User experience, also known as UX or UE is the commonly used term to describe the overall appearance and usability perceived by the users on a website. This user experience includes all the components of the human-computer interaction and is imperative for website design development and search engine optimization(SEO). A sound user experience includes a responsive design, structured data, unique & quality contents and minimal page loading speed. Online marketers are very keen about these elements as it is good for the user experience and for search engine rankings too. User experience(UX) or user experience design is often taken out of context. This article is intended to provide significant things about the user experience that every marketer must know.

Content and context is different

Many of us are not aware that content and context are different. Content is what you write and context is the meaning behind it. Your content should include proper keywords to make your context relevant and meaningful. Content and context define the overall user experience of a website. Content should be optimized for the search engine to crawl and context should be understandable for the readers. This is why we say, content is king and context is queen. Therefore apart from the visual design or interface design, content is also an important element of the UX.

Here is the user experience honeycomb by Peter Morville, that shows the important ingredients of good user experience.

Make sure your contents incorporate all the above seven facets.

UX and usability aren’t similar

User experience(UX) and usability are different. Usability covers all the necessary qualities and attributes for a good user experience. Do remember UX is a bigger concept, than usability. The usability includes the effectiveness, efficiency, readability, user-friendliness, page loading speed and user satisfaction with a particular website or content. Hence UX is dependable on these elements of usability for a greater user experience.

SEO is vital

Here is where both humans and technology meet each other. Marketers know the importance of SEO for their business. Findability creates a positive user experience and without SEO this “findability” is not possible. A user searches on the search engine to discover and locate their desired contents. So labeling, organizing, and formatting are essential for the website contents to be readable and accessible for the users. A sound SEO strategy which includes proper keywords, meta description & tags, H1 & H2 tags, backlinks, unique contents, sitemaps robots.txt, and image alt attributes is essential for the overall user experience(UX).

Download time

This means the perceived download time is more important than the actual time. If the users can easily find what they want on a website, this means a positive perception to download all the documents of the website. Conversely, if the user can not find what they want on a website, they assume the page loading speed and actual download time of the website is slow and neglect your site. Actual download time should be short and easy for the users to jump to various landing pages of your website. This is what a good user experience means and reduced timings entices the users to surf a lot on your website.