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Enhancing Brand Experience with UX Design
26 de April de 2022
What is it that makes a product, a sales channel or a landing page more attractive than others? As users, this isn’t always something we can easily identify. We’re driven by instinctive attachments and we wander through the great bazaar of stimuli without being aware of the fact that there are professionals behind it all, trying to present us with an experience that lives up to our expectations. This silent work makes all the difference.
User experience (UX) has a lot to do with this process and it’s one of the many disciplines that exist as part of a style of design that has been on the rise lately. UX appeared some years ago in web and app design and, as time went by, it started gaining ground beyond its area of influence. Usability, accessibility, interaction, simplicity and utility are some of the features that UX improves. But it also seeks to use this combination in order to provoke new sensations and pleasant emotions in users based on their lifestyle and needs.
Although limits are not always clear, UX is part of Customer Experience (CX). While the first one is a design philosophy, the latter is the result from the application of UX and other tools in order to reach brand goals that have to do with clients’ final satisfaction levels with the purchase process. In both, users or clients are in the centre of the strategy, but UX is more focused on their perception in order to make the experience more interesting and useful and to get them to become interested in a particular sale.
In order to make the most of UX’s potential, it’s important to take some aspects into account, such as clients’ own dynamics, channels and customer touchpoints, and commerce trends:
Understanding Clients, The Ones Behind the Wheel.
An important part of UX is focused on establishing, predicting and maximising the consumer journey. This journey is the itinerary that’s followed in the purchase of a product or acquisition of a service. However, there’s no unique way they can do this, especially since digital environments have significantly increased the options. In order to understand how users move, it’s necessary to know them and to put ourselves in their shoes.
Focusing only on the client’s ideal search, from the company’s perspective, is a mistake. Audencies are vast and varied. Their way of relating to products is no longer hierarchical nor passive. Knowing their routines and aspirations is key for designing strategies that will present them with satisfying experiences that will make them come back or establish themselves as brand stakeholders. Data, measuring tools and research will help us lay the foundations of a mutually beneficial relationship.
These are some of the keys to understanding the behaviour of 21st century users:
Information: Maximum access to information makes it possible for them to check, decide and have an opinion. Expectations and demands are greater.
Technology: Social networks, various devices and shopping and payment platforms have quickly gained ground and are constantly being modified. You must know how to recognise customer touch points in this vast field.
Time: Time efficiency is vital for customers. The current pace of modern life leaves no space for more. Users value, above anything else, not wasting their time.
Payment: As it is the case with time, the easier we put it, the more grateful they will be.
Prominence: Clients aren’t just “always right”, like we used to say, but they also want to feel relevant in the commercial environment.
Channels and Customer Touchpoints:
Nowadays, customer journeys are extremely dynamic and non-stop. Users decide how, when and where they interact with brands. This requires companies to change their businesses and open up to omnichannel strategies, where all channels, both physical and online, are unified based on client behaviour.
The sales channels are all the different media that a company uses in order to connect with clients, whether it’s a store, a website, social networks, search engines, etc. On the other hand, customer touchpoints are those segments in which the user moves along… before, during and after their purchase. By putting ourselves in their shoes, we can better understand their itineraries and needs, and make it easier on them by making channels, touchpoints, brands and customers all converge in one place.
Once the different buyer-persona are identified, it’s interesting to draw up maps of their customer journeys in order to make it easier for us to understand the stages they go through and trace an “empathy plan” so that stakeholders can help us attract more users. Companies are already integrating their departments with their channels and touchpoints, looking to establish synergies and to avoid fragmentations that would cause execution problems in their UX plans.
Some Present and Future Trends
In just a few years, the commercial environment will have changed. Having some notions about where the buying/selling processes are headed will make everything easier. These are some trends that have become a reality, or are on their way to becoming one:
Virtual Reality: The metaverse can establish itself as the ideal place to get in touch with products and brands and it can do it in record time. Many companies are already designing their strategy in the world of avatars.
Phygital: Physical environments won’t disappear… That’s for sure. Moreover, for a while longer we will continue to shop both physically and online. The term Phygital came from these two worlds and understanding how to move from one to the other is crucial.
Ropo/Bopis: Two concepts closely related to the phygital universe appeared on the scene in order to explain the synergy between the channels: ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) — a trend that applies to customers who look for products online but carry out their purchase in physical stores; and, BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up in Store) — when products are purchased online but collected in physical stores.
Small Retail: Stores that put their focus on the experience, presenting users with entertaining spaces that are not just to make sales, but also to create memorable experiences that would attract clients who will develop brand loyalty.
Moby Mart: The future of vending. We’ve already seen it in China. Mobile businesses, no employees, no queues and non-stop.
Companies such as Amazon and Alibaba have set on course to conquer new areas of retail which are thought to begin gaining ground in the coming years.
Having a deep understanding of your client and their customer journey is key in order to maximise user experience and not to miss opportunities in an open, dynamic and non-stop sales environment.
Article written in collaboration with: Eva Muñoz, Head of Loyalty and Customer Experience at Cepsa Iberia.