Content & User Experience Strategy

Simply put, Content & User Experience Strategy define how you interact and communicate with an end-user.

“Emotion is one of the strongest differentiators in user experience namely because it triggers unconscious responses to a product, website, environment, or interface. Our feelings strongly influence our perceptions and often frame how we think about or refer to our experiences at a later date.”

-Frank Spillers

Content Strategy

Content Strategy is the practice of creating useful, usable content that’s enjoyable. This is where a conversation begins with an end-user, a connection is made that results in mutually beneficial outcomes all around: a problem solved, product information found, etc.

Content fills a real need: it establishes emotional connections between people. The writing has heart and spirit; it has something to say and the wherewithal to stand up and say it.

- Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web

Recommended reading:

User Experience (UX) & Design

An E-Business team must be able to determine good design from bad. If not, it won’t matter how good the App/Dev, CRM, E-Commerce, or eMarketing strategy is, because if it’s not a positive user experience, people simple won’t use it — and they’ll move onto your competitor’s site.

Information Architecture (IA)

Information Architecture (IA) deals with the organization of information in an interface. It is possible to have good IA and poor Usability. It is also possible to have good Usability and poor IA. The two facets are linked and it takes the appropriate talent on the E-Business team to link them accordingly. Without good IA, sites suffer from disorganized content and while users may find pockets of “usable” areas, the method in which site visitors arrive at the usable content is flawed. Flawed IA ultimately leads to lower sales conversion rates, lower satisfaction, and a poor performing site.

Usability & QA Testing

Often the area of a website launch that is saved for the very end or is forgotten altogether — usability and QA testing from the consumer or customer’s perspective. QA testing of an application to iron out bugs is important, but this does not equate to usability and QA testing from a consumer standpoint. Usability and QA testing identify roadblocks and speed bumps that prevent site visitors from completing their actions due to poor design, IA, or application programming. It’s not meant to find software bugs (that type of testing is handled in Application & Development responsibilities).

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