Brands Need To Deliver A Great User Experience (UX)

Let’s say you’re a birdwatcher. You’ve got a feeder. You need to buy birdseed for it.

Back in The Dark Ages (no computers or mobile phones), you’d go to a store made out of brick and mortar. You’d talk to a salesman who’d hit you with some primitive marketing– like so:

Marketing like that doesn’t work anymore. Certainly not in the case of online shoppers. They don’t want a hard sell. They want a great user experience (UX).

User experience covers all aspects of a customer’s interaction with a brand. It includes both interaction design (which allows people to interact with apps or websites to do things like download documents, subscribe to newsletters, and purchase products) and usability (how easy it is to use a site’s interaction design).

Key elements of interaction design include mobile compatibility; uncluttered pages; copy optimized for search engines; smooth navigation; ease-of-use; and being able to contact customer service.

However, user experience is broader than site navigation and interacting with apps. It also includes content. That’s because a big part of user experience is how a brand speaks to its customers and anticipates their needs.

Content allows a brand to demonstrate expertise: to share its knowledge and success stories. It also seeks to actively engage its audience by encouraging them to ask questions and share their stories. Good content helps build the trust and credibility that every brand needs.

So if you sold birdseed, and your customers were birdwatchers, what kind of helpful content could you offer? A few ideas:

Does all of a brand’s content have to be sober and serious?

No. In fact, I think it would be a great mistake.

Why? Because today’s consumers want brands to show some personality. It’s hard to connect without it.

Together, humor and content can create a unique user experience and bolster brand voice. Cisco Creative Director Tim Washer puts it this way:

Comedy is the most powerful way to humanize a brand because it demonstrates empathy… when we look vulnerable, when we let our guard down a little bit, that’s when we make a connection.

These days, there’s so little content out there that truly connects with people… (but)
if you can make someone laugh, that is the most intimate connection you can make.

To be successful, brands need to provide the best possible user experience: they need to make it easy for people to use their sites and apps to find the information they need and achieve their objectives: downloads, subscriptions, purchases, feedback, whatever.

So the Birdwatcher Edition of good UX might look something like this: