The Serious/Not Serious Series on Jargon
YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS:
We give our guests a great user experience. We want them to like it so much that they want to come back, and guess what? Most of them love it and we have our “regulars”. Here is our “Recipe for Success” :
The San Quentin Guide to Providing a Good User Experience.
Make It Easy To Get In
It sure is easy to get in here. Johnny Cash comes here all the time, singing to our guests. He even stayed overnight in Bubba’s cell. He said that he got the inspiration for his song “Ring of Fire” from his visit here. I think it was because of the habañero chilli soup.
Make It Easy To Stay
Our guests here don’t want to leave. Once they get in, we just can’t get them out. Take “Mad Mick” Murphy from Dublin. Please take him because we don’t want him. He shows up drunk before breakfast, starts fighting and upsetting the other guests. We tried getting him to sober up but then he got sad and started singing about Ireland. Twenty four of our guests escaped that night to get away from him, and they were happy before that.
Make Sure Your Visitors Remember You and Come Back
Rob “Razor” Capone will never leave. He signed up for 25 years, but wants more. He says the premises are great, and he can get apple pies “just like mamma used to make” for $4. Nobody has the heart to tell him that for just $5 he can get apple pies just like mamma thought she used to make.
Our User Experience is second to none. Yes, San Quentin is one 4-star Prison.
SERIOUSLY:
You want some candy. You see a store nearby. You walk into the store. The floor is dirty and the store is badly lit. The products are scattered all over the place in no particular order. There’s no signage. You can’t find your way around. You can’t find the candy. You ask the sales assistant. He’s not very helpful and tells you to find the candy yourself. How would this experience make you feel?
Your Virtual Store
Your website is no different. It’s a virtual store. It’s vitally important that you provide a great User Experience to the visitors that cross your website’s threshold. User Experience (UX) is all about the overall impression, satisfaction and feelings that a user gets from visiting a site. Your business success is heavily dependent on User Experience. Do all that you can to give your visitors a positive User Experience. This will improve customer satisfaction and drive referrals and repeat business.
Chasing the User Experience
Matt Cutts (of Google) recently highlighted that “… by chasing after a good user experience, you help ensure that you and the search engines are both working in the same direction. That’s much better than you chasing the search engines, which are in turn chasing what we think is best for users.”
There are a number of elements to User Experience including functionality, design, branding and content. It’s about the overall package. Things that you can do to improve UX include:
- factoring in UX elements into the design,
- ensuring site navigation is intuitive,
- improving site speed (load times) and
- producing relevant engaging content on an ongoing basis.
Content & User Experience:
When it comes to content, the folks at The Wittery believe that if your content makes your site visitor smile, then you have achieved something very special from a User Experience perspective. Aim to make your content induce positive feelings in your site visitor.
Websites and the internet are full words. Don’t let the collection of words on your website fall into the “instantly forgettable” category. When commissioning content (or when writing it yourself), always keep your reader in mind. Aim to reach into their heart, soul and mind with your content. That’s how you can distinguish yourself in your visitor’s mind and improve their User Experience. Your visitor will then be more likely to stay longer on your site, remember you when they leave, buy from you, re-visit your site and tell others about you.
The Journey and the Destination
If SEO is about getting search engines to bring visitors to your site, then UEO* is about making sure those visitors have a good time when they get there. “Driving traffic to your homepage is important, but making the destination worthwhile is vital” according to Entrepreneur.com.
Next time visitors arrive at your site how are you going to make sure that your store is in order and that your visitors get the experience they deserve?
*UEO (or UXO) is an acronym for “User Experience Optimization”.
Other Jargon Buster Articles:
Attraction Marketing; Buzz Marketing; Content Strategy; Duplicate Content; Linkerati; PageRank; SEO; SERPS; The Cloud
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Tags: engaging content, SEO, UEO, user experience, User Experience Optimization, UX, UXO