In this session, we cover an overview of user experience (UX) principles for websites, emphasizing the balance between design and functionality. The presentation focuses on how to leverage websites as a central hub for business marketing and growth. Recorded for San Antonio WordCamp, this virtual keynote was for the audience of WordPress experts.
Core Objectives for Better UX
- Understand Customer Perspective: It is crucial to identify the best customer, understand why they are visiting, determine what is required for them to convert, and ensure the process can scale.
- Put the Website to Work: Treat the website as a functional asset. This includes creating a content plan, designing with the next step in mind, adding content consistently rather than in bulk, and leveraging the capabilities of platforms like WordPress.
- Fuel Marketing: View the website as the digital representation of the brand. All marketing efforts should lead back to this hub, which provides more control than social media platforms.
Practical Implementation Tips
- Lead Capture: Focus on initiating conversations by requesting only relevant information, such as an email address or phone number, depending on the desired action.
- Content Strategy: Use Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to fuel blog content. If an answer requires more than 300–500 words, it is better suited as a blog post.
- Optimization: Do not sacrifice performance with unnecessary plugins. Instead, integrate third-party authentication tools where appropriate to save users time and provide social proof.
- Journalism/News Sites: To improve engagement, link to past articles for context, utilize internal linking structures, and embed social media content like tweets or polls to create interactivity.
In this talk, I would like to show how our team has evolved over the years to find balance by focusing on user experience and how the trend of winning websites continues to be like a great experience IRL… Practical application that I believe can help everyone build better sites (design and content).