As I start my internship for American International Group (AIG), I have learned about their need for user experience in digital marketing. My project for this summer includes featuring user experience (UX) in the website for AIG’s Travel Guard.
User experience is defined as the understanding of user needs to help and create products and services that provide a meaningful experience to the customers. Businesses utilize UX to attract and convert customer’s interests into revenue. UX combines visual designs, interaction design, usability, and content strategy to create a valuable user experience. It is essential as an important component of successful digital marketing, prioritizing personalization and convenience.
A positive user experience is important when it comes to converting a customer’s journey into a success journey. This allows for the differentiation of your company’s product in a competitive marketplace.
Several examples of leading companies using UX to surpass competitors include Rover, Duolingo, and Starbucks.
Take Rover for example. Rover is a service for dogsitting, using reviews to build trust. Because many families value their dogs like children, Rover makes it simple for users to pick out a sitter and book them given their reviews and photo updates while their owners are gone. They take into consideration how important trust is when it comes to their pet and create a positive UX in order to stand out from competitors.
Similarly, Duolingo, a language learning service, takes away the burden of choosing and committing to a paid plan. Users are able to learn a new language and set a goal for their learning. Compared to many competitors such as Rosetta Stone, making users decide on a plan, paying and signing up for an account before they begin learning. Those additional steps that lead up to the purchase of a subscription causes friction that may cause uses to drop out of the process.
Starbucks is able to create a positive user experience that I have first hand experience with, by making it personal. Starbucks uses smart personalization in their app for online ordering through the analysis of a user’s past purchases and patterns. Compared to other cafes and fast-casual restaurants such as Panera, Starbucks is able to create an efficient user experience that allows users to take shortcuts to getting what they want.