Designing an Effective Content Experience for Your Business

Written by Matt Berringer

May 1, 2022

Designing an Effective Content Experience for Your Business

While strong content drives results, in today’s digital world, you also need to design content experiences for your audience. Here, we’ll outline what a content experience is, why design matters, some key elements for designing an effective content experience and tips for choosing a content experience platform.

What Is a Content Experience?

A content experience implements both content and design to leverage greater results and help your brand stand out. With content marketing growing more ubiquitous every year, strong content is no longer enough to generate results on its own. You also need well-designed content that achieves a high-quality user experience. That’s where design marketing comes in.

What Is Design Marketing?

Design marketing leverages common graphic design strategies to create experiential content for users to engage with. Such design strategies include small details like color and font choices, as well as the overall user interface of your content.

Why Does Design Matter?

Design can make or break your user experience. With poor design, the content you’ve worked so hard on — content that should drive results — might not get the chance it deserves. Use a design marketing strategy to improve your engagement and brand reputation and let that content shine.

Engagement

While unattractive design prompts 38% of people to stop engaging with a piece of content, using a platform to design your content can drive seven minutes of engagement per visit.

On average, users leave a webpage within 20 seconds, meaning you need to make an impression fast. With strategic formatting and visual elements incorporated into your content, you can catch your visitors’ attention quickly and draw their eye to the most important and relevant
content.

Brand Reputation

Design also directly impacts your branding, with 50% of consumer ; reporting that web design affects brand.

Again, users spend short amounts of time on most websites they visit, which means they’re making a snap judgment about the content they see there. Make sure that judgment reflects positively on your brand by giving your audience a visually appealing website.

More than that, well-designed content experiences make it easy and enjoyable for users to find the information they’re searching for. By ensuring your visitors find the answers they need before clicking away, you help paint your brand as an authoritative and relevant source for their needs.

Keys to Effective Content Design

To design an effective digital content experience, keep five characteristics in mind — structure, storytelling, personalization, interactivity and diversification.

1. Structure

Design your content structure to make it as seamless as possible for users to find the information they’re looking
for. Here are some tips for creating an effective page structure:

• Take users on a journey: Use design elements like color, font and layout to draw their eye to the most important information on the page, then guide them visually through the rest of the page.
• Make all page elements accessible: Ensure all visitors can benefit from your content by making it easy to read and accessible for people of all physical and cognitive abilities
• Optimize for mobile: Fifty-six percent of online traffic; comes from mobile. Ensure that all site visitors have a positive experience with your content.
• Draw attention to your calls to action (CTAs): In the same way, you used design elements to catch
  users’ attention initially, use design to nudge them toward your CTAs.

2. Storytelling

Use your content to tell a story
that connects your brand to your audience. Effective marketing is audience-first. When you market a product or service, you’re answering a question your audience has. Through storytelling, you can show your readers in detail that:

• You understand their problems
• You know why their pain points matter to them
• You can provide an effective solution

Through storytelling, you show your audience you empathize with them rather than telling them you do. Imagine if a brand told you, simply, that eyewear should be affordable. You might nod along and agree, but the statement doesn’t drive an emotional connection. Now, consider
this story from Warby Parker that personally narrates why expensive eyewear is a problem. The story is much more impactful.

3. Personalization

An effective content experience should speak to the individual. Understand the specific pain points across your audience and personalize content for each.

For example, Warby Parker might also share a story focused on their numerous glasses designs to connect with another customer segment. Or an amusement park might create content that resonates with families as well as content that resonates with a group of friends looking for a fun weekend together.

Personalizing your website might also involve a customized experience based on a viewer’s location or browsing behavior. You might target returning users with an offer on your products or services, or welcome new visitors to your
site.

4. Interactivity

Interactive content directly engages users with intuitive design. Interactivity can lead to higher perceived value, plus valuable marketing data for you.

The “IKEA Effect” reveals that when users directly contribute to a desired result, their perceived value of that result increases. In other words, allowing users to interact with your content constructively can make them value it more.

Beyond that, user interactions give you direct insight into how your audience thinks and feels. For an example of content design that’s interactive, check out Rocket Mortgage’s website. The financial institution links to a mortgage calculator from their web content. The calculator might provide insight into the average range of home prices their readers are shopping for, which could help them personalize their content accordingly.

5. Diversification

While we’ve already discussed the benefits of diversifying your content for personalization, let’s jump into another
type of diversification — cross-platform content. Strong design gives you the tools to diversify your content across
platforms.

Think about it. A web article, digital catalog, video, infographic and social media post can all communicate the same information. The main difference? Design. With effective design, you can publish the same information in various formats.

Reformatting your content for different mediums is known as repurposing content. Repurposing content allows you to reach customers on new platforms and more efficiently scale your content. Just keep in mind the best practices for each new format. An Instagram post and a Tweet, for example, will require slightly different design elements.

Content Design Tools and Platforms

Designing effective content involves a lot of moving parts. The good news is that you have several content design tools and platforms at your fingertips.

First, you could hire a designer to help get your content in shape. But make sure you understand the interaction between marketing design and graphic design. A graphic designer will help you create visually stunning elements, but their pieces should build toward your overall brand. Marketing design should incorporate every touchpoint a customer has with your brand, including your content, website and physical touchpoints.

While a designer can be a viable option for some, you don’t have to hire one to create visually stunning content.

There are many content design tools and platforms that empower you to take ownership of the design process. When choosing between these tools and platforms, consider the elements described above. Will this tool help you structure content effectively, tell a story, personalize it for your audience, incorporate interactive features and diversify it across platforms?

Check out a Demo of Nxtbook Media’s Content Experience Platform

Nxtbook Media provides a content experience platform that helps you create beautifully designed, interactive and personalized content for your website. With functionality that makes it easy to update multiple platforms simultaneously, our content experience tools can help you quickly and efficiently drive results.

Schedule a live demo of our PageRaft or nxtbook platforms today.