Episode 22: The Impact of UX on E-Commerce Success
Learn how user experience (UX) impacts SEO, e-commerce, and email marketing. Discover actionable tips on improving mobile UX, boosting search rankings, and creating a seamless customer journey.
“Great UX is not an overnight thing. It’s something you’re going to constantly improve and fine-tune to make things better, and that plays into your SEO.”
Objectives
In this episode, you will be able to:
Understand how user experience (UX) directly impacts SEO, and how poor design and functionality can lead to higher bounce rates, ultimately lowering your site’s search engine ranking.
Learn the importance of optimizing for mobile users, as mobile traffic can make up 70-80% of an e-commerce site’s visitors.
Discover how to build trust and enhance brand credibility by aligning the user experience across all digital touchpoints—website, email, and customer service.
Explore the benefits of continuous testing and optimization in site design, user flow, and email marketing to improve user engagement and conversions.
Transcript
Robbie (00:00):
So Tim, I’m working on email, I’m working on content, I’m working on SEO. Why should I care about UX, or what even is UX?
Tim (00:09):
Well, we’re gonna have to dive in then because, let’s just say, if your users have a bad time, there’s something wrong with your UX.
Robbie (00:17):
If they’re having a bad time, they’re not gonna have a good day.
[Intro]
Robbie (00:29):
Okay. Hello, this is Robbie Fitzwater and Tim Lowry with the Content Community Commerce podcast. We are excited to be talking shop on topics around content, community, and commerce, and where those three converge, how it impacts business, especially e-commerce businesses. And we’re here to support e-commerce entrepreneurs, e-commerce marketers—basically marketers trying to understand how to leverage a lot of the, basically, insights around content to grow their business and to do it in a sustainable way. So, one of the topics we talk about frequently, and it’s kind of one of the background topics to any e-commerce store or any marketer, is UX. And that’s a topic that goes really deep into the side of SEO and really deep into email too, but also it touches on the broad customer experience at a high level for e-commerce store owners. So, Tim, we were kind of talking shop on topics we can think about, but we keep going back to this over and over again because it’s a pretty big deal.
Tim (01:31):
Yeah, it’s—I was at MozCon a few years back, and they were talking about, you know, as marketers how we all need to know little pieces of things. But then, rather than looking at it as just like all these individual verticals, they started overlapping them. And for SEO, one of the things that was smack in the center was UX. And like, that’s your user experience, and it just makes sense. Like, if your user lands on your site and it’s a dumpster fire with a scroll, they’re not gonna spend long there. They’re gonna leave that site very quickly. Or if they can’t find what they’re looking for, or visually it’s just horrible, they’re out. And that’s gonna impact your SEO. ‘Cause if you’re gonna have people leaving your site quickly, then everything falls apart. Your paid falls apart, your SEO falls apart, nobody’s signed up to your emails.
Tim (02:21):
So, I think UX is one of those kind of critical components within the build of a site that can’t be overlooked.
Robbie (02:27):
So, UX in terms of like, UX is just like how people interact and engage on your site and with your content, basically with any digital touchpoint to do with your brand.
Tim (02:38):
Yeah. Anything from what was their experience like to read your blog, through to how they checked out or signed up to an email. It’s like, all of that has UX. Like, or even how they interact with your customer service.
Robbie (02:55):
So, it’s a really broad, broad-ranging topic with a lot of unique details and nuances. But for e-commerce marketers, like thinking about this in terms of: let’s get our arms around this. How does it impact or how should I think about this in terms of how it impacts SEO? Why is it important for SEO?
Tim (03:14):
Yeah, so I think of so many sites that I’ve landed on where you make that query and you click on it. It maybe has really good information, but I can’t get beyond how horrible the site is. Instantly, I distrust it, or I can’t find what I’m looking for. And if that’s happening, and people are bouncing out within split seconds of being there, that’s gonna be a signal to Google. Like, maybe this is not the best result to be serving up here. And over time, no matter how good your content is, you’re gonna start shifting down on that page one to eventually page two, and then you’re just, you’re gone. So the SEO component is: the better your experience is, then if your content is good, if it’s visually enjoyable to engage with, and then if it leads somebody on to doing another action on your site, then you’re gonna get rewarded. Because Google’s gonna be able to tell like, okay, this site answered the question, it did the thing, the people stayed there, they lingered longer. That’s the big part of UX. It’s like, if you can make it great where the user doesn’t want to leave the site, then Google’s gonna know like, this site’s obviously doing something right. Their algorithm is going to be able to tell that.
Robbie (04:29):
This is not some like fly-by-night, like dropshipper on e-commerce space. Like, they’re not going to be just like burning bridges and frustrating people. Like, this is something that has like a certain level of reputation, certain level of implied authority. Yeah. And makes people feel safe and confident.
Tim (04:44):
And great UX is not, it’s not like an overnight thing. It’s like you’re gonna launch your site, but if you’re, you know, a serious brand, like, you’re going to pay attention to this and you’re going to constantly want to improve and fine-tune and make things better. Update, and not be satisfied with your out-of-the-box blog. It’s like, how do we make our experience better for the readers? Okay, they’re on our product page, how do we make our product page more enjoyable so they’re more likely to purchase or we can get more information across without it being a wall of text. Like, it’s something that’s always evolving and improving and just getting better.
Robbie (05:22):
Yeah, and then in terms of like how people interact now versus how they interacted probably about even five to 10 years ago, mobile is becoming a bigger and bigger component of how people should think about this UX experience too.
Tim (05:37):
Yeah, when I had my Moto Razr, I was not shopping on much.
Robbie (05:43):
So they were doing like the flip thing with the phone. And like the commercials for the Moto Razr, those were…
Tim (05:49):
It is, like, it’s different. Like you said, 10 years ago, five years ago, even within the last couple of years, things are just continuing to kind of push the envelope of like, where can you go? And then that mobile-first element is increasingly so much more important. Like mobile now represents for some brands potentially 70 or 80% of their site traffic. So you need to be thinking of not just like, “Oh man, on my 30-inch desktop computer, my site looks amazing and it’s great.” It’s like, how is it when somebody just pulls out their iPhone or their Android or whatever device they’re on? Is it equally as enjoyable, if not more enjoyable and easier to use? And with people spending more time in apps and things like that, your website needs to be, and we’re going down like a whole different avenue of that, but like your website truthfully needs to function in that same way where it’s a great experience, easy to use, fast, light, nimble, does exactly what it needs to do. And bad UX shows so much more on mobile.
Robbie (06:52):
Yeah, it shows. It’s really painful, and like you see a lot of sites that are like, “Wow, this is a great, well-designed site on desktop.” And then you see it on mobile and it’s just like a whole different experience.
Tim (07:02):
So cumbersome. And there’s not really a reason for it because people can be like, “Well, we’re a big site.” You’re not as big as Amazon. Yeah, it’s—you’re a big site, but Amazon literally has hundreds of millions of products and pages and things, and you can get around that site so easily on mobile and obviously within their app and everything else. It can be done, but it’s just overcomplicating the user experience. Sometimes it just gets in the way of making something functional.
Robbie (07:31):
And then the way we experience it too, like it shifts people’s perceptions of, like, the Amazon effect really happens when expectations are shifted outwards. Where, like, two-day shipping at first was a big deal, and now two-day shipping is pretty par for the course. And like, it’s basically them shifting expectations for people in the real world where they interact and engage with Amazon on a regular basis. Like, that’s what they’re expecting from so many other places. And when there’s a big gap between what they can expect and see in a lot of the platforms they interact with, that’s where a lot of this friction happens. It’s unpleasant when they’re suddenly going from someplace that’s a great, smooth, and aligned experience to something less than ideal.
Tim (08:13):
It feels alien to them. Like, people know when UX is done right. People shouldn’t notice—they’re just on your site and having a great experience. It’s invisible.
Robbie (08:23):
It’s like that *99% Invisible* podcast. Yeah. It’s like, 99% of good design is invisible.
Tim (08:28):
But whenever it’s wrong, it becomes very evident. It feels alien. It’s like they can’t figure it out or they start distrusting it because it’s like, “Where do I go? I gotta press this. Okay, where do I enter my card information? Oh, this feels sketchy. I don’t want to put my card into this.” Like, it just falls apart. So, I think that, again, that user experience component, when it comes to relation of, you know, where our verticals are within, like, the SEO and within the email, for me it’s always—you know, I’ve got a client right now, and it’s encouraging them. I’m like, we’re in the process of changing the blog. It’s like we know we have enough readers where we need to think differently about how they consume this content on your site. That should not be the afterthought design component that was out of the box. It’s like, this now needs to be…
Robbie (09:19):
They’re driving enough revenue that they can put their big boy pants on.
