The world of today is governed largely by content. You may not think that content and UX design are related, but a new definition will show you how important the relationship is.
Information is the core of content. This information can be displayed digitally as long or short text, images, videos, podcasts and soundbites. It could also appear in the form of newsletters, emails, social media posts, audio clips, and newsletters. The content of an app is the way information is presented on its homepage. It can also be the actual information. The menu that we see at our favorite local restaurant when ordering takeout, and the buttons on a website menu are content.
When you understand this, the importance of content to a user’s experience becomes apparent. You might even say content is user experience. With so much content across so many mediums and touchpoints to create, careful planning is necessary.
Content planning is the process whereby UX designers create the best content for the channels and times that are most appropriate to provide the ultimate experience to customers and clients who interact with their brand or company. To illustrate how important content planning is in UX, nearly 90 percent of online shoppers said they would not return to a site after a poor user experience.
What is a UX Content Strategy? Why is it Important?
UX content strategy is so much more than just creating content. It is a multi-layered approach that takes into account the company’s content needs and optimizes their end-user experience.
UX content strategy is crucial because it’s the backbone for a company’s customer-facing image. It is the face of the business: UX content management manages what the customer hears, sees, feels, and reads during their interaction with the brand, product or service. Content that is UX-informed and carefully curated can help small businesses become bigger, while helping big businesses remain relevant.
Content strategy can vary depending on who is in charge of designing it, what the end user needs are, and how the business will use it. A good UX strategy is basically this:
A UX Content Strategy is a process that assesses the needs of end users and aligns them with business goals. This creates a framework to help in the creation and implementation UX-enhancing contents which meet business goals.
Four key elements of a robust content strategy for UX include:
- Editorial
- Experience
- Structure
- Process
Credit: 
Brain Traffic
Explore the relationship between content strategy and UX
We all know the importance of content marketing. This is especially true for new brands. What shape does content marketing take when it is combined with UX? It’s important to first understand what UX is.
UX, which stands for “user-experience”, can mean many things. Most of them are interconnected. UX, like content, is ubiquitous in the digital world. The job description for a UX Designer is very broad and diverse.
Empathy Lab 
You’ll notice from the infographic above that the best UX designers have a diverse range of responsibilities, from designer to consultant.
They need to understand UX from all angles: the end-user’s needs, the client’s goals, and the technology that can support them. They also have to be aware of online trends, such as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) search engine algorithms, and how to combine this information into a framework that is easy to use.
Content is the end result of all of these nuanced and varied aspects of a UX designer’s work. Value-adding content which is optimized to a very specific set of goals, based on a very specific set of research parameters, technological requirements/limitations, and client expectations. Here, content strategy and UX come together.
UX Content Strategy: Elements
We’ve already mentioned that the four elements of a successful content strategy are structural, process, and experiential design. These four elements can be further divided into two categories: system design and content design.
Content Design is a design that focuses on the user’s needs by utilizing fundamental content strategy rules.
System Design is a comprehensive guide to the design of content, covering the technologies, interfaces, metadata and site architecture that UX designers are required to work with.
It’s important to remember that these elements are not independent. Content strategy is a part of UX that focuses on analyzing how your UX-guided material affects the end user. Then, you can adjust your framework in a continuous cycle of design improvement.
Let’s examine its four key elements in more detail now that we know what UX content is, why it is important, and how it relates to content.
Editorial Design
Editors have two main tasks:
- It is important to maintain consistency in terms of tone, style and grammar.
- Find and highlight the most compelling content elements to ensure it appeals to the intended audience
It is the same for an editor in a literary publisher, an editor of a TV show or – as is our case – a UX Designer entering the editorial phase of their UX Content Strategy. The designer is focusing on the content and the way it should be expressed.
The editorial UX strategist must understand their audience as well as their client’s goals and brand. The editorial UX strategist combines the two to create a style guide that lays out the following clearly and consistently.
- Their content must communicate the messages that they intend
- Use the right language, tone and voice to convey your message
- Point of view of the brand client
- Brand standards or language standards that must be adhered to
- What type of content to use? What type of content should be used?
- At checkout or as soon as the end user opens the app, it is best to deliver each message. When it is most effective to deliver each message (e.g. at the checkout or when the user opens the application)
Experiential Design
Experience design is the twin of editorial design within the “content design” family. In any good UX content strategy, the designer will consider the end-user’s experience. The designer should always work for the benefit and satisfaction of the client/customer who uses the product.
To achieve success, you will need to conduct a lot of primary research. You should know the target audience of your product/brand.
- Age
- Their socio-economic background
- They may have a cultural or religious background
- They have their own interests
- The location of the company
Most importantly,
- They face issues online
In order to implement an experiential design strategy in UX, the designer must first understand the audience intimately. This will allow them to determine what issues they face in their digital life. Knowing the audience well enough to create a clear image of their likes or dislikes allows the designer to better understand what content will improve the user’s experience.
UX content strategists can create a journey map that is more accessible, efficient and tailored to the customer’s journey by analyzing the brand. The UX content strategist can plot the points at which they will need content. They will also know what format it should take – whether user-generated or in-house content – and how to best deliver editorial messages at each of these points.
This step also involves drafting a framework that outlines how to best optimize the user’s experience across multiple platforms, i.e. For web, mobile and tablet.
Structural Design
Content design (editorial or experiential) is about improving the user experience by enhancing the tone, look and intent of the content. Structural design, also known as structural content engineering, is about optimizing information architecture to make sure that the content is easily accessible and digestible.
Imagine publishing an in-depth “how-to article” on the web, which is accurate, helpful, and entertaining, but not formatting it, adding metadata, or including a link from your website’s menu. Even if it’s backed up by editorial design and experience, the incredible content you created is difficult to find and engage with. It becomes completely useless. This will neither enhance the user experience nor meet your business goals.
The following should be evaluated before evaluating structural engineering for content strategy.
- Note the strengths and weaknesses of the existing information architecture for a brand/product.
- The brand/product layout and structure as experienced across multiple interfaces and platforms
- Search terms and categories most commonly used by end users
After gathering this information, UX designers can redesign and reorganize an app’s or website’s information architecture, for example, to make it easier to navigate for the average user. By tagging, categorizing and writing a framework that streamlines the process of creating all future content, they can ensure the content is easier to discover for users.
By optimizing the content’s visibility and relevance to search engines, and other websites.
Process Design
The final element of content strategy is process design. The three other core elements of a UX strategy for content are about determining what the content should say, how and where it should say it, and how and when it should be organized. The UX designer puts it all together in the process design phase.
Process design controls are also known as “content management” or “content governance”.
- Who will create the content: what software or tools will they use?
- Who will be informed and consulted about the creation of content?
- Content approval:who will have the final say as to whether a content piece is ready for publication? What will the publishing process look like?
- How will content be reviewed : what metrics and standard will be used to determine if content is fulfilling its purposes/to determine the performance of content; and how will it be refreshed? What will the content life cycle look like?
It would be impossible to measure the effectiveness of a UX strategy without this crucial step. With quality process design, it is possible to improve the cycle until the user experience and client goals are optimized.
Conclusion: Recapping UX Content Strategy
Content and user experience are at the heart of every interaction we have online, whether on a mobile, tablet, PC, app, website, or search engine. It can be difficult to determine how you can make the content of your company or client as good as it can be while also improving user experience and meeting your client’s needs.
Credit User Experience Project
To master this art, a UX content designer needs to consider a hundred different things. It all falls apart without a robust UX content strategy.
The first time you saw this post, Optimizing Content Strategy for UX: A Beginner’s guide appeared on Scoop.it blog.
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