How to Refine User Experience to Drive Digital Marketing Success
In this age of the digital native, the average consumer is more empowered than ever before. For businesses looking to attract and convert consumer interest into revenue-boosting opportunities, User Experience (UX) is essential to success. So, how does your business ensure it is providing a customer journey that leads to engagement and conversions?
Experts suggest that by 2020, customer experience will surpass both price and product as the most critical brand differentiator. What's more, one in three people will abandon a product purchase because they can't find the information they need.
The perfect online consumer journey consists of a user-friendly website that couples seamless navigation with a simple buying journey in addition to dynamic and digestible content, top-notch customer support and mobile compatibility.
Combining these core elements enables a business to create an online environment that can take a brand to the next level. That said, many businesses neglect to prioritize UX, hurting their potential for commercial growth and development.
Find out how the 3 key factors related to user experience and how it could fit into your digital strategy.
Mobile
According to GSMA data, 5 billion people now have a mobile phone connection.
Mobile technology caters to today's hyper-connected, on-the-go mentality, offering a level of freedom, flexibility, and autonomy that has changed the way people interact with the world. And as mobile now accounts for 65% of digital media time, the traditional desktop is fast becoming a secondary touchpoint for the majority of today's digital users.
Mobile is ingrained deep into the consciousness of the contemporary online user. As such, mobile consumers are five times more likely to abandon a purchase if the website they're trying to navigate isn’t optimized for their device.
The potential consequences of a poorly optimized mobile site are a significant loss in conversions and in some cases, detrimental damage to a brand’s reputation.
However, taking measures to ensure a website is well designed and fully optimized for mobile, doesn't mean forgetting about desktop. Most e-commerce transactions still occur on a desktop, so it’s key ensure the UX is consistent across all mediums to provide a balanced multi-platform strategy.
Key takeaway: Place focus on the UX of your mobile touchpoints, but don't let desktop design and functionality slip.
Content
Content is still king and crucial to marketing teams looking to provide a seamless UX.
Amongst B2B marketers, 91% use content to boost brand awareness and engage with their target audience on a meaningful level, and over 70% of digital marketers can demonstrate how content marketing has served to increase engagement and leads.
In addition to providing consumers with a clean, digestible design, a fully optimized mobile design, and intuitive sales journey, delivering targeted, SEO rich content that speaks to prospects on a personal level is a vital element of user experience.
Not only will publishing well-crafted content help to boost rankings on Google searches, but SEO friendly copy will also provide the reader with a valuable answer to their question, almost instantly. The result? Increased conversions as opposed to high bounce rates and cart abandonment.
Take Cox Media Group for example. With the realization that the company was falling behind competitors, relying on TV, newspaper, radio and other traditional marketing forms of advertising too much, the media colossus decided to focus on its digital content marketing efforts.
By creating an online 'Success Kit' in several formats including eBook and video, the brand offered its target audience valuable information on how to succeed in the media world. By doing so, Cox Media connected with a host of previously untapped prospects, earning 5,000 downloads, generating 2,000 leads within a year of publication.
Key takeaway: Review content marketing efforts and see where there may be gaps. Create content that addresses pain points, provides solutions, is SEO friendly and can work across multiple platforms.
Visual & Voice Search
The next few years is forecast to witness a significant rise in visual and voice search as AI and other autonomous technologies continue to evolve.
For instance, renowned online grocery provider Ocado recently released a voice-based food shopping app compatible with Amazon Alexa. By giving consumers the power to add items to their grocery list using voice commands, adding to the brand’s already varied point-of-purchase options.
Speaking on the development, Simon Horrocks, A/NZ country manager of AppDynamics, said:
“What this [partnership] tells us is that we should expect the unexpected when it comes to the way brands engage via voice and we’re certain to see some innovative approaches from brands. The agreement between Amazon and Ocado may well be an indicator of what we’re likely to see more of in the emerging voice application marketplace.”
According to recent insights, as more consumers begin to embrace voice and visual search, traditional SEO practices could prove obsolete, moving towards what has been coined as a 'Search Channel Optimization' (SCO) approach.
At present, 60.5 million people in the USA alone use digital assistants like Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant. Also, 20% of current mobile searches on Google are made via voice search. Voice and visual search functionality are on the rise and there’s no stopping it - which means to succeed, these elements must also form vital parts of your overall UX strategy.
Key takeaway: Investigate how voice and visual search technologies could enhance user experience. It could be as simple as live chat or voice search, but as the technologies evolve more opportunities may present themselves.
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As digital technology becomes more sophisticated, so do consumers.
We are an intuitive species, and as our digital lives become an extension of our physical being, it's up to brands and businesses to offer a level of user experience that caters to a new breed of web user.
Take note of the 3 tactics above and take action now to ensure the best possible chance of long-term commercial success.