Tim (09:22):
Yeah, it now needs to. Like, you look at sites like Spruce, NerdWallet, where there are huge content sites. The experience when you land on it, you’re reading, moving between content, finding all the related things—it’s just so seamless and enjoyable. And for them, this is now like—we’re at that stage where, like, if we want to take it to the next level, that experience needs to be there. So it’s knowing when to do it and what to be doing it on is another part. But I think that you have to look at those areas of where you’re getting the most traffic and the most potential bang for the buck, and that’s where you have to really sink in and level things up.
Robbie (10:03):
Yeah, and especially like—I know we talked about content and onsite too—like, that’s where, like, I always think about email in terms of, like, how is that experience happening on their device? How is that working? How are they engaging with it versus not engaging with it? And email is one area where good design goes a long way, but it can go in a different direction really fast. And it can be really heavy-handed with that and try to find out what experiences can be best for that brand. The best analogy I’ve seen for it is like when you’re incorporating new design elements or incorporating new designs, it’s kind of like hot sauce. You can put too much hot sauce on something, and it’s gonna—if you put just enough on it, it’s gonna enhance the experience. Yeah, like a lot of trendy design, you can kind of see this where it’s way too much, way over the top, like it looks like it’s gonna light up and sing a song on your phone. But trying to find that right balance of, like, communicating what you need to communicate, finding an effective way to give them the information you’re looking to give them.
Robbie (11:02):
But also, like, I always think about it in terms of, like, “Hey, we give them a primary call to action or primary goal that we want them to take.” And then also, what are the other exit ramps they could take? Where, if we’re sending them down like, “Hey, we’re giving them directions on the highway—get off at this exit.” If they don’t take the exit for whatever reason, if they don’t engage with it, let’s give them a few backup plans and give them other things to engage with as they go through. So we hopefully have some type of hook that’s gonna be relevant and valuable enough to get them actually back to the site where they can engage with your business. And I’m also thinking like, the user experience and email—you want it to be reflective of the brand, of the site. Like, you don’t want your email to look like all of a sudden one or the other.
Tim (11:46):
It’s like people have a great experience on your site, and then they get your email and it’s just a horrible experience, and they get the first sentence through—or vice versa. Like, the site’s horrible, but then whoever’s handling the email has all of a sudden set up this Ferrari of an experience. And then people go from the email back to the site, and they’re like, “Oh, what?”
Robbie (12:01):
So expectations can be really bad or really good. Like, again, starting off with a really great site. If you have, like, an Allbirds-like site experience but your email looks like a Nigerian prince is sending it, you can have a problem. There’s a distinct change there. But trying to make sure that is pretty locked up alignment is important. And then also training your audience to kind of understand what to expect from your business. In terms of being consistent, like for our clients, we focus on a few individual templates that we kind of work with. We call it the “everything template,” which is like a pretty well-designed HTML template with a lot of different design element buckets we use interchangeably. It’s a modular template, so we’re not reinventing the wheel, and we can use all the elements in different ways, so they’re not getting the same thing over and over. And then we use a hybrid template, which is like a—looks like a plain text email, but technically we call it a hybrid template. It’s a plain text email but it has all the bells and whistles of HTML. But it gives the human experience and element of a plain text email, which works really well.
Robbie (13:09):
So we’ll use those in conjunction really consistently. Yeah, and then kind of training that audience to understand what to expect when they’re getting it. So they may feel like they’re getting human-minted emails from team members, and they’re also gonna be getting really well-designed emails from the business. And using those in conjunction really helps to kind of create that holistic experience. And we’re trying to think about that in our sending frequency, our sending experience, in our unit.
