My new found respect for marketing design

I have been a product designer for almost 10 years now. But I hadn’t had the opportunity to design marketing landing pages until last year when I stumbled into designing them for a product at Chegg® because our marketing creative team was strapped for time.

I have seen and used countless landing pages before. So when I was asked to design one, I thought — “Sure! How hard can it be?” I routinely drool over the latest visual design styles on dribbble.com and assumed I could use my normal design thinking process, add an extra bit of visual flair…and I’d be done! Even though my intentions were in the right place and I was following all the design methods I knew of, I did not realize I had such a giant blind spot!

Designing to sell is not the same as designing for use.

In order to convince someone to purchase your product, you need to connect with them at an emotional level. And this needs a design approach different from the usual user-centered design process. We designers often wear multiple hats. But like any other craft, we are not skilled at every type of design.

What constitutes good marketing design?

Later, having gone through the process of designing landing pages — once even with a colleague from marketing design — I started observing and understanding key differences between marketing and product design. Understanding these nuances has made me truly appreciate good marketing design.

The primary job of a marketing designer is to create desire. Users don’t buy your product simply because it is a good product; they buy it because they want or need it. A landing page has to convince people that the product will solve their problems and make their life better. It has to show value and paint a picture for a better future.

By contrast, the goal of a product designer is to create a product that can be used effortlessly and gets people hooked. You might be guiding users through a task or a workflow such as buying something online or paying your credit card bill or you might be enabling them to consume content such as books, newspapers, or videos.

Tell a good story, don’t describe product features. Good marketing design focuses on how awesome the customer will feel after using the product rather than describing how awesome the product is. It is important to present the value a feature might bring to the user. For example, when creating value props for Chegg® Math Solver, we focused on users ‘Understanding Math’ instead of the ‘ability to view a detailed math solution’. A few core messages combined with appropriate visual imagery helps build an emotional connection with the user.

When designing a product, on the other hand, copy and visuals are usually instructional. The primary focus is the product content. Content in this case could be a video you want to watch, a dress you want to buy, or a math solution you want to understand. The messaging is much more direct and to-the-point.

Lab research won’t give you all the answers. The goal of a landing page is to encourage users to purchase or at least try your product (convert) with minimum friction. The ultimate metric for success is the number of click-throughs it can generate on its main call to action. Research in lab will help you identify areas of friction and give you a sense of how clear your messaging is. But it is incredibly difficult to gauge whether your page is creating enough desire for a user to ultimately buy your product. If we just give them what they say they need, it cannot be guaranteed that they will buy it.

Interpreting results from lab research can be tricky too. A marketing page is considered a success even if 1 in 10 people click on the call to action. But if only 1 in 10 people respond positively in lab, you might think the designs are a ‘disaster’ when they might not be.

For product design, however, even a few well-designed usability sessions with the target user can give a pretty accurate reading on the ease of use of the product. Compared to marketing design, a typical product design and research process is much less subjective.

Putting my learnings to the test

Here is the process I have seen work well at Chegg. Before the design work begins, it is important to understand the marketing strategy. This is a vast topic but take a look at this quick overview.

The strategy includes segmentation, targeting and positioning
Segmentation and targeting involves identifying the target audience, their motivations, and their biggest unmet needs. Market positioning tells you how you might want to present your product to potential customers and differentiate it from others. Here is a great article that explains these concepts in detail.

At Chegg, we use qualitative and market research to frame our messaging in the language used by students to describe their unmet needs.

Positioning leads to the messaging strategy
This includes a messaging hierarchy with one engaging key message or value proposition and other supporting messages. The key message should target what is most important to your audience and communicate that as a benefit.

As an example, for Chegg Math Solver, the product helps solve students’ math problems by breaking out a problem into steps. The benefit is that students can study and understand the underlying math concepts. The primary message we chose to go with was “Understand math, one step at a time.”

Understand your brand
The brand ties everything together. It provides a framework for the designs. The Chegg brand is optimistic, helpful, and authentic. We want students to succeed in school and beyond. All our copy and visuals fit within the brand and make it stronger.

Conceptualize and test both visuals and copy
A copywriter and designer come up with copy and layout concepts to best represent the core message in tandem. Images don’t work by themselves without some form of copy, and vice versa.

• Stay concise, provide just enough information. Don’t reveal too much. You want to entice them just enough that they are willing to give your product a chance. You also don’t want to overwhelm them with ALL your product details — most people don’t care that the iPhone has 2436x1125 pixel resolution at 458 ppi, they just care that it takes AMAZING AWESOME photos (and yes, I had to look up those specs just for the purposes of writing them out!).
• Visuals are not just eye candy. They help enforce the message and when combined with the copy, help create an overall story that emotionally captivates the audience. Confetti might be fun stuff visually, but does it add to the story on the page or is it just clutter?
• Always be authentic. Users can easily sense falsehoods and hyperbole. Students can smell marketing salesy-ness from a mile away and are turned off by it. Stay straightforward but not dry. For example “Try this product” is too dry with no emotional connection but “Help boost your grade” or “Get study help” is straightforward and addresses the students need.
• Test your assumptions. A/B testing pages will ultimately give the most accurate read on the success of designs. In order to evaluate if your designs are worth A/B testing though, talking to target users early is useful. A few interviews with users can help you gauge if the messages and visuals are resonating.

The boundaries are blurring

Even if the goals and processes of marketing and product design teams are distinct, for most digital subscription services like Chegg today, the boundary between marketing and product UI is getting fuzzy. Users are encouraged to start using the product right away via free trials and no sign-up requirements. Customers are also exposed to promotional material within the product UI.

For example, when a student uses Chegg Study®, we also recommend other Chegg services they might be interested in. Hence, a typical web page might have elements of the core product and elements that are trying to up-sell or cross-sell other services. Designing for such a blended experience needs understanding of both marketing and product design principles.

One way to achieve a more unified experience is to act as one design team that includes both product and marketing designers. This is how we are organized at Chegg. It is so much more fun this way and builds trust & respect for each other’s work. Each designer brings their unique skill sets to create meaningful experiences for the user. Understanding each other’s expertise makes everyone a better designer!

I am indebted to Yun Chi, one of our awesome marketing designers at Chegg, for being such an amazing design partner and helping me appreciate the intricacies of her craft. I think I am a better designer today learning and understanding a completely different approach to design.