Increase Your Website's Potential: Understanding UI & UX
One thing marketers should know is sometimes the best way to increase awareness about your brand and get people down the marketing funnel into preferring your brand, doesn't always come from giant advertising campaigns like Content Marketing. A good way to grow your brand's awareness and generate more website traffic is by simply having a good UI/UX through an efficient landing page.
What's the Deal with Landing Pages
Like the name suggests, a Landing page is the standalone webpage people first land on when they click an advertisement link for a brand's ad campaign they see somewhere like social media or by email. What makes a good Landing Page is one, that continues to maintain the attention of the user. People see landing pages after having an initial spark of interest which leads them into clicking an advertisement link, so creating a landing page that is clear and not cluttered in what the brand represents is vital. It's also important to create an engaging advertising campaign to get people to click a landing page in the first place, by practicing effective Email Marketing or Paid Search to increase the amount of clicks.
Here are two prominent types of landing pages:
Is it a Homepage or Landing Page?
After describing what a landing page is, you might be picturing a home page in your head, but the two of them are NOT the same thing. A Home Page, is what you'd see at the front of a website when you search for a brand's website. A home page is also generally filled with more links, as it's a hub to get you to everything you need from a brand such as, products they sell, about page, contact page, and mission statement. This means that a home page has potentially more distractions as it's filled with all sorts of links, whereas a landing page would have one or just enough to get users to fulfill a desired action. This might seem worse, but it actually helps increase conversions if there are distractions on screen. Fewer distractions also help in maintaining an effective balance of UI and UX on a website, which is the next topic I'll talk about.
What is the Purpose of UI and UX
UI and UX stand for User Interface and User Experience. A user interface in design, focuses on the visual interactive elements of a product to create aesthetically pleasing interfaces. A user experience on the other hand is understanding user needs through research to design intuitive interfaces which will allow customers access through your website with ease. For More of an understanding on UI vs UX, check the image out below (Image obtained here).
Digital Marketers can use UI to create good landing page designs, as since it's the digital interface of the website, creating good visual elements are important. This is seen through buttons, icons, spacing, typography, and color. Balancing these elements with one another is important in creating a brand image as it creates consistency. Buttons for example are helpful in getting from one part of a website to another, so putting them in places people see such as the top or center of a website will make users want to spend more time on your website. Creating a consistent color theme, use of icons, and typography will also help your website pop out too as it unifies the website and simply makes it easier on the eye to look at it.
Digital marketers also use UX as well in landing page design, as customer analysis and user research, wireframing, prototyping, and competitor experience all are beneficial in optimizing the user experience on a landing page. A successful landing page requires a lot of research and beta testing, so marketers must ensure they not forget this and only focus on the on the page visual UI elements.
How Bad UI and UX Can Look Like
One of the best things about marketing is learning from real world examples, and throughout this whole blog I was talking about what makes a good website UI and UX, but now I'd like to talk about an example of a website with bad UI/UX, Craigslist. Craigslist is a website which allows you to purchase items sold online from other users, and is one of the rare times purchases are made Consumer to Consumer (C2C).
One of the first initial things I thought when clicking the link to Craigslist, is "How is this the Home page." Craigslist's home page is the definition of bad UI/ UX as, the page is cluttered with links that make the user have to spend more time searching for what they are looking for. There are titles for community, housing, for sale, jobs, services, and forums, which makes it a little easier on the eyes, but even still the sections could be organized better so you aren't seeing 100 links. There are also no pictures which could help the balance of the page as it's already filled with text. The search bar is also small on the side, so your eyes won't immediately pick up on it as your attention goes to the absurd amount of links on the page. A simple fix for this is by creating tabs, so that the only Links you see are for the section you are highlighting for. This prevents users who lets say are looking for jobs, to have to deal with the clutter of the other sections as they prevent the user from easily accessing the information they are looking for. Ultimately a good UI/UX is what creates a good brand website, and if you are a startup and not an established name like Craigslist, creating a website like this will only stunt your future growth and success.