Tim (13:35):
‘Cause you gotta think about, like, there’s a handoff both ways. Like, there’s the handoff from the site to the email, where you’re passing that person over. And then vice versa—like, eventually the email’s gonna hand that person back over to the site, and you need it to feel comfortable and familiar, and the experience should look and feel the same. When things are disjointed, instantly that first level of trust is like, “I’m not sure I trust this brand.” It’s like, this feels a little off. Um, and then just the more things get cumbersome, and the worse the UX is as they get into it, then there’s less and less likelihood that they’re gonna move through. And I think it’s probably the same in email, where, you know, from a user experience standpoint, like, if you sent this email and you had all these things but then all of a sudden buttons aren’t going where they’re supposed to go, things are broken, the design is really janky looking if you look at it in one device but in another device it’s pretty good. It’s like, you gotta test it across platforms, devices, like what people are using.
Robbie (14:31):
Yeah, yeah. For us, we have to test everything. Like, we look at everything across every device and email client, and like use—like, Email on Acid. Yeah. Um, shameless chance for a plug to sponsor this podcast, *Email on Acid*. We know who you are. (laughs) *Email on Acid* by Sinch—that’s your free plug for this. Yeah, yeah. It’s your free plug for this week. We’ll take some love if you guys want to send it over. But basically, if you can kind of, like, create that experience that you know is going to be aligned across those different devices, you want to have as much consistency as possible. And that’s not always easy. Like, email designers—like, Outlook is a beast. Yeah. Outlook is just really difficult and really challenging.
Tim (15:15):
Even for a website, it’s like, yeah, we can make it look great in Chrome and Safari. And then for, like, the 300 people that are using, you know, Explorer back in the day—it’s like, there may be a few that have managed to not sunset whenever they shut it down. It’s like, yeah, our site is a miss on that.
Robbie (15:32):
Like the person who hasn’t updated their computer since 2015 because they want to hold on to it. (laughs) But yeah, it’s always a challenge, but making sure you can do that really plays a large role in making sure you’re going to have a sustainable ecosystem for your marketing that’s really going to, again, provide trust, provide a consistent aligned experience, and really give them something that they’re hopefully going to enjoy interacting with and also be willing to come back to.
Tim (15:58):
Yeah, no, it’s still like the coming-back-to part. I love that, because that is good UX. You have a good experience on a site—you’re going to come back to it. You have a bad experience on a site—you’re going to forget it or you’re going to tell all your friends, “Oh man, I was on this site and it was horrible.” I felt like… you know, all the things fall apart. And I remember somebody doing a teardown at another conference I was at. It was the founder of Unbounce, and he was trying to update his driver’s license or something like that. And the process was so bad, he went back through and basically went screen by screen, pointing out all the processes and steps and things that were counterintuitive and back and forth. And in the case of, you know, when you’re a government entity that issues a driving license, like, you get away with stuff that nobody else does because it’s the only option. You have a captive audience. Yeah. Where it’s like, “This is my only way to get a driver’s license upgrade.” You’re either gonna do this or you’re not gonna drive. My guess is, if you’re an e-commerce site—unless you have some proprietary product that you cannot get anywhere else—you don’t have that luxury of a captive audience, because they can just say, “This is horrible. I’m out. I’m gonna go somewhere else.” Or, “I would love to read this advice or learning column or best-off guide that you have on your site, but I just can’t get beyond the hideous typeface and how it looks and feels. And I don’t know where to go after I finish reading because there are no off-ramps to the next thing.” You don’t have that luxury.
Robbie (17:31):
There are no intuitive next steps, there’s no direct call to action. You’re not getting that experience. You’re creating a haphazard experience, essentially.
Tim (17:40):
And then to top it off, we have an email popover that fires on a really scary site, and it looks just as bad. It’s like, spin the wheel! You’re not going to get that sign-up. You’re just basically burning your building down at that stage.
Robbie (17:54):
Yeah, so like even that list capture plays a large role in—is this going to feel like someone I want to give my email to? Is this someone I want to transact with? And even at that level, you’re making some type of transaction. You’re transacting with your data or with your wallet. That’s an impactful component people are really thinking about.
Tim (18:14):
Yeah, do I want to give my email to yet another website to send me…?
Robbie (18:20):
And is it a Nigerian prince going to fail?
Tim (18:23):
If I spin the wheel, will I really win? So, those kinds of things—it’s like, don’t muddy your experience. Don’t try flinging trends and things at the site that you just don’t know. Solid basic UX principles of a good experience go a long way, and then dress that up to match your brand. But unless—you talked about a site that you’re on and it had kind of like a Netflix-type scrolling experience—unless you have the budget to execute and test and make sure these things work, don’t try insane features on no budget.
