Understanding Online Marketing, Part 2: User Experience (UX)

Understanding Online Marketing UX User Experience

In this installment of our Understanding Online Marketing series, we’ll be taking a look at the User Experience (UX), and its importance on your website.

What is UX?

The user experience is exactly what it sounds like: a positive, negative or indifferent experience a visitor has with your brand online, or in person.

When the UX is good, a visitor will stick around, and actually look forward to coming back to your site. In a way, good UX is similar to going to your favorite restaurant where you love the food, the wait staff and the atmosphere.

Let’s examine some key areas where user experience comes into play in your web design …

Navigation

When it comes to site navigation, it’s always a good idea to be as clear as possible. Like the Dollar Shave Club homepage example below, you need to ensure that your navigation makes sense and involves 0% guesswork. In other words, this is not the place to be cute or metaphorical.

Navigation and Homepage User Experience UX

Whenever possible, it’s always best to have ONE site navigation. For a large portion of websites, a single navigation with dropdown menus will suffice nicely. If you have a more complex hierarchy of subpages, it may be necessary to have a dropdown menu that drills down into a secondary dropdown menu.

You can also use mega drop downs, like Williams-Sonoma …

User Experience Mega Drop Down Menus

Or if you simply must have a secondary navigation, make sure it’s consistent on every page of your site like J. Crew does …

UX Double Navigation J Crew

Typically, multiple navigation bars, or primary and secondary navigation bars can be tricky and difficult for the user to navigate — which means a bad user experience.

Homepage

In addition to successful navigation, the Dollar Shave Club homepage example above also provides a solid overall user experience. It’s clear, with just a couple of options to choose from: (1) watch the video; (2) click on the “Do It” call to action (CTA). The sparse copy above the CTA is clear, compelling — and expresses two great benefits, “a great shave, for a few bucks.” This is UX at its finest.

Mobile Homepage

Here are a few UX best practices for a mobile homepage:

User Experience Mobile Homepage

Subpages

Just like your homepage, subpages need to be clear and uncluttered. Once again, Dollar Shave Club gives us a good example. You know exactly where you are and what your options are — without having to think about it. Three call-to-actions (my suggested maximum for any web page) make it easy to choose the blade that’s right for your beard, and move on. The fact that the page looks appealing is also important.

Subpage User Experience Example

Mobile Subpages

Some examples of what goes into building a mobile subpage with solid UX:

UX Call to Action Mobile Subpage

We hope these best practices help improve the user experience on your website!

Want to learn more?
Sign up for our complimentary Holistic Approach to Online Marketing webinar.

You can also read our article, Ultimate User Experience (UX): The Dollar Shave Club.

Check out other articles in the series:
Understanding Online Marketing, Part 1: Your Website

 

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Posted in How To, Marketing, User Experience (UX), Web Design
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