“You are almost always wrong about your users”

Manik Rathee

Websites have become more complex as our industry’s technologies advance. A key component of digital marketing is the User Experience (abbreviated as UX) because is finally how a person feels when interacting or using a website, an app or any other system. It is an essential part of a digital marketing strategy because is finally how users perceive and interact with the platform: It is easy and pleasant to use? It communicates what we do? An user can access from any platform? It has clear call to actions? These are some of the questions that every UX designer may try to resolve when optimizing a website or any system.

The following table summarizes some of the key components for analyzing the UX of a website. In this case I have chosen Patreon for the analysis. Patreon is a crowdfunding platform that allows artists and creators to fund their projects or artworks.

Here some UX recommendations…

1. Explain, then ask. When users first arrive at the website, they are invited to join without knowing about the site and its offering. Include short description bullets or cards about the site and how it works. You can also link to additional content.
2. Give clear call to actions. Separate call to actions based on the website’s two main objectives: First, invite creators and artists to join the community and upload their work, and second, motivate the crowd to fund their projects. For example, for the first objective the call to action could be “Start a Campaign” and for the second objective could be “Explore Projects”.
3. Tell a story. Don’t give orders. The order of information is key to telling users a story and making them interested in your product. Start with the most attractive content/features and then ask the users to “join today” or “sign up”. Always try to give reasons of why to join (you can include the advantages of the platform). Engage the users with a story and then ask them to do something.
4. Hoover me. For the desktop version you can add a hover to each of the projects on the homepage with a small description of the project so users can scan it and learn about the project.
5. Include missing content. Crowdfunding is a new industry. It requires that all platforms educate users how to use it and why this platform is different from the rest. I highly recommend to add the following pages: “How it works”, “Pricing”, “Success Stories”, and “Contact us”.
6. Avoid deal-breakers. If users are trying to go back to the home page why are you asking them to login or register? The home page is the most important page of the website and needs to be open to everyone.
7. I don’t speak English. Consider the possibility of adding new languages to the website.

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