Robbie (18:57):
Yeah, reinventing the wheel is a challenge. And it’s so tempting because, as people in the world, we experience some of the best digital marketing in the world every day. Because, again, as consumers, as people, we see what good looks like on our phone, whether it’s the emails we get from Lululemon or the sites we engage with on the weekends, or anywhere where the large portion of the population shops online. So, it’s a big deal, and this is where we need to be thinking about how do we borrow those ideas but not try and be too heavy-handed with the way those work.
Robbie (19:31):
Because, like that example, of an Asian food company or an Asian sauce company, and they’re like a DTC darling right now because they’re doing really, really well. They have a replenishable product, so it’s like a really sexy brand. But I was like, wow, I’m looking at their product pages and I’m looking at their shopping pages on mobile, and it feels just like a Netflix experience. And that’s like an experience that we’re all kind of trained intuitively to engage with because we know what it looks like scrolling on Netflix. We’re used to that kind of engaging, interactive feel for Netflix. But again, that’s not going to work for everybody because if you have 30,000 SKUs, you can’t necessarily have that same kind of engagement. Or you’ve got a really good recommendations engine, or you’ve got to be able to understand how to get people to the right place at the right time on their site. So, understanding the context of your business and then understanding how you can leverage those new ideas to borrow them but not change too much too quickly.
Tim (20:29):
I’m gonna sound like such an old man in what I’m thinking here, but you need to think about your site like a grocery store. It’s like, grocery stores, you get in, and when they’re done well—like I think of here in the Southeast, like Publix, for the sake of it—they have invested so much in how you should flow and move through that store and find things and end up buying more things.
Robbie (20:49):
The bread and the milk are the opposite ends of the store.
Tim (20:52):
Yeah. It’s planned out, but it’s done in a way that you can move through. But when you go into some stores that are smaller, or recently I was traveling overseas, and you go into stores in a different country and they’re not following planograms or like, the layouts of how they do things. You spend 30 minutes wandering around trying to figure out like, “I’m looking for coffee… where is this?” It’s a really difficult thing, and that’s just a real-world user experience example of, like, when it’s done well, the user is going to flow through your site, they’re going to get to it, and then they’re going to end up at the checkout. And they may potentially have more in their cart than they anticipated, but you’ve given them such a good experience that they either stumbled upon a product they didn’t think about, they read an article along the way that informed them, “Oh, I need to add this to make this product work better.” And then next thing you know, they’re at the checkout. Whenever it’s done wrong, it’s like going to that grocery store overseas where it’s a mom-and-pop shop that’s kind of laid out the store themselves with what they think, and, you know, it’s just a different experience.
Robbie (21:52):
Okay, but I’ve got to double-click on this analogy too, though. Because like, with a good experience and a good grocery store, how much are you going to spend at that grocery store over the lifetime of that relationship?
Tim (22:01):
Oh man, once you find a grocery store that you like, that’s where you shop. I know that you’ve got your dedicated one that you go to. And it’s the same with our family, where like, we really love how their produce section is set up and they always have just good stuff. It’s small, but you can get everything you need and be in and out. And now that we go there, you go to other ones and it’s like, this is overwhelming, there’s too much, or it’s, you know, the experience is just too many things going on.
Robbie (22:26):
The lifetime—I love this, it’s my favorite example—the lifetime value of a family at a grocery store is like $50k to $90k. Because, like, you’re spending $300 a week for a family, like… it’s a lot of money over the lifetime of that customer. And yeah, like that’s really smart because you’re coming back in, you’re enjoying it, and you’re adding more to your basket every time. I always joke, like here in the Southeast, we have Harris Teeter in Greenville. I’m like, yeah, they give out free beer. And they’re like, “They give out free beer? How do they stay in business?” I was like, they give out free beer—that’s really smart. They’re spending like $2 for that beer, but if you’re walking around the store with a beer, you’re spending a lot more time in the store, you’re probably making a lot more impulsive decisions, you’re kind of lubricated. And that’s like the best business hack ever. Like, if you could give people free beer for e-commerce stores, yeah, that’d be brilliant. And I know, like, this is—again, the e-commerce experience is more like spearfishing, like you’re looking for one specific product than like exploring and engaging with an entire store. Like, your e-commerce is spearfishing, it is…
Tim (23:34):
Yeah, your UX is like cross-sells, up-sells, making things visible, like the right products that are related to the product. Like, that’s where you take that physical shopping experience, and if you’ve really thought out your user experience, people may come in for that one item. But if they then see other things where it’s like, “Oh, this would look great with that,” or, “Oh, this adds to this or makes it better or more efficient,” then that’s good user experience. Versus them just finding the one product and being out and never knowing that you sell $20 accessories that make that product better.
