How can Content Strategists think critically about user experience?

Content strategists are the storytellers of the digital world, and user experience is their stage. To think critically about user experience, they need to be more than wordsmiths; they're architects crafting a seamless journey. It's about understanding the audience—what they need, how they feel, and what makes them tick. Map out the user's path, from the first click to the final action, and weave content that guides, engages, and delights at every turn. Keep it simple, relevant, and accessible; content should be a helpful companion, not a roadblock. When content strategists become UX architects, every word, every image, paints a picture-perfect experience for the user.

As both a Content Strategist and Director of UX in my past tech career, the two roles should be co-working and co-located in your organization for maximum collaboration. Map the user journey, prioritizing the users for your goals. Conduct a content audit against the map for each step in the user journey to identify where you have content gaps or need to optimize your content.

The term “audience” implies that UX is a practice of generalization but successful UX strategy operates on the understanding that different users have different needs at different stages of their journey. Surveys, journey analysis, and customer insights may reveal themes or commonalities but today’s content management systems can support highly sophisticated targeting and segmentation methods so it’s advisable to structure your thinking along these same lines and start by defining problems and opportunities for identifiable customer segments, journey stages and touchpoints.

To nail UX in your content, start by focusing on the problem you're solving: - What's bugging your users? - What do they need and want? - How does what you're creating fit into that picture? Look for any gaps or stumbling blocks in what you've got now, and also keep an eye out for new opportunities. To get the answers, you've gotta dive into some user research and understand what makes your audience tick.

As brand content strategy leader, I believe: - Understanding your target audience is crucial to creating content that resonates with them. Conduct research to determine their demographics, interests, pain points, and preferred content formats. - A content calendar helps you plan and organize your content creation and distribution efforts. It ensures that you have a consistent flow of content that aligns with your business goals and target audience needs. - Regularly track and analyze your content performance metrics, such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversions. Use these insights to optimize your content strategy and improve user experience.

Data without context is useless. I'll give you an example: In my work with a SaaS client, I identified a critical bottleneck, revealing insightful disparities between user counts and actual installs across platforms: - Monthly new user count: App Store (41), Shopify (11), ???????????? ???????? - ???? - Number of installs: App Store (79), Shopify (19), ???????????? ???????? -???????? Data will always tell you a story. But you need to make sure you use the data in the right context

The easiest way to analyse the effectiveness of UX is to measure the performance of your website. - How many users navigated to your website? - How many users clicked on your content? - How many users downloaded your content in PDF format? - How many users signed up for product demos? - How many users reached out for more information? - How many users dropped out of the purchase process and at which stage? These will help you determine: - If your bounce rate is justified, or if it signifies that something is wrong. - If your abandoned cart metrics are exceptionally high, or within expected limits. At the end of the day, if your website has the right content and UX, it should be a haven for increasing sales.

When we talk about UX content, we can do tests with users to evaluate our ideas. A/B tests are interesting for deciding between one content strategy/experience or another. During usability tests, we can understand if the content is useful and is helping users achieve their goals.

Data is our best friend; we should stop worrying about bad stats as they tell us which way we should go next. Is the bounce rate increasing? The theme might be interesting, but not the format in which we displayed the content. Low number of unique users? Review the themes and check if you're addressing users' pains and needs. Great reading stats but low conversion? Take a look at how you're presenting your services in your content. Make sure not to appear as an all-mighty brand (we all hate them) and don't oversell. No one wants to date the show-off. And finally, get rid of your ego. You might think you just had the million-dollar idea, but at the end of the day, users don't empathize with you, and they're the ones that move the stats.

Los pasos anteriores están muy bien y definen claramente el proceso que debería usar un content manager o cualquier profesional que desarrolla estrategias de productos orientadas a clientes. Creo que hay algo muy importante a tener en cuenta en estos ejercicios: - Sé muy empático. Ponte en la piel de todos los stakeholders, y trata de pensar y sentir lo que ellos hacen. Y no solo eso, cuales son las motivaciones que les impulsan. - Define muy bien los KPIs que sean realmente relevantes. No te pierdas en la inmensidad de los datos. Con un 20% debes poder valorar el 80%. - Ves por delante del balón. Anticípate a lo que crees que van a hacer o necesitar, te ayudará a estar preparado y aprovechar mejor las oportunidades.