User experience is the result of individual communications, design and technical inputs combining to shape the experience of the people who use your company’s online information. The opinions and perceptions of this interaction with your website shape the user experience. Poor functionality, design and management of a site can undermine the company image just as much as a cluttered storefront or unpleasant customer service.

Essentials
Although strong design, high-end interactivity and use of the latest technology play a role in the user experience, it is much more about commonsense and thinking like the end user. This means taking a few basic realities into account when communicating essential information to people online – realities such as understanding that the Internet is a highly dynamic medium requiring more complex user participation. With this participation comes the users ability to control their experience and navigate around distractions. And because of this ability, content in this medium also needs to be delivered differently for consumption then it’s delivered in traditional mediums. Plus, the Internet is becoming a portable, on-demand source for information and entertainment whereby direct communication must be relevant.

Know Your User
For effective user experience, it’s imperative to know your user. It’s much easier to develop a great online experience by focusing on one or two key segments and giving them exactly what they want – than trying to create a generic experience for everyone. So identify your target markets, users and business objectives first and you’ll save yourself time, money and headaches while enhancing your probability of actually creating a compelling experience.

With user in mind, think about how the website is structured, laid out and designed. Consider the importance of ease of functionality. Make sure content is relevant and optimized for an online audience. Don’t get too carried away with Flash and fancy graphics – it could get in the way of important information. Finally, make sure offline marketing messages correspond with online activities.

Focus On The Details
With user experience, it is often the small details that can make the difference between users having a good or bad experience. You can have good content and consistent, well-crafted messaging, but this can easily be compromised by an ill-considered design or formatting decision.

Given the large number of things that can go wrong, it makes sense for communicators to give the same, if not more, time and thought to online communications as they do to the content, design and format of their corporate brochures, annual reports, annual meetings, investor presentations and even to their physical locations. In doing so, you can:

• Satisfy the customer: Increased customer satisfaction drives repeat and referral business.

• Increase conversions: Successful redesigns can increase conversions by up to 100% or more.

• Elevate adoption: Ease of use and usefulness are primary drivers of technology adoption.

• Differentiate: Constantly seek to improve the user experience.

Your website may be very appealing to the eye, but how important is this if the user is not sure what your site is for, why they should view it, or how they should use it? If not properly addressed, you will lose these potential customers and the revenue they represent to user frustration and website abandonment.

Ultimately, the goal is to achieve an intimate understanding of your customer’s expectations – to know what are their needs and wants, and the easiest way to determine this is to integrate user testing into your development practices and incorporate the results into your design.