The goal of this article is to help you understand UI/UX Design, and ultimately why your website needs to start with an intuitive plan.
As more and more consumers embrace mobile devices and seek information at their own convenience, the rules of brand engagement are ever evolving. If your website isn’t setup to adapt and respond to visits from many different screen resolutions, you may miss out on opportunities to achieve greater success with both your audience as well as the search engines. The idea is to reach your consumer wherever they are, in the right moment, with the right information.
Responsive Design
Recently, Google publicly announced that their search engine algorithm will take both quality content as well as the mobile-readiness of your website into consideration when listing your website in its index. What this means is that your website needs to retain both quick loading speeds as well as easily readable content, along with its core functionality, especially when accessed from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.
Even if search engines weren’t partially judging your site based on its responsiveness, it would still be a great idea to build your site in a way that optimizes the user experience.
Good developers already build sites to be intuitive and responsive right out of the gate, but if your site hasn’t been updated in a long time, it’s definitely worth your time to understand how the research and planning process works and why it’s important to the success of your project.
5-Steps to building a successful online presence (based on Google’s best practices)
- Step 1 – Organize audience insights: The first step in the process involves a little research into your audience to determine exactly what information they are looking for and when they will be looking for it, then planning your project around that information.
- Step 2 – Design compelling creative. Work with a creative agency to bring your brand alive visually, and implement brand consistency across all channels, from your website & social media to print collateral.
- Step 3 – Execute with integrated technology. It’s 2017; it’s possible to fully analyze a consumer’s purchase path and understand which touchpoints are most likely to translate into action, however, it’s important to seek guidance from your agency with regard to UI/UX design, digital marketing, & development capabilities. Depending on the size and scope of your project, this step can take months to accomplish.
- Step 4 – Reach audiences across screens. Plan for the mobile world we live in now, not the world you grew up in. Your site should be intuitive and responsive across all devices; implementing programmatic advertising affords brands to take a big leap toward actionable measurement.
- Step 5 – Measure the impact. How will you know what high level decisions to make and what KPIs to tweak unless you implement a plan to measure the progress? Be sure your key decision makers are armed with a way to understand the metrics. Typically a good agency will provide key decision makers with the analytics they need to understand their audience behavior. Get better answers to your questions and make more informed decisions about your marketing spend and creative direction with good measurement tools.
A closer look at intuitive UI/UX Design & Site Architecture
A very important component of usability is site architecture. More recently referred to as UI/UX design, planning for proper organization and structure will allow users to easily and intuitively find exactly what they are looking for quickly and efficiently, instead of sending them in loops without a clear-cut path to finding the information they need. This step is easy to overlook, yet without a carefully planned site architecture, many website redesigns will only yield a “prettier” version of your old website…without improving upon usability. When it’s time for a website redesign, it’s important to seek the guidance of a professional UI/UX designer to assist with constructing the page schematics and visual blueprints. Most professional creative agencies will provide a wireframe report during the research and planning phase to help organize your project before any development takes place.
New types of internet enabled devices are being released and put into consumers’ hands every day, so you should expect that your website will need to be both highly organized as well as able to accept traffic from a variety of sources. The best way to determine the status of your site is to talk with an agency that you can trust. Interested in learning more? Subscribe to our blog to get the latest digital marketing advice emailed right to your inbox about once per month.
