Hack your digital spending
Deciding where to put your money to improve digital is really tricky. Whether it’s a branding refresh, a new website or a campaign piece, the same questions exist: ‘Who do I work with?’, ‘What should I focus on?’, ‘How do I reduce risk to make sure the project is successful?’. Although it’s only possible to increase your ability to make these decisions with more digital experience and working with people who know their shit, there’s something super simple you can do to make sure whatever you do, works. Hell, you can theoretically double every £1 you pour into digital.
Build with user-centricity in mind.
User Experience as a principle underpins everything you see in the digital world. UX done well makes life easier for the user, and gives them what they want. See, successful products are those which provide value to their users.
I’ll say that again.
Successful products are those which provide value to their users.
UX — without the jargon — operates on a level below the high-level business idea. A UX specialist is the person on your team whose job it is to know your users inside out — their needs and problems — and provide the fundamental structure for building a product which is sure to provide value for them.. Kinda like digital architects: you give your idea, and they figure out the best way to build it. Unfortunately, like a bassist in a band, UXers aren’t seen as the sexiest nor the most necessary team members. They provide the structure and framework for your awesome design and development to take centre-stage, but all too often it’s months into a project before the management team consider bringing on a UX specialist.
When it comes to that brash statement that every £1 you put into digital could be doubled, prototyping makes this possible. As it’s expensive to test an idea by putting it straight into production, UX designers have a whole box of tricks — such as problem interviews or paper prototyping — to test ideas before rolling them out to their users. This test-and-learn approach ensures that you don’t charge down a rabbit-hole with an idea that you could’ve figured out earlier didn’t work.
Being pragmatic, we’re also aware that it may not be possible to have an experienced UX designer straight off the bat of a new idea. Regardless, we’d recommend getting a UX consultant for a few days at the beginning to help you cement the right fundamentals from the start of the project. This can also help to up-skill your team so you can make your production as user-centric as possible until it’s feasible to get a full-time UXr on-board.
As Apple’s Tim Cook said, “Most business models have focused on self-interest instead of user experience”. Don’t fall down this trap!