Robbie (24:08):
Okay, so now you have my wheels spinning too—like user experience of a post-purchase sequence or like…
Tim (24:14):
Yeah.
Robbie (24:14):
…email flows.
Tim (24:15):
Yeah, so we will be having a part two to this because this is not going to end well if we don’t. But we were going to talk about like, hey, what are three actionable high-level things that businesses can do to start to incorporate some of this thinking? Not like nuts and bolts tactical things, but how do they take some of this thinking and incorporate it into their operating system as a business? Like how do they bring this into how they think about marketing? And we came up with three unique principles, but I think we’ve kind of touched on them briefly. But the first one is like, not reinventing the wheel. Not reinventing the wheel in terms of how you’re doing what you’re doing and also following broad market trends to understand. Like, those broad market players in this space are going to help inform behavior moving forward.
Robbie (25:03):
Like e-commerce sites look a lot more like Amazon because Amazon—most people have some type of relationship with Amazon in their life, and they kind of dictate how people are expecting to interact on e-commerce. So borrowing some of those concepts and not trying to create an entirely new user interface from scratch is gonna be a smart direction to go in.
Tim (25:25):
Yeah, you don’t need to repioneer the cart. Amazon has thought this through, and they found a way that works. Shopify has invested millions upon millions to make a great checkout experience within their stores. You don’t need to come in and have your team gut the checkout out of your site and try to come up with your own unique way to get somebody through the cart. Like, don’t reinvent that wheel. People that have done this for much longer and have much deeper pockets have tackled this and tried to think of the best possible way. And I never understand when people are like, “If we’re going to do our product page, should we redo our checkout?” And it’s like, no, make the button on brand, you know, color-wise, but no.
Robbie (26:08):
Yeah, if you want to build a moat around your business, don’t build it around your checkout page because you’re probably building a moat that’s preventing people from getting there. Because honestly, don’t reinvent the wheel there. Actually, just don’t touch it.
Tim (26:20):
Yeah.
Robbie (26:21):
And then second one—so again, not reinventing the wheel. If you’re like a typical e-commerce business, a standard Shopify template is probably going to be a pretty efficient place to start too.
Tim (26:31):
Once you get over that million-dollar threshold per year, for the sake of it, then you can start thinking, “We can start investing back in it.” But until then, odds are the template, with just some branding elements added to it, is probably going to hold you through. Or at least that’s my opinion. You don’t need to go in and gut and build and do all that at that stage.
Robbie (26:53):
Yeah, so not reinventing the wheel. By the time maybe you’re upgrading to Shopify Plus, that’s when you’re thinking about adding more customization to your template, trying headless or experimenting with that. So not getting too fancy too fast and just using something out of the box is probably going to be a great way for you to start that growth process—like testing your product market fit, making sure you’re going to be in alignment, and making sure you can grow without all the bells and whistles. Because those aren’t going to be what makes you completely successful early on.
Robbie (27:25):
The next step—the next piece—is testing. Testing what works and testing what doesn’t. I know we feel like, on the email side, we can test anything and everything, and that’s one of the things I love about it. You get to have, like, the nerdy science component where all of our automations have some level of testing built in because you want to be gradually improving and optimizing over time. You can test value propositions, you can test wording, you can test—again, like, everybody talks about testing button color, but like, don’t care about button color. That’s probably the tenth thing you’re going to test. But yes, that’s something you can test and experiment with. But that testing and iteration—like, as marketers, we’re never going to know what’s going to be perfect out of the gate because every business is going to be contextual, and you have to understand what’s going to work and what’s not.
