh at. I often incorporate such things into any work I do where I can choose the topic, just because I don’t really control my inner 5-year-old when it comes to things like this, which can be good or bad. In this case, it made my work interesting and my experience of creating a no-code website enjoyable. Thank you to the mentors for being okay with it, because I kind of found it hilarious.
Looking to the future
In the weeks to come, my group and I will have to redesign our SME’s website to make it more user friendly and appealing to buyers. I will be sure to implement my newly gained knowledge to conduct research beforehand to find out the users’ profiles and their pain points, hopefully making the website easy to navigate and logical to improve their overall experience. I hope that this will increase the selling rate of the SME we are working with.
Beyond that, I wish to contribute my skills to any cause that would need them, such as school projects, my church, or personal projects. I hope to be constantly sharpening my skills and exploring deeper into UX, UI, web development and digital marketing since I find it quite intriguing. Perhaps I may look into it as a career option in the future, but for now, I am still unsure since I have yet to find out what other career pathways are like.
How digital skills are highly transferrable
Since technology is so advanced now and so many aspects of our lives are digitalised, websites are something I use every day; they just differ in type. For example, YouTube is a website, along with other entertainment-type websites like those that let users publish their own stories.
Developers must make sure that the users do not lose attention and click off the site. There are also e-commerce websites with monthly sales (9/9, 10/10, 11/11 etc), and developers have to find ways to appeal to customers so they would spend more money. These all involve factors of good UX, UI, web-development and digital marketing.
In school, my schoolmates and I use resources such as Student Learning Space (SLS), Google, and Google applications like Classroom, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and more to support our learning. There are also apps that provide tools to help students with tasks such as preparing for tests (e.g. Quizlet), reinforcing new concepts (e.g. Kahoot!), or platforms that have an array of extra materials that students can use or view if they have trouble catching up in class (e.g. Khan Academy). Learning resources have to make sure not to bore the students, and implement some form of orientation to show students their progress. Google applications, on the other hand, must make sure their websites or apps are easy to navigate since they serve as tools for students to store or do their work.
In the videos included in our courses, there were some examples of different landing pages. I found it insightful because before Skills Week, they would just seem like a normal website to me, but after learning about UX and UI, so many things suddenly stood out to me. Even now, as I explore different apps and websites, I can see what the developers do to give users like me the best possible experience or appeal to us to invest in things like subscriptions or premium benefits, be it in the form of clear navigation, obvious call to actions, or the use of hierarchy. Now, I am more aware and I admire these small but important details included in the websites I use.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about digital skills and using my understanding of the skills to make my own website. To me, the experience was very rewarding and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to take part in the course.
CareerContact is an ed-tech platform designed to bridge the gap between school and work. We help students develop digital skills and connect them with SMEs in Southeast Asia. Feel free to reach out to us at CareerContact.cc or join us at CareerContact.app.
