Ever Growing importance of content in UX design
The most apparent outcome from the adoption of apps like Instagram, Facebook is the insane rise in the amount of visual content that we find ourselves consuming on a daily basis. The reason I explicitly mention visual content here is that visuals are most effective at grabbing attention and likely to register with the reader. Social media apps have leveraged this principle to increase their active user base. These apps encourage users to create and upload content with the least amount of effort. Overall social media had caused a behavior change where we are now used to consuming more content than ever but in small bite-sized form. Ironically, this style of content consumption has left us with diminished attention spans. As per a recent study, Instagram users across different age groups spend an average of 28 minutes daily on the app. This information conveys an important aspect of how people experience content. In my opinion, an important lesson to learn as a designer is to always keep in mind that the product’s end users are normal people who use social media apps on a daily basis and as a result are trained to adopt certain behaviors that can be leveraged to deliver meaningful experiences.
In this post, I am going to discuss how content applies to design. As designers, there are so many details that we are asked to pay attention to and here’s another one to keep in mind — content. Let me share a very simple way to understand this — users were forced to read before, then it changed to skimming and now it’s literally JUST glancing. So, it’s safe to conclude that most users welcome content that can be interpreted within a glance. This means as a designer you have to think “I only have a few seconds to grab my users attention and convey all the necessary information”. This rule can be applied to something as simple as a component’s empty state or a dialog box or something as complex as a website’s landing page.
Types of content
Before we jump into the details of content, let’s start by understanding what aspects of a product/service qualify as content -
- Copy/text — Anything that involves text on buttons, alerts, error messages, notifications, body text, etc. A lot of agencies and companies have dedicated copywriters and working with them closely can help shape the tone and voice of your product.
- Media — Images in the form of illustrations, photographs or gifs, videos, etc. fall under this category.
- Graphs/ visualizations — are not restricted to analytics or enterprise dashboards but also used across consumer platforms, thus gaining a spot in this list.
These different types of content when used together and in the right manner can help tell compelling stories and leave a long-lasting impact on the reader.
Role of content in UX
1. Creating first impressions
AI engines are a boon to designers as they aid to uncover and validate the end user’s actual behavior. With personalization gaining importance, it’s safe to assume that often times people are looking for experiences that resonate with their personal life. So when a user lands on your product, aim to evoke an authentic connection. Content plays a big role in creating this authentic, impactful first impression. For example, think of the last time you visited a website that used stock photography and how that canned experience made you feel!
The same rule of evoking resonance is can be extended to establish a friendly tone and voice for a product/service’s copy or messaging. For example, the welcome message on your product can either turn away your visitor or create a friendly perception of your brand. The current trend of using illustrations throughout the product experience is an excellent example of how content can elevate user experience. For example, slack uses colorful and playful illustrations of humans to convey the brand’s personality. On the other hand, some brands use non-skin tone colors for human depiction in their illustrations to avoid racial bias. Whereas some use a mascot to avoid gender bias.
2. Driving engagement/ keeping the visitors hooked
So once you have created a good first impression, your next goal as a product designer is to keep the visitors coming back for more. An easy way to approach this is by thinking of your experience as a story. Which means there needs to be a beginning, middle and ending.
Translating this idea of storytelling to product design, first think of your goal and then craft the story. As the storyteller, it’s easy to first write down the end result that you would like to achieve. Then think of the story’s beginning — generally this is the entry points of any experience. Lastly, the most important and tricky part (in my opinion) of the story is the middle — where the users need to stay interested and engaged to eventually drive them towards the end. To explain this theory, let’s take the case of a retail app, your objective is to push the user to add more items to their cart. I love how the Nordstrom app does this — when you open their app, there is a beginning to the home screen that is personalized just for you, as you scroll you see curated “looks,” which on further interaction which prompts you to purchase products.
This is a classic example of how you can progressively disclose relevant content to the user in the form of small bites. This way of coupling different types of content like an illustration with a short message or a short tutorial video can help convey a complicated concept to the user.
Similarly, prioritizing and organization of content is key to its success in delivering the right experience. Initially, aim to give the user a contextually relevant amount of content to digest and as they go deeper into the product, serve more details. This concept is depicted in the pyramid below.
3. Driving conversion
Lastly, I came to realize the actual impact of content on driving conversion when back in 2017 I designed a component library for Lululemon’s landing pages. Prior to the project, Lululemon was struggling to drive engagement and conversion on their website. When I dived deeper into their old website, I discovered a plethora of rich content, in the form of photography, videos that was hidden. As a result, they were not able to showcase the worth of their products in spite of putting in so much effort in generating great content. My designer instinct was to reuse and leverage this content in a more strategic manner. This approach made me realize that many times as designers, we just need to step back and think about how to repurpose what’s already there. Using this philosophy, I designed a component library that showcased different permutations of content together, coupled with relevant CTA’s. I also designed a content strategy guide, that can be used to create more intentional landing pages like the seasonal products, new technology launch, etc. In order to drive conversion, the strategy was to place the relevant call to action triggers that can push the guest in the shopping path. Post the launch of the new website, Lululemon reported a spiked growth to 6.2% conversion rate. Of course, that cannot be attributed to just the landing pages and there were other parts of the website that were improved too. However, I am pretty sure that these content pages played a role in driving engagement.
Last words
My biggest lesson from past projects is to never treat content as an afterthought, especially if you are considering responsive design or mobile. A content-first approach helps establish breakpoints and results in an efficient and mobile-friendly experience. It also helps establish a content priority and set expectations and requirements with other teams like branding, marketing, etc. early on. From an experience standpoint, having a good mix of organized content will undoubtedly play a significant role in attracting users and building a long-term connection with them.
