Simple UX rules that will give your content strategy a boost

Content marketing has been around for quite some time now. It remains one of the most popular marketing practices because it gives brands credibility, engages customers, and builds stronger relationships with them.

However, the approach to content marketing has changed. While in the past, it was enough for you to publish short-form articles daily to rank high, today this is not possible.

Millions of new content pieces are created and published every 60 seconds. As your target audience now has a greater array of content to choose from, their demands have also grown. They now turn to high-quality and insightful content that provides actionable tips and helps them solve specific problems.

And, the quality of your content is not the only thing they care about. The overall website appeal and design are also immensely important UX factors, helping them form their perceptions of your brand in just a few seconds.

Therefore, to stay competitive in such an overcrowded ecosystem and win your target audience over, you need to focus on creating a customer-first content marketing strategy.

Increase your Site’s Usability, then Focus on Content

No matter how great your content is, if a user cannot access, read, and share it easily, they won’t engage with it. And, to identify the major problems harming user experience and fix them fast, you need to do continuous technical audits of your site. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Does my site load as expected? Research says that users expect your site to load in less than 3 seconds. And, delays greater than that may frustrate them, causing them to kick your site too early.
• How clear is my site’s architecture? A visitor lands on your site for a specific reason. And, if it takes them more than three clicks to find the information they’re looking for, they will probably leave your site without converting. So, start with your navigation menu, ensuring that all labels and URLs are logical and easy to understand. Internal links and website features like sidebars, search bars, comments sections, and social media buttons are all important elements to add to your website to make it easier to navigate.
• Is my website responsive? More than half of your website traffic now comes from mobile devices. Logically, your mobile users expect exceptional browsing experience in order to take the desired action. This is why you need to invest in responsive design and create a site that feels and looks the same across all devices.
• Is my content easy to read? Even the most quality articles get ignored if their design doesn’t hook people’s attention. So, to keep users interested and focused on your content from beginning to end, make sure you leave lots of white space, remove all distractions like popups and irrelevant ads, and choose legible fonts and letter sizes. As for colors, choose contrasting combinations, and yet make sure they blend well together.

Segment your Audiences

Your users love personalized content. Stats say that 52% of customers would give you their personal data in exchange for targeted offers and content, while more than 60% of them expect brands to provide personalized experiences based on their previous purchases.

Sure, to tailor your content strategy to your audiences’ needs and expectations, you first need to get to know them. And, the first step to take is to segment them. Research their demographics, background, major challenges, hobbies and personal interests, goals, biggest fears, and common objections. Once you do so, you can finally create solid buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a fictional depiction of your ideal customer. With its help, you will be able to better visualize your website visitors, create relevant content, and deliver highly targeted user experiences. Most importantly, buyer personas can guide your entire digital marketing strategy, from understanding keyword intent to addressing local markets.

Let’s say that you’re a small, beach restaurant in the Gold Coast. As your competition is fierce, you want to grow your online presence and get yourself noticed by the right customers. In this case, working with a local SEO Gold Coast agency that understands the local market would help you target the right keywords and create industry-specific content that resonates with them.

Create Engaging and Interactive Content

Now that you’ve built a pleasant environment for your visitors and built buyer personas, it’s time to focus on the quality of your content.

Your website design should inspire a visitor to spend more time on your site and help them find the information, guidance, or motivation they’re looking for. However, to provide true value to your visitors, your website design needs to be paired with exceptional content.

We’re living in an era of personalized marketing, where your users expect to get highly targeted and relevant content to speaks to them as individuals. You need to do the abovementioned target audience segmentation to understand their needs, problems, and expectations and tailor your content strategy to their needs.

Instead of writing articles just for the sake of SEO, you need to strategize your content marketing calendar in the long run. Each piece of content you produce needs to be highly relevant to your audiences, well-researched, backed up by authoritative sources and, above all, helpful.

Even though articles are the traditional form of content marketers utilize, they’re definitely not the only one. There are numerous content types that will engage your target audience and boost their user experience. For example, comprehensive guides are a helpful resource that provides actionable tips for readers. Infographics and slideshows give you the opportunity to pack a bunch of data and boring statistics in a highly engaging and visually appealing way. Some of your customers would rather watch a video or listen to a podcast instead of reading a lengthy chunk of text.

Your goal is to think about the types of content that resonate with your audiences and focus your energy on them. Most importantly, keep auditing your content to see what really works.

Keep Users Focused by Minimizing Distractions

Have you ever heard of the experiment conducted by researchers Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper? Namely, they placed two tables, one with 6 jam pots and one with 24 types of jam, in two completely different places in a local supermarket. What they noticed was that the larger display attracted more visitors, but had fewer sales than the smaller display.

The same rule applies to digital marketing. When provided with too many choices, your users may get distracted from converting. Given that, it’s important to use your UX site design to limit choices and minimize distractions. This is the only way to focus visitors’ attention on what is really important to them.

• Create an article around a single topic to keep them interested. Jumping from one topic to another may confuse a reader and get them to kick your content.
• Limit the number of content pieces presented on your blog. For example, packing 20 articles on a single blog page may be too overwhelming for your visitors, hurting their experience with your site. In this case, you should limit the number of content links and suggestions to help a user find the desired information faster. Also, a nice search bar could be a great addition to your blog.
• Remove any additional distractions, such as annoying popups or auto-play content. These are all elements that frustrate users and drive them off. You need to make sure that vital elements of your content pages, such as your internal links, CTAs, or social media buttons stay prominent.

Over to You

Content marketing and UX design simply go hand in hand. Functional, appealing, and user-centric design takes your content to the next level. It helps visitors create positive first impressions, engages them, and inspires them to convert. However, the design doesn’t mean anything if not combined with highly relevant content that brings value to the people reading it.

Hope these tactics will help you align your UX tactics with your content marketing strategy.