Connecting with your customers and providing them with information and quality service, as we discussed in our previous blog post, is a major part of your brand’s customer experience (CX). "How do we get those customers through the (virtual) door and how can we encourage them to return?""How do we foster brand loyalty?"These answers aren’t always as clear-cut as the typical methods to bring them to you. However, we can focus on a major pillar of customer experience to pave the way.User experience (UX) includes all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company, its products, and its services (Nielsen Norman Group). Naturally, these touchpoints and the overall user experience are critical to how customers perceive your brand.

The entirety of user experience can seem daunting to try to implement. However, four proven strategies will take your brand’s user experience to the next level:

• Make every touchpoint consistent
• Use benefits-driven, user-focused messaging
• Create user-friendly forms
• Always test and seek feedback

Make every touchpoint consistent

You may have clicked on an ad, and suddenly you're on a website that doesn’t look right. You might have asked yourself: “Did I click on the right thing? Is this website legitimate?”Users crave consistency and instilling it into your omnichannel presence will elevate your game. Implementing a look and feel on all of your creative achieves this for your brand. Consistency instills consumers’ trust and enables them to complete tasks faster. As a result, they will know that on the other end of the screen is a knowledgeable representative of your brand to guide them through the rest of their journey.It seems like a gargantuan goal to accomplish. Yet, there are a few tried and true ways to get there faster than you may think:

Understand what your customers sense and understand about your brand, determine how you want them to feel—then develop a brand “personality” around both.

Do you want to be known as rugged, durable? Creative and cutting-edge? Do you want your consumers to feel like they can rely on your products for years to come? Jot these ideas down.Next, engage and discuss with your consumers to learn what they think of when they hear about you. Learn how they feel about their interactions with your brand. Find the common ground between what you want to project and what your buyers see. This is the “sweet spot” of your brand’s personality.

Create style and editorial guidelines and stick to them.

Brand guidelines include the colors, fonts, patterns, messaging, and elements that build your brand throughout the consumer journey. Develop them to be concise and actionable without a lot of gray areas.Once they're ready, implement them everywhere. From a print/mobile ad to a confirmation email, make your campaigns and branding look consistent. Think of Nike, Apple, and Target. You know exactly you’ll get from their products just by name mention alone. They’ve accomplished this through great branding.

Foster adoption of these guidelines throughout your organization.

Once you’ve started building your brand, seek feedback from everyone who touches it. For instance, this includes customer service representatives and the people who create your pitch decks. Engaging in the process gives your team a sense of ownership and increases the chances your brand guidelines will get utilized. To prevent design-by-committee, take in that feedback but limit decision-making to your core team.

Use benefits-focused, user-centered messaging

Albeit painful to most marketers, here's the cold hard truth: customers care about the problems a product will solve and the benefits it provides more than who makes it or its features. Appeal to them with headlines and calls-to-action that directly speak to what problems will be solved by using your products. Let potential buyers envision their experience with words and images, and keep it concise so that you make the most impact. Claude Hopkins said it best:

"Always bear these facts in mind. People are hurried. The average person worth cultivating has too much to read... They are not going to read your business talk unless you make it worth their while and let the headline show it."

So, how do you make it worth their while?

Avoid the hard sell.

If you know the phrase “show me, don’t tell me”, it certainly applies here. Consumers in the modern market are well-informed and aware of advertising tactics. Cultivate a dialogue by focusing on the value your product provides instead of its features.

Change the focus of your headlines to focus on the command verb and the problem solved, and nothing else.

Make your value proposition the star of the show. Contextual imagery (such as your creative and logo) will inform them that your brand will deliver on these promises. Here are two examples:

• “Acme Tools get the job done faster.” → “Get the job done faster” or "Work smarter, not harder"
• “It’s your move. We make it exceptional.” → “Make your next move exceptional.”

Actualize that solution in your call-to-action.

“Learn more” and “Get started” are phrases that don't convert. Follow your strong headlines with calls-to-action that describes to them exactly what to expect. To create a great call-to-action, start with a strong command verb that communicates the desired action you want them to take. Then, use a creative and enthusiastic call-to-action to entice them to complete the ask. Make them specific, sincere, substantial, and specific (Nielsen Norman Group).Most people are commitment-averse, so ensure that what you are asking from them is clearly defined and doesn’t require much. A free demonstration is less of a "risk" to them than “getting started” (that ambiguous phrase could mean anything!).

Carry that messaging through each touchpoint.

Remember how we said consistency is key? It extends to your messaging, too.Visitors convert into leads (and eventually your customers) when you use consistent messaging. Ad platforms like Google AdWords know and incentivize this.Two of the three determining factors in a Google AdWords Quality Score are ad relevance and landing page experience. Messaging that is both relevant and consistent between the ad and the landing page improves those quality scores’ metrics. This often has immediate benefits for you in the form of lower cost-per-click rates.So, consistent and user-focused messaging performs better with consumers and potentially stretches your marketing budget further? Yep! It’s a win-win scenario for your audience and your brand.

We've reviewed the first two strategies that will take your brand’s user experience to the next level. Check back tomorrow for part two as we dive into creating user-friendly forms and testing/seeking feedback!