5 Ways UX Can Boost Your Marketing (and Where to Start)

User experience design and marketing were once considered disparate disciplines whose paths didn’t cross—designers focused on creating and understanding user experiences, while marketing specialists focused on reaching new customers and improving conversion rates. But this is no longer the case. In fact, the best digital marketing efforts now have UX design at the heart of their campaigns.

For example, usability consulting firm Experience Dynamics collated stats that found that 52% of surveyed users said a bad mobile experience would make them less likely to engage with a company. Mobile users are also five times more likely to abandon a task if a website isn’t optimized for mobile. And with the vast majority of online searches now happening on mobile devices, digital marketers hoping to convert a potential customer into a paying customer cannot risk poor user experiences on any digital channels.

In other words, digital marketers hoping to stay competitive need to engage with user experiences. 

What Is UX?

User experience, or UX, encompasses a range of disciplines and skills such as user interface design, understanding user intent, and behavior, understanding both user and business goals, customer service, content creation, and improving usability. It helps to think of UX as everything a person interacts with and responds to when they engage in a product or service. What does the user anticipate? How do they feel about the branding or design? How functional or usable is the product? How much friction is there between the potential customer and a sign-up or sale? 

How Can UX Help Your Marketing?

Strong UX design is central to any successful digital marketing strategy because, in addition to helping marketing specialists reach their target market, a positive user experience can boost customer satisfaction and lead to higher conversion rates.

Better Messaging

Even the best digital marketing ideas can be a flop if the delivery and presentation are cluttered, confusing, or present accessibility challenges. This is where UX designers can help—whether optimizing content for mobile users, streamlining calls to action, performing search engine optimization (SEO), or prioritizing the information that is relevant to users, a good UX can both improve a marketing message and ensure that it reaches its target audience. 

Easier Conversion Paths

It’s one thing to get a user to notice your marketing campaign. It’s another to persuade them to register, sign-up, order, or checkout on your website or app. Good UX design can remove conversion friction and seamlessly guide potential buyers onto their customer journeys. UX can also create conversion funnels that allow marketers to see where customers are running into friction points, which allows them to quickly clear the path. 

Improved Branding and Impressions

UX design plays a significant role in telling a brand’s story. Color, images, fonts, text and graphic placement, and visual effects all contribute to how a user feels about a company and its product. This means that the better the user experience, the more likely a digital marketing campaign will reach its target market and leave a positive impression. 

Happier Users

Having a firm grasp of UX means understanding user intent and goals, which, in turn, means a digital marketer can better tailor their campaign to feature relevant content that appeals to their target audience. In other words, good UX makes users feel like a marketing campaign isn’t wasting their time. 

More User Insights via Testing

A large part of the UX discipline is user testing and research. Through learning more about customers, their expectations, and the problems they hope to solve, digital marketers can get to know their target audience better and, by extension, orchestrate focused and effective campaigns. 

Where To Start When It Comes to UX and Marketing

As a digital marketer, you don’t need to be an expert in UX design in order to be effective at your job. Likewise, UX designers don’t need to double as marketing specialists to help craft successful campaigns. That said, both professions can gain a lot by simply having a greater awareness and understanding of how the other discipline can bolster their work.

You’re a Designer

Thanks to market research, digital marketers know a lot about the consumer segment they’re pursuing. Leveraging this knowledge can give UX designers a leg-up as they craft user interfaces that also help their organization meet marketing and business goals. 

Review User Data From Your Analytics

In order to design a positive user experience, designers should enrich their work with insights from market research and user analytics. Learn about the customer profile, understand what potential customers are trying to accomplish and what they’re looking for, and design to meet those needs. 

Test Different Layouts and Designs Often

When building interfaces, UX designers should work with digital marketers to make sure that each new development is addressing the specific needs of customers. If marketers know what users want and UX designers have the design skills to create seamless and delightful experiences, then frequent and rigorous testing should be used to make sure that both marketers and designers are aligned in the development of a product. 

You’re a Marketer

Similar to how a basic understanding of marketing can help UX designers, digital marketers can create more effective campaigns by learning the basics of UX design and understanding the important role it plays in digital marketing. 

Ensure Consistent Designs Across Channels and Experiences

A consistent user experience helps build a brand identity, makes websites and apps easier to navigate across different platforms and devices, and ensures that users know where to find the information they’re looking for. A well-designed product or service can also engender positive feelings from users, which can earn brand trust and goodwill, resulting in sales conversions.  

Build Funnels To Determine Points of Friction When It Comes to UX

Instead of having large and unmanageable customer journey maps, digital marketers can take a leaf out of the UX design book and build funnels that users pass through, which helps identify points of friction. Having a streamlined funnel also allows design and marketing teams to quickly and effectively address UX issues. 

UX Marketing FAQs

Still have questions about the overlap between UX and marketing? We answer some commonly asked questions below. 

Is UX the Same As CRO?

User experience (UX) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) have some overlap, but their areas of focus are different.

UX design is broadly intended to make a website, app, or product easier to use. It takes into account a user’s intent and behavior and crafts designs that are intuitive, usable, accessible, and consistent.

Conversion rate optimization, meanwhile, is intended to get users to perform the types of actions that an organization wants them to perform. It is more specific in its goals than UX design, with a focus on driving key actions such as sign-ups, downloads, or purchases. 

Is It Worth Learning UX?

For digital marketers, learning UX—even at an introductory level—can improve marketing campaigns. This is because having an understanding of UX design can help marketers identify snags and points of friction in their conversion funnel; instead of investing more money in new campaigns, marketing specialists can improve the performance of existing campaigns by identifying and removing blockages in their customer acquisition funnel.

In short, knowing how to improve the user experience will result in both stronger and more efficient marketing campaigns.

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