A UX expert shares how marketers should (and shouldn’t) approach UX

Let’s call it like it is: user experience, or UX as it’s most often referred to now, is being watered down by us marketers.

It’s not our fault, really. When the web and the concept of digital experiences for brands was new to everyone, big corporations didn’t really know what to do with the software teams or how to build out a digital product or program. So they stuck them with the team that was used to taking new customer-related ideas — marketing — and they built the plane as they flew it.

We’re not in those early days of digital anymore. UX is a well-researched, respected discipline that companies now dedicate entire teams and budgets to. But somehow, marketers often still end up being in charge of what we think UX is when it comes to a new product launch or new digital initiative. Today, we’re here to clear up some of the confusion around UX and make all of us smarter, better partners to our development, design and UX teams. This will lead to building out the best customer experiences possible for our brands.

What UX is (and isn’t)   

“UX is not your design pattern library. It’s not your user interface…not your design tools…not your brand standards…not your messaging,” says Jared Caponi, founder of Exploded Map, a user experience and product strategy firm based in Brooklyn, New York. “While all those things are UX adjacent, UX is the thinking and process of visualizing what an ideal experience should be from a user or customer perspective.”

Jared began his career as an art history major studying how people interact with museum spaces and curatorial techniques affect peoples’ perception of art. That took him to project management during the early days of dot-com in the late 1990s, which led him to transition to user experience and information architecture consultancy in the mid aughts. So, he’s kinda seen it all.

Jared says that UX fundamentally is about treating whatever problem you’re trying to solve using a user-centric lens.

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, User Experience “encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” So while much of that is related to aspects of the brand that marketing may control, like a website, UX is not shorthand for digital design. It’s much larger than that, just as marketing is much more complicated than it once was. Jared asks marketers to think about the entire journey and all steps involved in it for a customer:

“Okay, so, maybe you scan the QR code. You end up on a website or you download the app. You sign up with the app, and then, whether you make a transaction with that app or whether you’ve shared something online, or whether you’ve tweeted it…etc.,” Jared says. “So what user experience is really good at is mapping out all of those touchpoints and thinking through what it’s actually going to be like for a customer….Are we asking too much of the customer? Are the actions we’re asking the customer to take adding value for them?”

For a non-marketing example of UX success, Jared points to GE’s Doug Dietz , who developed a way to help young children in pediatric oncology wards sit still during an MRI. He took a scary, loud and complicated procedure and turned it into a Pirate Adventure. Kids are put in pirate outfits, told they’re going on a pirate ship adventure for their procedure and told to be still and quiet so they don’t spook the mermaids they see projected onto the screen in front of them. The parents and the nurses get dressed in pirate outfits along with the kids to make the whole experience feel like a fun game instead of a scary medical procedure. By thinking about the user and not the outcome, UX finds creative solutions to big problems. 

The emotional side of data

We often think of UX as a technical experience, something reserved for software design and wireframing and all the things we as marketers don’t have to deal with. However, the experience part of UX really is much more emotional and sentiment driven.

Marketing teams tend to live and die by our metrics. We need answers based on website analytics, click-through rates and social engagement to guide our next steps, quickly. Think of UX as the qualitative ‘why’ to your quantitative ‘what.’

“Did I get a view on my page and did they stay for a long time? Many people are inclined to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, those are good things!’” Jared says. “But a user experience practitioner will look at that and go, ‘Well wait…did they bounce off that page in half a second because they found what they needed immediately or did they bounce because they were overwhelmed and gave up? Did they stay on it for a long time because they were engaged and delighted, or because they were lost and confused?’ It’s very hard to just use data to evaluate user experience. So that’s where research comes in, trying to figure out what people are actually getting or not getting from whatever it is you’ve put in front of them.”

So is UX here to burst our marketing performance metrics bubble? No! Well, maybe sometimes, if it needs to be. But other times UX can be aspirational. Jared says involving UX in early planning stages and tapping into this emotional side of research is a great way for marketing teams to create a dream journey for their perfect customer:

“I often ask marketers to tell me a narrative about the person who’s gonna go through the envisioned steps, because the goal for the marketers may be to get them through as many touchpoints as possible. So what does that look like? Once you know what the goals are then you can create an aspirational journey like, okay, this is our perfect customer. We expect they will find value in these things, and once they’ve done them, then what do we know about them? And what can we do for them?”

Best UX practices for marketing teams

There’s natural tension that occurs between marketing and user experience. Mostly because marketing operates from a business perspective, while UX operates from a customer perspective; this is not a bad thing! Marketers and UX professionals must find the delicate balance between advancing business objectives and ensuring the customer is being served an experience that hopefully exceeds their expectations. It may even be helpful for marketers to think of UX teams as a test customer, someone who’s going to poke holes to make sure the real customer doesn’t have to.

For marketers, Jared recommends the following best practices when working with UX teams and thinking about user experience as a whole:

1.) Remove your biases and be realistic.

It’s really easy for marketers to overstate a customer’s dedication to our brands. While we know a subset of customers are extremely loyal, not everyone will complete the 20-step journey we want them to. Jared advises marketers to start  with what customers think of the brand, not what you think about your own brand. 

Do they really want a personal relationship with us? Or do they just need to get in and out of the store sometimes? When is that personal relationship actually important? These are the questions UX asks.

2.) Use demographics as a starting point, not the be all and end all.

Along with all of the important quantitative studies that marketing teams do, lean into the qualitative as well. This is where UX teams will be able to get behind the demographic information and statistics and tap into the emotions a user is experiencing.

During qualitative research, Jared says: “In these calls, when I observe a behavior or I hear a perspective, I ask, ‘Why do you say (or do) that? What would make more sense to you?’ And a lot of times you end up with insights into problems you didn’t even know existed.”

3.) Don’t get caught up in internal terminology.

Marketers like to name things. We just do — sue us. But when an internal pet name becomes the name of the branded program, problems may arise if it means nothing to your customer. Research everything, including the terms and language you’re using.

4.) UX is bigger than digital. 

Think about UX as the big picture; it’s not just this new landing page. Instead, it’s the interconnectedness of your entire customer’s experience: the website, app, direct mail, digital ads, physical store, and of course, the product/service itself and how this new landing page fits into that larger experience.

“Branding used to be about how you push your image out into the world,” Jared says. “And now, your brand is shaped by how people experience it. You’re not in as much control over that as you think you are, so it’s important to know how people experience things so you can shape your brand around how they want to experience it.”

For more of Jared, you can find him on LinkedIn, and often helping us with UX projects here at McGuffin.