As more companies realize the importance of offering valuable products and services, they’re adding UX specialists to their marketing teams. User experience (UX) design professionals ensure that consumers feel comfortable using websites and applications and enjoy the process.
It sounds like a simple task to design a website that people enjoy using. But with all the flashy graphics and complex information to wade through, designing an enjoyable user experience is much more complicated than it was in the early stages of the internet.
But an interesting question has emerged: is UX part of marketing, or do these design professionals belong in a different department? We hope that this article helps you answer this question for your company.
What Is UX Design?
UX design involves the entirety of the developmental process and includes aspects such as branding, aesthetics, function, and navigation. It often intersects with human-computer interaction (HCI), industrial design, behavioral psychology, graphic design, information architecture, marketing research, engineering, and project management. Many businesses now view it as a strategic differentiator and key competency for success in the digital age.
Although enterprise UX is not yet a well-defined field, it does require skills from several other areas like psychology, communication, computer science, and graphic design. As such, UX design can be seen as part of marketing when designing for customer acquisition or retention strategies via content and platform optimization.
What Is Marketing?
Marketing focuses on creating value to a company’s brand and services. It encompasses all aspects of the business, from product development to customer service.
The two most popular marketing strategies are awareness and communication, focusing on how companies create brand awareness and effectively communicate with their customers.
In this sense, UX design is not marketing because it is more about designing interfaces than explicitly marketing a product. The UX designer’s goal should be to provide customers with an interface that allows them to accomplish tasks quickly without problems or frustration.
Similarities Between UX Design and Marketing
Though they are both concerned with the user’s experience, marketing focuses more on the sale while UX is more focused on the design that eventually leads to the sale. However, they are both critical in creating a successful product.
Here are the characteristics that UX and marketing share:
Research
Whether starting a new business or rebranding an existing one, your ultimate goal is to connect with your target audience and persuade them to buy what you’re selling. Both disciplines focus on understanding your target market and creating a user experience that meets those needs.
Both UX and marketing start by researching who their audience is. After confirming customers’ needs, they develop strategies for meeting them. When creating the product itself, both disciplines use research data to create something tailored specifically for the customers they want to reach.
Psychology
Both UX design and marketing are about understanding and appealing to the needs and wants of people. Both need to have a strong sense of human behavior, motivations, and emotions to be successful.
Additionally, both disciplines need to be able to create engaging and compelling experiences that appeal to people on a personal level. Ultimately, both aim to get people to take some kind of action, whether it be making a purchase, signing up for a service, or something else entirely.
When designing a user experience, designers will also try to influence decision-making by implementing cognitive biases into their designs. Both UX designers and marketers will often use persuasion techniques such as social proof, storytelling, reciprocity, scarcity, and more to achieve their goal.
Differences Between Marketing and UX Design
Much market research has analyzed customer behavior to create effective advertising messages that result in a sale. In contrast, UX designers work closely with customers to understand their needs to develop a product that fulfills them during their research or buying process.
Here are more differences between marketing and UX design:
Conversion vs. User Experience
UX design focuses on creating products that users will find meaningful and relevant, resulting in a positive user experience. It involves designing the entire user journey, from discovery to purchase (and sometimes also follow-up actions after purchase).
On the other hand, marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services. It’s about creating awareness and demand for a product or service, then driving customers to take action aimed at increasing conversions.
General Trends vs. User Behavior
Marketing focuses more on analyzing trends in the market to aid your business in presenting as a cut above the rest. However, UX design focuses more on individual users’ interaction with your website or application to evaluate pain points and create an intuitive user experience.
3 Ways Good UX Design Contributes to Marketing Success
Good UX design helps your customers navigate your website and find what they need quickly, easily, and efficiently. An excellent UX design, in turn, can mean more sales and a lower bounce rate on your website, leading to more overall engagement and better brand recognition.
Here are three ways that UX design contributes to marketing success, and a greater explanation of how good UX design can help you accomplish your marketing goals.
1. Creating Buyer Personas
You need to know your target customer in order to design a user experience that leads to conversions. When you know who you’re designing for, you can create a user experience that caters to their specific needs and pain points, which leads to more conversions.
A buyer persona represents your ideal customer based on the market research you’ve done and data you collect from your existing customers. When it comes time to create blog posts or social media content, marketers should know what type of reader they are trying to reach, whether it’s someone who is just learning about the company or looking for information before making a purchase decision. Marketers should also collaborate with designers to define the type of content they want the website visitor to see at each stage in the conversion funnel.
2. User Testing
User testing is when you request real users to use a product or service to provide feedback about their experience. User testing can be conducted at any stage of development, from early prototypes to live products.
Use this feedback to improve the design of the product or service. It is an essential part of the design process, allowing designers to iterate based on honest user feedback rather than assumptions.
3. Journey Mapping
Journey mapping charts a user’s steps to completing a task.
Journey mapping helps businesses design their user experience in a way that leads to desired outcomes (such as making a purchase). For example, it can improve customer retention by minimizing the number of times users abandon an online store without completing their purchase.
This data t also prevents marketing departments from wasting money on campaigns that are unlikely to be successful because they do not serve the customer’s experience or make sense within their journey..
The Advantages of Integrating UX Design With Your Marketing Efforts
A well-designed website can help build trust with potential customers and create a solid first impression. Good UX design can improve website usability, making it easier for visitors to find the necessary information and take the desired actions.
By reducing friction and making the user experience more enjoyable, good UX design can lead to higher conversion rates and increased sales.
Great Customer Satisfaction
Integrating UX design with your marketing efforts provides excellent customer satisfaction when the website or app makes it easy for customers to find what they want. They spend more time on your site and buy more products. Additionally, the more features you provide to help users complete their tasks, the more likely they will return.
UX design ensures that your website or app meets the needs of the people who use it. A good UX designer will always put the user first and ensure that everything they do serves the user’s needs.
Creates Advocates for Your Product
If your product is easy and enjoyable, customers are more likely to keep using it and recommend it to others. This approach will likely lead to customer loyalty and referrals.
When you put the user first in your design, they will have a better experience using your product. A well-designed user experience can help build trust and credibility with your audience. Enhances the Conversion Process
Integrating UX design with your marketing efforts can create a seamless user experience that guides users through your marketing funnel. Good UX design can enhance the conversion process by making it easy for users to find the information they need and take the actions they want.
Good UX design can increase the ROI of your marketing campaigns by making them more effective and efficient. Ultimately, happy customers mean success for your business via more sales and repeat customers.
Final Thoughts
By making it easy for users to find what they need, good UX design can contribute to marketing success by helping potential customers complete the purchase process. It contributes to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, leading to repeat business and positive word-of-mouth recommendations. Good UX design helps create a brand identity and differentiate a company’s products or services from its competitors, contributing to long-term marketing success. UX can be a part of marketing–and it’s often better when they are.
