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Today, the brand experience is more than the product, visual presentation or the logo. In the digital age, the website is a big part of the brand experience. While part of the website browsing experience goes back to the visual presentation and logo, the user experience is something that many brands are not bringing into the picture. UX design makes users want to interact with the site and come back to it in the future. Therefore, it’s part of the brand’s responsibility to tie in the user experience for a successful branding campaign.
A Great User Experience Enhances Brand Discovery
While you may have a great brand experience on your site, it doesn’t really matter if you have a UX design that doesn’t work. The user experience allows visitors to access and interact with the site which is what enhances brand discovery. A great UX design is composed of many things including a well-designed user interface, adequate space, fast loading images/videos and helpful elements like search bars on the site. Improving or adding these aspects of design will enhance your brand experience.
For example, using adequate spacing and a better font in your design allows your message to be look cleaner and clearer. You can even get free fonts. Readability will improve and with it, so will your ability to communicate with your audience. Improving your site’s loading speeds will encourage more users to use your site. Most users that abandon websites do so because it takes too long for the site to load. A consistent and intuitive navigation menu will help users find what they’re looking for and make it easy for them to use your site and learn about your brand. You can go on and on about how UX design’s relationship with the brand experience.
To add a different perspective, many brands use fancy Flash sites to create a unique brand experience. The problem with these sites is that they hurt the user experience. They often take a long time to load and can cause problems in many browsers. There are many ways to design just as rich and interactive of a website without Flash. By using CSS, jQuery and unique presentations like parallax design, brands can engage their users and inspire them to go through their entire presentation.
Focused Design and Quality Content Results in Visitors Coming Back
Even if a company wants to start a blog to support their branding campaign, there must be a lot of thought put into the design and content. Many popular blogs tend to overdo it when it comes to widgets. The sidebars are littered with them and it can be very distracting. For brands that want to connect with their audience, a more minimalist design approach may suit the initiative better. Taking away all the distractions allows users to focus on the content which is what connects them to the brand. Only the most important widgets should be utilized on the blog.
Speaking of content, a big part of the user experience is based on the quality of the content. Brands need to do a better job in figuring out what kind of content their audience is looking for. The biggest mistake that’s made in content creation is assuming that the audience is interested in the same topics you want to publish. Instead, do the research and figure out the needs, desires and problems of your audience. Then, create content around these topics to get them engaged in your content and invested into your brand.
Don’t Forget About the Customer Experience
At the end of the day, your customers are the most important when it comes to helping you get the word out there for your brand. Unfortunately, most brands drop the ball after the sale is made. The only thing these brands do is try to maximize their profits by focusing on the upsells and cross-sells. What you really want to do is instill the brand experience into your new customers by continuing to offer customers value.
The most obvious way to enhance the customer experience is to follow up with them and teach them how to use your product or service. This will help them maximize the value of what they just bought and also encourage them to consume their purchase. You can follow that up by delivering additional quality content through an email newsletter, blog or social media. If you want to go further, you can create a customer loyalty program to reward customers for their business. The idea here is to enhance your everyday customers’ experience as many of them will be your brand ambassadors.
In conclusion, there are many things that companies can do to further their branding initiatives. They can make a website or start a blog, create a brand-oriented design and invest into their marketing. But at the end of the day, all of those things require a great user experience to deliver the message and impact of your branding campaign. You can think of the user experience as the bridge that closes the gap between you and the user.
