What is Content UX and Why Does it Need to Be in Your Business Vocabulary?

What is Content UX and Why Does it Need to Be in Your Business Vocabulary?

Is content truly king or is user experience (UX) the way forward? For years, the battle has raged between content strategists and UX designers trying to claim the crown of most important to a business’ success. Well, we’ve got some news, an oligarchy is in order, wrapped neatly into a new package labeled “content UX” that can transform your website’s performance.

What is Content UX?

As alluded, content UX is the merging of two previously separate disciplines — content strategy and user experience design — to create seamless experiences across your website. But let’s start with the definition of both content strategy and UX design.

Content strategy is the creation, publication, and oversight of useful, usable content. For instance, it’s writing the blog post, publishing it at the correct time for your audience, and monitoring its click through rates, engagement, and link profile long after it’s published.

UX, in turn, is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided through interactions with your website. Examples include building helpful dropdown menus, adding a breadcrumb trail to pages, and categorizing or tagging blog posts, plus a whole host of other design elements that make your website easy to navigate, intuitive, and simple to use.

Content UX, therefore, is creating and publishing valuable and engaging content into a design where it can be found, easily digested, and accessed by users. It also means optimizing existing content to ensure that your published articles or landing pages aren’t buried in the sitemap or impossible to find.

These two fields already overlap in many areas, making a transition to content UX less difficult than you might imagine. To help you visualize, take a look at this user experience honeycomb, created by Peter Morville, that shows the key factors to consider in UX, each serving a unique purpose in website design.)

ContentUX-content-hexagon

As you can see, at least four elements — useful, usable, findable, and credible — should apply to the type of content you are already creating. It’s then a matter of combining your content strategy with your UX plan at earlier stages to capitalize on the benefits of quality copy mixed with easy-to-use interfaces.

Why Does it Matter?

In today’s online world, simply pumping out blog posts and new landing pages won’t lead to ranking success, nor will a responsive website design or interactive interface garner favor with Google on its own. The two must go hand-in-hand.

Before you can create an easy-to-navigate content hub, you need content worth organizing. On the flip side, you may have some great content, but no simple way for users to find it. Think back to the honeycomb — when information is found (UX), is it useful (content strategy)? Is your article extremely credible (content strategy), but not accessible (UX)?

Knowing where and how your UX design and content intersect and relate is essential to good content UX. For example, if you want to add a “Latest News” reel to your website, but you only post a new blog every three months, UX can create a reel that disappears after 30 days and reappears when a new post is added, instead of having stagnant content sitting on your site.

If you remember one thing in terms of content UX, make it this: everything needs a purpose and a place to exist on your website. This focus on content UX adds value to user experience by positioning relevant and desirable information where readers can find it.

What’s Next?

When it comes to implementing content UX, your first move should be to understand your customer’s journey through your site and to find gaps in content. Whether you have amazing content that simply can’t be found, or have a point in the journey where users seem to be bouncing or leaving your site, it needs to be identified.

In successful content UX, the customer is king. Focus on a good user experience that follows unimpaired pathways and journeys, while adding value to their overall experience with engaging, relevant, and informative content along the way.

Woo Content is an international, multi-lingual copywriting agency based in New York, London, Sydney, and Singapore.

Recent Posts

  • What is Content UX and Why Does it Need to Be in Your...

  • Beegit and Ad-Rank Media

  • Customize your team's content workflow — and fonts!

  • Five quick steps to creating a content plan that kills endless revision loops...

  • Deep content search and improved commenting with resolved comments

  • Updated version control system for easier collaborative editing