Hello again.
A quick announcement before I get to today’s topic. On the 22nd of February, my Finding Clients Masterclass will open to new students for one week only. If you want to be informed when it is available, you can register your interest here.
I have recently been working with a client who is about to run an ad campaign designed to drive people to a landing page. The landing page encourages people to visit their existing website to either buy online or find a store. Unfortunately, the whole experience is a mess.
The problem is that the team responsible for the landing page is looking at it in isolation. They are not considering the bigger picture.
They have failed to think about who the users coming from the ad campaign will be, and what questions they will have in their minds. They haven’t worked with the ad team to form a consistent message or an agreed customer persona.
They have also failed to consider what will happen when the user attempts to find a store or purchase from the landing page. For example, when I looked at the journey holistically, I found that the store locator didn’t work properly, meaning that even if the landing page and ad campaigns both worked, the client wouldn’t have succeeded in their ultimate aim of more sales.
I see these kinds of problems all the time, both in-house and with agencies. Everybody has blinkers on, focusing solely on their role and responsibilities while ignoring the bigger picture.
Everybody either thinks it isn’t their job to worry about other experience elements or are too afraid of treading on other people’s toes to comment. There is no communication, no collaboration and no coordination.
Everybody Loses
The sad thing about all of this is that everybody suffers:
- The user has a terrible time, passed from one isolated experience to the next.
- The client sees poor sales and awful return on investment.
- Those responsible for individual parts of the journey get blamed for poor performance even though they delivered what was asked of them.
Who Should Be Thinking Holistically?
In my mind, ensuring this collaboration and thinking holistically is exactly the role of a user experience designer. Our job is to design the whole user experience, not just a part of it.
That is why I get so annoyed when you see job descriptions for UI/UX designers like these are the same things. A UI designer designs the interface they are asked to design, a UX designer considers the whole experience.
If you call yourself a UX designer, you cannot look at your project in isolation. You have to consider it as part of a bigger picture. You must do everything in your power to ensure all parts of the journey work together to help users complete their goals and the organisation succeed.
At Least Flag Problems
Look, I know it is not always easy, and you won’t always change what needs to be changed. However, you should at least flag these issues. Don’t sit and grumble about them in private, but inform key stakeholders and allow them to decide whether these problems are worth addressing.
I would encourage you to ask yourself whether your team truly has a UX designer in it, or whether everybody is looking at their individual part of the puzzle and ignoring the bigger picture.
Upcoming Workshops
I have a number of upcoming online workshops that you might be interested in joining. Here is a list and where you can find out more.
- Designing Websites That Convert (16th, 17th, 23rd and 24th March)
- Customer Experience Strategy (18th March)
- Implementing Customer Experience Online (25th March)
