UX starts before user clicks your website
I’m currently learning UX design at General Assembly, we are introduced to some of the best practices in the industry, or at least the basic skills to become a junior UX designer. From researching user’s problems to prototyping, we focus on how to solve user’s pain point while balancing the business need.
To me, UX design means creating a compelling product that provides meaningful experience for users.
But I know it’s not just about that.
When you really think about it, “user experience” means A LOT OF THINGS. Page speed, content, usability, visual design, product delivery, and even customer service. The moment users interact with your service, it’s the time they start testing your business idea.
However, let’s say you have a well-designed website that solves your user’s problem, but if your audience have trouble finding you online in the first place, is that a good UX?
No.
As someone who’s also interested in content and digital marketing, I started to think what’s the relationship between UX and SEO? Well, I’m not surprised to find them quite related; you can even call them twins from different families, and here’s why:
1. They are all about “user’s experience”
From SEO’s perspective, UX is one of the most important elements regards to ranking. Some factors that impact a website ranking include the site’s speed, responsiveness on different devices, user engagement (e.g. comments, shares…etc), content relevancy, and dwell time (time spend on a page before returning back to the SERP). It’s obvious that if users have problem navigating your website, you’re more likely to get punished from search engines.
From UX perspective, SEO helps people find you in the mass. Rand Fishkin, the founder of MOZ, said in one of the episodes of Whiteboard Friday, “User experience starts before people clicking on your page.” That is why understanding your users prior to any design is so critical because that can affect the copy you write on your website: the language they use, the intent of their search, and how you position yourself online.
2. Bad UX leads to bad SEO, and vice-versa
A poorly designed product not only causes confusion, but keeps people away from using it. And as discussed above, when people have an unenjoyable experience on your website, search engines will penalize your rankings.
Same thing with SEO, if you stuff your page with keywords that makes it hard to read, or having pages that provide minimum value to the users, the overall user experience will be bad even if you designed an easy-to-navigate website.
UX and SEO work together, not separated. Good SEO brings traffic; good UX helps convert.
3. Content is king
This is an old saying that still holds its truth in 2018. In fact, people consume more content these days that our attention span is shorter than a goldfish. We are surrounded with different forms of content that tries to catch our attention: TV, YouTube videos, Facebook, Instagram, ads, the list goes on. But we always remember the ones that stand out; the ones that are enjoyable AND solve our problem.
From what I’ve learned so far, SEO, content marketing, and UX are about:
SEO: Technical strategy. Relevancy. Authority. Visibility. Searchability. Content marketing: Value. Informative Information. Engagement. Relevancy. Consistency.
UX: Clarity. Consistency. Navigation. Experience. Problem solving.
As you can see that the above areas are independent yet overlap a lot. They are neither just business focus nor fully customer oriented; they are both.
UX needs SEO; SEO needs content; content marketing needs content; content needs UX.
While voice UI is probably the hottest upcoming UX trend, I also believe that content driven design is another that worth talking about. UX designers should definitely work with digital marketers to not only understand user intent and create informative content, but help users find the content as easy as possible.
User experience does not start when users interact with your product, it starts when they go online.