Tim (28:10):
Yeah. Unfortunately with organic and SEO, it’s a little harder to test because of timing. Like, you make a change. Some things you can do—it’s not really a test, it’s an update or an improvement—but you can’t really run side-by-sides of the same content on your site to see. But you might be able to take two similar products and optimize one a specific way, and then optimize the other a specific way, and then see which performs best. But again, it needs to be within variables of similar keyword volume and demand for that type of product. That way, you can kind of get a feel for, okay, this page is performing better, getting more traffic. But it’s a little bit harder to measure. From a website side, though, there’s a ton of things you can do—like tools like Hotjar to be able to record and see how users are interacting with specific pages on your site. Are they having, you know, what I call those rage clicks where they’re just clicking on things and it’s like, “Why is this not taking me anywhere? This is not doing anything!”
Tim (29:01):
And then you’ve got Google Optimize where, you know, it’s a free tool. You can make some tweaks and have Google basically A/B test two variations of a homepage or a landing page and see which one performs best. Then you move on and run another A/B test on something. But those are more sitewide tests. If you make those improvements and they keep users there longer or doing more, that will passively help your SEO by having traffic, making that the last click—it’s the last place they come, and that’s where they stay and that’s where they finish their journey.
Robbie (29:49):
Yeah. So again, smart and aligned. And the last piece we talked about was aligning the entirety of the customer experience. So that’s where, again, we talked about, like, yeah, they have a great experience on their organic content and then they sign up for email, and then the emails just look like Nigerian prince.
Tim (30:17):
Yeah.
Robbie (30:17):
Yeah, sending them over and like… One typo every once in a while could be human. It could be a nice touch, and you can respond to that. Like, “Oh hey, sorry about that—sticky fingers!”
Tim (30:22):
“We didn’t mean to say 95% off, we meant 5% off. But thanks for clicking in!”
Robbie (30:28):
Those are the mistakes you don’t want to make. And if you do, you address them very quickly. But yeah, those are, again, when that experience doesn’t line up, it’s really difficult. If the site is beautiful, smooth, and has this elegant feel, and then the second they get an email from the site, it’s like, “10% off! 20% off! 30% off! 40% off!”—if everything’s a sale, nothing’s a sale. And suddenly, you go from this beautiful Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus experience to Bob’s Used Cars. (laughs) It doesn’t work well because it’s this disjointed experience that really turns people off. When you can align those user touchpoints across that customer journey, you need to be thinking about this more holistically. Even if they’re engaging with your site, then they’re engaging with your social, then they’re engaging with your email—this is an entire user experience that fits across the expanse of that customer journey, from their first touch to their last purchase and beyond. Thinking about making each one of those touchpoints smooth and seamless is really important—or at least coherent.
Tim (31:27):
Yeah, it’s huge. And it’s noticeable when it’s not. I think that’s the biggest thing—clean, simple, don’t overcomplicate, keep it consistent, and don’t try to reinvent the wheel.
Robbie (31:38):
Yeah, so again, we have some small things you guys can take away and run with. And also, like I said, we have a lot more fodder for conversation in this one because we could probably go down another rabbit hole, but we’re not going to take any more of your guys’ time today.
Tim (31:54):
Yeah, until next time.
Robbie (31:56):
Until next time, this is Tim and Robbie with the Content Community Commerce podcast. We’ll come back with a second installment of this where we’ll go deeper in some different ways. But again, if you guys have questions between now and then, let us know. Respond to us, message us on LinkedIn, connect with us on LinkedIn—we’d love to hear your comments and questions.
Robbie (32:16):
And again, we like talking about marketing stuff.
Tim (32:20):
That might be obvious at this stage.
Robbie (32:22):
Yeah, marketing. So let us know. We want to hear from you. And if you’re willing to, we’ll make a shameless plug—yes, subscribe and make sure you get more of these, because hopefully, we’re adding enough value that you’re having a good enough experience that you want to come back.
Tim (32:41):
Thank you.
Robbie (32:42):
And he’s got an Irish accent—that just makes the UX of a podcast like 10 times better right there.
Tim (32:48):
Or else it completely confuses people, and they don’t understand what’s going on, and they’re like, “This is a bad user experience.”
Robbie (32:56):
See you guys next time!
[Outro]
