Why Marketers Should Learn UX

A UX expert explains the importance of having UX skills to drive conversions.

I recently sat down for a conversation on UX with Nicole Shannon — a leading digital solutions architect and current Associate Director of Digital Marketing for Furman University. Here is a transcript of our discussion on why UX is a primary driver of sales in the digital age.

UX Design

Hi, Nicole. Thanks for agreeing to do this. First off, how did you come to be experienced in UX?

I was drawn to UX design when I discovered the huge impact it had on the success of my digital marketing and web development projects. Once I got involved in the field I was hooked. I enjoy the research and creative problem-solving involved in UX design and the satisfaction of seeing the quantitative results of my efforts.

In realizing people from all different backgrounds and experience levels might be reading this, can we start with your definition of what UX is?

UX design is about creating a positive experience for a user. We have all experienced bad UX at some point from the customer service phone tree that sends you in circles to the e-commerce site with the counterintuitive checkout process. In the digital arena, UX is usually associated with a person’s experience using an app, a website, or navigating through a digital advertising sales funnel. Ultimately though, UX is the experience or take away a person has from interacting with your business or organization. This interaction when positive can assist with the acquisition of new leads, the conversion of leads into new customers and the fostering of new customers into loyal customers and brand advocates.

When your user’s experience is poor however they may abandon their interaction with you, fail to follow through on a sale, or decide to share their negative experience with others.

What do you think is the main thing people get wrong about UX?

I think many people have a limited view of UX. I want people to think of bad UX as any roadblock that could come in the way of the interaction you would like to have with your end user. Is there something you are trying to communicate? Is there something your customers are trying to do on your app? Is there something you are trying to sell? These are all interactions that you want to go smoothly and bad UX will cause an obstruction in these processes.

Remember, UX is not just about websites. UX is relevant at every point of the customer journey, every part of the sales funnel can be either improved by good UX or hindered by bad UX. It’s about the entire user experience — the entire customer experience. It really infiltrates every part of someone’s business.

I see. So it’s much broader than people outside of UX might think. Let’s start with website UX, though, since that is the first place people tend to think about when approaching UX. What is a consideration that must be made there?

When applied to a website, UX design can address something as broad as how successfully you present and communicate your unique selling proposition to something as nitty-gritty as to how easily someone can find and navigate your customer service chat app.

But it’s also bigger than that, it’s the entire narrative of interaction.

Could you explain that bigger narrative a little more?

Sure, it’s an entire story of how you are able to communicate with your potential customer, and how that relationship unfolds as you provide offers and services to them.

When should the UX process begin?

It needs to be addressed when you discuss the first touchpoint you’re going to have with prospective customers. And then it continues to be addressed as you maintain that customer relationship.

What are some questions UX designers ask when starting a new project?

I always ask, “What is the current customer experience?”, “How frustrating is it for them to be able to get what they need?”, and “How readily are you addressing those needs?”.

So, say a business owner or marketing department can’t answer those questions well, what has usually gone wrong?

Often times I find that businesses have not taken the time to consider UX at all and when they do they often consider the customer from their perspective. Attempting to emphasize with the customer and imagine what their experience is like instead doing their due diligence by conducting the user testing and customer research they need.

Can you give an example of that?

Yes. I was hired once to come in and repair the UX on a large budget enterprise website because the project was initialized and completed without anyone considering UX. Just saying it out loud sounds unbelievable, but this was an actual project completed by a well-known firm. The project was initially such a disaster that the website was completely unusable until my team was able to come in and assist with the repairs.

Wow. I’m guessing that the project did not go as well as they had hoped? Okay, getting away from large enterprises for a moment, what advice do you have for the small business owner, or freelancer even, who would love to have great UX, but can’t afford to pay someone else to do it?

Even a person that lacks formal UX training can learn how to improve their UX by asking their users what their pain points are. A user’s frustrations are clear moments for UX improvement.

Once those areas of improvement are identified, how should a small operation go about making those improvements?

If there’s no budget in place for even a few hours of UX consulting, then I would suggest finding a member of your team who is interested in learning UX on their own. There are so many great online courses and materials — some paid, some not, that can give anyone an introduction to UX.

How important is UX for an online business?

If your business has poor UX then leads are going to abandon your sales process. They’re going to get frustrated with you because they can’t find what they’re looking for or do what they want to do. Which means you’re at risk for losing a potential customer- a potential sale.

It sounds like UX is directly tied to profitably then.

Yes. And it affects free traffic and paid traffic. It even affects someone you met at a networking event who took your business card and decided to check out your website when they got back to their office. Maybe they had a great interaction with you in-person, but a bad experience with your website could abruptly end their interest in wanting to work with you.

You brought up paid advertising, how does UX factor there?

With paid ads, UX can be the difference between getting that conversion, or not. I mean, if your paying to get a visitor to a landing page and the UX of that page is poor-you’re probably losing that lead. And that’s really bad because you’ve not only lost potential money from a possible lead, you’ve also lost the money you spent to get that visitor.

Can you discuss the relationship between marketing and UX a little more?

When looking at marketing in any channel, UX helps a marketer adequately communicate. That communication should clearly relay the product or service they are selling, how it will benefit their customer and how their customer can attain it.

Even when you’re setting up something like a brand awareness campaign, UX can help make that experience a positive one by considering the takeaway that your audience has after hearing your message or interacting with your marketing materials.

How do the best UX designers accomplish something like that?

It starts by doing a lot of research. Researching the needs and behaviors of your primary users and conducting user testing before finalizing your UX design. Another thing that’s done in UX similar to marketing is to develop user personas to really understand who your primary users are.

It sounds like what you’re suggesting is that UX has huge implications in not only websites but print campaigns, ad campaigns, just about every client-facing thing a business does.

That’s right. Any touchpoint that a user has with your organization or business, anything that is a part of your communication to your audience. Your content marketing both on and off your site, social media, new client onboarding materials, customer newsletters, basically all ongoing communication, all of these things should be addressed and assessed from a UX perspective.

Nicole, thank you for sharing your UX experience here. To connect with Nicole, find her on LinkedIn.