How to Get Started with User Experience (UX)
When we think of marketing, we often think of commercials, billboards, and print ads. If your taste is a touch more modern, you may consider content marketing and influencer marketing. But alas, a new dog has entered the race. User Experience is the future of marketing.
What is UX?
User Experience (or UX for short) is the systematic approach to ensuring every part of your business matches customers’ expectations. From first glance to first click, to the confirmation emails, good UX takes an inclusive look at what it truly feels like to be a customer. Every touchpoint of your business has now become a place for you to build your brand loyalty and long-term customer relationships.
Benefits of Good UX
The benefits of truly caring for your customer’s experience throughout their buying journey won’t be a surprise to seasoned business greats. Alas, most professionals are well versed in making sure that what they say they’re going to deliver is indeed what they actually deliver. The business leaders of the world would tell us that this is “just good business” of course. Let’s check out some benefits:
- Long-term customer relationships are formed when users feel like their experience with your business is an efficient and meaningful use of their time.
- Trust is built in your brand identity when users feel like you’ve done the heavy lifting of making working with you easy.
- In a hyper-stimulating world, good UX breaks through the haze of competition by allowing quicker ways to connect users with what your business is providing.
How Do you Get Started with UX?
Self-reflect
One of the best ways we can really see the benefits of user experience and apply them to our own business is to look around at the businesses we love to interact with. What do you love about your favorite subscription service? Why do you prefer ordering on certain apps over others? Which websites make it easy for you to regularly find what you’re looking for? By scanning your own user habits you’ll be more able to empathize with other end users. Odds are both you and your potential customer are looking for similar things.
2. Be Your Own UX Tester
Take a deep breath, close all the tabs on your browser, and start from square one. How would you as an end-user get to know your business? Would it start with a quick Google? If so your UX strategy needs to have a plan for SEO.
After that what would happen? Take a look around your website with fresh eyes. Where are your eyes pulled first? What do you want to click? If you’re struggling to be objective, it may be a great time to find a friend or colleague to give you some quick direction. Of course, there are UX experts out there, but a trusted advisor works as you’re just getting started.
3. Check out some UX software
As more folx are learning about the power great UX has on business, more software is emerging to help too. There is software out there that can help you track different metrics on your website, places where you can get feedback from other users, and a whole host of tools to help better connect your user with your business. The key to using this software is simply to continue keeping a user-first mindset. All the software in the world can provide data, but it’ll still need you to synthesize the data and make some informed choices.
UX and Marketing
So do you throw your social media plan in the trash? Do you chuck your most recent ad campaign? The answer to these and any of your other marketing initiatives is probably a loud, “no”. The truth is marketing and UX work hand in hand to make your business grow. Being more aware of not just how you get new customers but also how to retain them with great UX will mean your business will continue to grow into a more empathetic future.
