Why User Experience is Key to Digital Marketing Success?
Have you ever visited a website that felt like a breeze while browsing through? Have you ever bookmarked a website just because its webpage felt so different and good from the others?
According to the top Dallas digital marketing agency, there is a distinction between user and customer. Not every user becomes a customer, but it is of paramount importance that every single visitor is paid equal attention.
The way a user is made to feel while browsing on a website is user experience.
If the user on the way to browsing learns a thing or two about the brand, clicks on the ‘Buy Now’ button, and proceeds to check out eventually means that the digital marketing initiatives were successful for the company.
Surveys and analyses by the top digital marketing companies in Dallas and around the world agree that not all brands get to create an ambiance that will blow their visitors with a mind blowing user experience. Some even do not understand the need and importance of focusing on user experience for eventual success in digital marketing.
What is User Experience?
The human experience or feeling generated when a user comes into contact with a brand is termed user experience. A user may experience the brand physically or virtually. Since we are talking in terms of digital marketing, we would narrow down our discussions in this article to focus upon only the experiences a user generates when they come into contact with the brand virtually, i.e., through a digital medium, viz., websites, apps, or social media channels and pages of the brand.
What does the user feel in general when they visit the brand’s website or other such virtual meeting space? Since digital marketing is all about putting the word of the company or brand in front of the user, a user experience is all about how the user would perceive that message. The layout, the design, the optimization, the analysis, the images, etc., everything counts here. The user is the center point of attention, and very rightly, the experience generated by the user is of paramount importance for any digital marketing campaign to be successful.
Why is it Important for Digital Marketing Success?
Brands and companies want to know how a user feels about their products or services. The reasons are manifold. But, one of the main reasons is to retain the existing customers, and gain new customers. On this account, many surveys and research are being conducted by reputed agencies on how a user feels about a brand. Numbers talk. Let’s listen to what they want to say.
The statistics are alarming. Consider the following:
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Research by PWC reveals that 32 percent of the consumers are most likely to be driven away from a brand just after one bad experience.
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Forrester’s research report points out that every $1 invested in user experience gives a return of $100
Similar other reports highlight that:
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If a brand can retain as little as 5 percent of its customers due to creating a good user experience for them, then the profits will increase by at least 25 percent.
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86 percent of customers are willing to pay more if the user experience is great.
Those were just the tip of the iceberg. There is a plethora of such research and analysis being conducted around the globe. Invariably, all of them point out the identical facts unanimously.
ln a nutshell, it can be safely concluded that user experience is an important element for the success of not only digital marketing but also for the success of the entire brand.
Let us try to decipher this further in detail.
Every interaction creates a user experience. What’s yours?
We have come to know the universal fact that every customer or user is unique. However, we also need to understand that every user interaction is as special and unique as it can be.
Every time a user visits your website, he interacts with your brand. Thus, every user interaction generates an experience for them that is unlike any other. It could be either a good user experience or a bad user experience. Most digital marketers fail to acknowledge this fact.
Most digital marketing activities focus on only creating digital content to market your brands and delivering them to the customers, not knowing or understanding how the content is being received and perceived by the users.
Most brands who see these alarming stats and facts get intimidated. They are not led to correct and accurate understanding. They do not have the expertise to understand user experience intricately.
They need to understand that when digital marketing embraces user experience, it becomes expansive, holistic, inclusive, and thus, responsive and responsible.
Understanding correctly that the experiences generated by the user, whether good or bad, are in the first place triggered by the brand itself. Thus the onus to set it straight lies on the brand too. This is where specialized digital marketers like the Dallas digital marketing agency come into the picture.
It also means that a good user experience can be architectured, articulated, and directed to fetch the desired goals. Further, it indicates that a bad user experience can be converted into a good one. Eventually win the users’ hearts and loyalty.
Are you creating your brand advocates through the user experience?
Research points out that 13% of the users will report their negative user experiences about a brand to at least 15 people.
If this is the case, it will lead to negative word-of-mouth publicity for the brand. Negative publicity for one brand means positive publicity for the competitor brands.
On the contrary, 72% of the users promise to spread the good word about a brand. At least six people if they feel good about it.
Thus, every user experience, whether good or bad, creates a brand advocate in the user. Digital marketing companies such as the Dallas digital marketing company strive to convert every user experience into positive brand publicity.
Since the behavior and demands of the user are ever-changing in this fast-paced digital arena. Analyzing what the users need to experience when they visit your website. This is the key to creating a road map for a good user experience.
Key elements of User Experience for Success in Digital Marketing
Now that we have understood what user experience is and why it is critical for success in digital marketing, we need to look at what constitutes a user experience.
1. User Interface
A user interface is a connection point or platform through which a human user interacts and communicates with the computer or machine. In simpler terms, it means a virtual place where the brand and its users interact with each other. For the digital marketer, that virtual place is, most of the time, the brand’s website.
A brand needs to ensure that its website gets built in a way that will not only attract the visitor to peep in but also make them stay longer and eventually entice them to become the brand’s customers.
For many businesses, the website is often the first point of contact. The user experience for the visitors while browsing through the website must not drive the visitors away. According to the Dallas digital marketing agency experts, ‘unfortunately, this is the case.’
Research points out the fact that visitors are five times more likely to close the website if it is not mobile-friendly and fast.
User interface embraces under its canopy a whole realm of factors. Everything from technicalities to creativity and understanding of the human psyche plays a role in creating a good user interface.
2. Speed
Everything matters, right from the website being fast enough to load and the content being valuable for the customers to images or graphics in the content.
Some surveys reveal that customers are likely to abandon a website if it takes more than 5 seconds to load. Thus, the digital marketing agencies in Dallas and around the world, unanimously agree that the speed at which a web page loads is critical.
3. Bounce Rate
Alongside the speed of loading a webpage, the amount of time a visitor spends on the website also matters.
If the visitor just landed on your website and stays momentarily and flies away to another site, it means the content on your website is not of much value to your visitors. It is known as the bouncing of the visitors.
While this may be perfectly alright if it is a one-off occasion. If it happens frequently, one needs to introspect and rectify it.
A high bounce rate tells the search engines that your website and its contents are of no good for the search results to rank high. It will ultimately hurt digital marketing initiatives.
4. Uniform Seamless Design
Users today want to access your website through various devices, viz., computer, laptop, tablet, and mobile phones. They may visit your website from one particular device. Then may want to shift to another device and continue browsing your website from where they left it on the previous device.
To make this transition easier and with a seamless experience, your website should not only have a uniformity in its design to give a seamless browsing experience but it also should be synchronized with the particular user’s visit.
The top digital marketing companies in Dallas agree that it takes a lot of meticulous planning and attention to keep the user and the different devices and access points in mind while designing a website.
Wrap Up
Has reading this made you more aware of the need to make your visitors feel important and special? Now you know there goes a lot of hard work behind making that web page browsing feel smooth and buttery, eye-catching, and arresting.
When you come across a similar experience the next time, do appreciate the efforts put on to give you that wonderful feeling while you browse through one page after another. You knowingly or unknowingly had a great user experience. And that is one of the most vital success factors for digital marketing.