The Moment of Truth – Content Strategies for User Experience and Conversion

How do we balance art and the user experience in the digital landscape? Designers and writers love to create beautiful images and words, but if customers can’t relate or find what they are looking for, then art is lost in the creative pursuit.

The moment of truth in digital marketing is finding the right mix of the aesthetic and the customer journey. The holistic approach of design and content – for mobile and desktop – really comes down to two things – user experience and conversion.  It starts with understanding your audience and the way they interact, then creating a clear story line they can navigate, and delivering content that meets their search expectation.

The concept of storytelling is exciting. But great content is more than telling a great story; words have to relate to the customer challenge, speak their language, feel empathy, tap into emotions, give answers and inspire action. If content doesn’t relate to the user journey in every stage and encourage conversion, then we have failed our customer.

How do we create content that is engaging, emotional, usable and easy to understand? How do we match our content to user expectation, increase time spent on page and eliminate bounce rate?

Here are 10 content strategies that will enhance user experience and drive conversion:

1. Relate to your target audience and persona with content that proposes and solves a problem, speaks the language of the audience, wins trust and evokes action.

2. Add compelling and emotional messages on the Home Page Hero that simply conveys the story and what problem your site solves

3. Eliminate distractions – Home Page should be a road map your customer can easily follow without distraction, with a clear conversion path and usability at heat spots

4. Ensure navigation names and messaging are clear and understandable by all users; navigation and messaging should always be obvious and never overly playful or confusing

5. Create The Scent Trail

• Content starts with enticing meta titles and descriptions on SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) with keywords people are searching for and language that inspire clicks.
• Create headers that match the meta data, add value and emotional triggers
• Make sure the body content and image reinforce these terms and match user expectation to increase time on page and diminish bounce rate, the holy metrics of CRO.

6. Employ persuasive content that engages, entertains, solves problem, and is direct

• Write immersive content with less adjectives and more action
• See things the way your reader does; convey their who, why, dreams, how they do things, and challenges
• Add value proposition for stickiness – make the words count

7. Keywords – Optimize your content with phrases people are looking for and use variations based on intent, semantics and how people search, including mobile and voice – a mix of WordTracker, Answer The Public, and social and channels.

8. Add relevant reviews on key conversion pages to build trust and credibility.

9. Add emotionally driven call to actions that help users solve a problem – booking a room, getting email specials or planning a meeting

10. Optimize What You Can Measure

Now that you have created content around your audience, with information that is helpful, trusted, entertaining, and inspires action, how do you know if it’s working? Well, if your customers are not staying on your page for 15 seconds, then you have not matched their search expectation or did not deliver the content they searched for. Some key CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) metrics of content are:

• Engagement – page views
• Bounce rate – matched expectation
• Stickiness – time spent on page
• Scroll – Exposing more value

Inspire, Empower, Measure

Remember, creative content is as powerful as the engagement and metrics behind it. If your customers are not interacting with your content – clicking, engaging, scrolling, or booking – you are not connecting with their emotions or matching their expectations.  Clear, persuasive content will move your audience from looking to booking. It’s all about the journey.

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Contributed by: Robin Kessler, Content Manager