Take a moment to think about your favorite website and social media application. What is it about both that makes you go back time and time again? Are you addicted to YouTube? Do you spend more time on Twitter than the current president-elect does? Which company has the best website in your mind? Coca-Cola? Tesla? Amazon? Once you’ve answered those questions, write down why you love these sites so much. Why? Because what you love about them helps build your digital brand.
User Experience
Although a concept that dates back decades, user experience has become the new branding catchphrase. User experience, or UX as it is called, encompasses all facets of a visitor’s experience on your business website and social media platforms. As you learned when you set about to develop your digital marketing plan, studies show you have about 10 seconds to lure people into your cyber world and keep them there. That isn’t a lot of time, and if your online presence is complicated, they’ll leave anyway.
User experience uses all sense but scent to draw people into a virtual reality and keep them there. This includes websites, social media, and handheld device apps. You need to take advantage of sight, sound and emotion to establish your online brand, and if you completed the exercise in the introduction of this post, you probably realized how your favorite sites use sight and sound to elicit your emotion. This is a science, and it is used against you every day.
UX Design
Computer science is the basis for UX design, but it isn’t enough. A person interested in this vocation should also gain UX design experience, such as working a UX design internship San Francisco program or one in another major city. Job experience is what gives the UX designer the ability to work with the senses and their related psychology, and this is crucial to any successful user experience. Today’s customer wants to be immersed in your online presence, not stare at a text-filled screen.
Go back a few decades and think about the first personal computer. If you’re old enough to remember it, you remember a bulky machine that had a screen of one color and blocky-looking text of another hue. That was it. There was nothing that drew people to computers and made them want to use them on a daily basis, which is likely the reason why most thought Bill Gates was insane when he said his goal was to have a PC in everyone’s home.
Today, people turn on their computer or handheld device and are catapulted into another world. Even a smartphone has graphics, video, and sound. Your online presence must include all of this to get people to your platforms and keep them there. Take into account Pokémon Go alone. How many people spent their days in a virtual reality world within their handheld devices? Too many, and their responsibilities suffered as a result. Your online brand must compete with that, and UX design can help.
When it comes to your user interface, simplicity, and convenience is key, but you must also entertain. Take advantage of every sense you can when setting up your brand. Sight, sound, emotion – all of it. If you do, you’ll have a successful online presence to boost your business.
