What’s a user experience? And what’s makes it a horrible or great one? These are the questions every business should ask and have the answers to. At least, they should if they want to appease their audience.
The problem is a great user experience isn’t the same across various industries. In order to figure out what works for your business, you have to do research, testing, and validation.
In this guide, we’ll show you what it takes to make a solid UX strategy. But first, let’s go over what the user experience is and how it relates to UX strategies.
What is the User Experience?
User experience (UX) is another buzzword we use in the digital marketing field. However, a lot of businesses still struggle with understanding it’s definition and purpose.
In a nutshell, UX is all about consistently improving how people interact with your brand, whether it’s online or offline. When visitors come to your website or visit your storefront, they should feel good about shopping and interacting with your business.
Great examples of businesses with excellent user experiences are Google and Facebook. They both excel in giving users exactly what they want.
Google makes it simple for searchers to find what they’re looking for. And Facebook delivers content to wall activity that resonates with the user.
Breaking Down the UX Strategy
Now, let’s go over the user experience strategy. A user is anyone who purchases a product or service. And the experience comes from the interaction you have with the product or brand.
What every business seeks to understand is how to make users’ experiences superior, so they’ll return for more. Growing your loyal customer base and drawing in new customers is the key to expansion.
To tell whether the user experience you offer is good, you have to analyze whether you’re delivering on your promise. Are you resolving their problems? Is interacting with your business convenient and simple?
For a website, it’s all about the design. In the store, it’s all about customer service and atmosphere.
Next, we’ll go into the elements of the UX process.
The Elements of Designing Your UX Strategy
One way to look at UX is as the science of design. You’re consistently observing and testing your UX until you get it right. You find this by collecting data that supports and validates the design you select.
Here’s a quick overview of the fundamentals of UX design.
Behavior Analysis
This is a biggie because people are unique. This makes it difficult for brands to pinpoint what will work and what won’t. However, you can overcome this conundrum with a little research.
For instance, you can monitor their behaviors. How are they engaging with your brand? Do they love it or hate it? Are they looking for help with satisfying a current need or to resolve an issue they have?
What you’re doing is identifying the habits and goals of your end user, then using that to make their experience seamless. This data is available on Google Analytics and you can obtain it using surveys.
You can also have a website audit done by professionals. You can read more about it here.
Here’s a closer look at how you can collect data for proper behavioral analysis.
Conduct Interviews
You can do this live or online using surveys and questionnaires. Focus on qualitative data, such as what they think of a product, service or navigation of the website. In other words, data you can’t measure but provides intimate and useful details.
Create a Customer Journey Map
This is a way you can visualize the journey customers undergo when they interact with your product or brand. It’s a story detailing where the journey begins and how it reaches the end.
You can pinpoint flaws throughout the journey. For instance, in the beginning of the journey, you may have great information to peak the interest of users. Then near the middle and end, you may lack calls to action and follow-up communications to seal the deal.
Business Strategy
Your business strategy has everything to do with your competitive edge and meeting business objectives.
This is how you’ll differentiate your brand from the rest, while at the same time appeasing your target market. However, when you’re creating a UX strategy, you have to hone in on the human-centered process.
After all, you’re looking to please people, not just business goals. Sure, you want to sell more products. But how will you connect with users and ensure they’re satisfied throughout the journey to make this a reality?
Understanding the process through the eyes of your customers is key. To help, you can look for the answers to the following questions:
- Who’s the end user?
- What’s their motivation?
- How do they feel about it (frustrated, excited, cautious)?
- Are you making assumptions or using facts?
- Is the buyer process clear?
- What do users expect when they click this?
- Are you considering the wants or needs of your audience?
- What is it you want users to do and how will you help them to do it?
With this intel, you can develop a design that improves the user flow (how people move through your site). And you can ensure it looks and functions nicely.
It’s important to create a prototype as close to the real thing as possible, then test it on users. Once you validate the end product works, you can launch it.
Now, all you have to do is continue to monitor and tweak your UX strategy as needed.
Don’t Forget About Website Uptime
You can’t deliver a quality user experience without quality web hosting services. If your site is constantly down, then you can bet your customers will go elsewhere.
Once you make a bad impression on a prospect, it’s likely they’ll never return again. So first impressions are everything.
You can ensure your site is always up at Site Uptime. Here, you’ll receive real-time monitoring reports for your website. And if your site goes down for whatever reason, you’re notified immediately.
Don’t let poor web hosting be the downfall of your business. Contact Site Uptime today for more information!
