Table of Contents
We sat down with UX designer David Martin (uxhacks). David is our go to guy for UX, branding and technical consulting for all of our companies.
Let’s get into it!
Timestamps
- 2:23 – How does UX fit into the overall marketing process, particularly for SEO Agencies?
- 6:02 – When it comes to the audience research process, how small of a niche is too small in your opinion?
- 9:06 – When should somebody hire a UX in-house or is this something that you think they should outsource to a specialist?
- 13:37 – What is your advice for agencies that are struggling with their design?
- 15:54 – The Sill (thesill.com) Review
- 23:27 – WEBRIS (webris.org) Review
- 28:32 – Klientboost (klientboost.com) Review
- 36:26 – Typeform (typeform.com) Review
- 39:10 – Slack (slack.com) Review
- 42:50 – Bulletproof (bulletproof.com) Review
How does UX fit into the overall marketing process, particularly for SEO Agencies?
Every agency handles it differently. For smaller SEO agencies, it usually comes up as an afterthought. Say a client is running Facebook ads for a high-intent audience and the ads are simply not performing.
At that point, it becomes obvious that you need a UX specialist to diagnose the problem. Most of the time it comes down to the following three issues:
The value proposition is not clear and the business does not have any Unique Selling Proposition
The website does not make it easy for the user to act on the CTA or there is a lack of one altogether leaving the user confused
The business has not built trust with the prospect
When it comes to agencies you need to warm up your audience first and build trust with them before asking for their business.
You have to tell them what value you will provide them and how it will solve their problem before expecting them to subscribe or buy anything from you.
No one wants to visit a website and buy a product that has no reviews, testimonials, and star ratings.
Trust signals like these are super important to make the user feel safe.
When it comes to the audience research process, how small of a niche is too small in your opinion?
No niche is too small unless the product that you are selling is just not scalable in terms of production.
I have seen people selling slime online for $10. It is a super low budget product but these shops are selling out massively because they know who their audience is.
I think that it is important to spend some time upfront talking to your customers. Try to figure out what their problems are and how you can help.
If you could have this conversation with your customers you will provide them a better user experience on your website because you will be able to address those pain points for those personas.
It is also important to make a distinction between primary and secondary personas.
Your primary persona may be an SEO agency owner but you also have secondary personas, for example, a freelancer who wants to learn SEO or an entrepreneur who wants to acquire SEO skills.
These may not be the personas you are marketing to but you must have an optional user path on your website for them so they can find a solution to their problem as well.
When should somebody hire a UX in-house or is this something that you think they should outsource to a specialist?
For large companies, it makes sense to bring UX in-house but for small agencies, this can be very costly. If you are a small agency I think you should work with a strategist.
The difference between a skilled UI person and a skilled UX professional is that the UI person is a good designer and the UX person is a good strategist.
UX person can do the high-level thinking and boil that down into practical suggestions like for example on-page optimizations for
CRO.
He can make sure that you have reviews and testimonials. He will see to it that your CTA is clear and everything is contextual and the right kind of media is being used in the right places.
What is your advice for agencies that are struggling with their design?
When you design a product or service that no one cares about it means you have not spent enough time testing it during the design process.
You should keep testing your design and UI at every stage of the design process and you can do that easily on platforms like usertesting.com etc.
People hire a designer before they are clear on what they want to build and that is very costly in the end.
Your design may look nice and trendy but none of that matters if your message is not clear. It will not matter if your users are not feeling like they can trust you. It is useless if the value proposition is not clear.
How nice your website looks is no measure of the effectiveness of its design.
Website reviews by David
15:54 The Sill (thesill.com) Review
23:27 WEBRIS (webris.org) Review
28:32 Klientboost (klientboost.com) Review
36:26 Typeform (typeform.com) Review
39:10 Slack (slack.com) Review
42:50 Bulletproof (bulletproof.com) Review
