Strategy: Brand Strategy

This month in Ask UXmatters, the UX professionals who belong to our panel of experts discuss the relationship between User Experience and branding, comparing their scope and the value they deliver to an organization. Our experts then consider the relationship between User Experience and Customer Experience (CX).

Our panelists also explore the measurement of brand strategy utilizing KPIs and UX measurements. Plus, they consider the importance of consistency in the brand experience. Finally, our experts look at the impact that all of the touchpoints for a product’s or service’s user experience have on the brand experience. Read More

Much has been written in the past decade about the importance of usability and the user experience to customers’ perception of an organization’s brand. Jared Spool’s 1996 article “Branding and Usability” correctly identifies the importance of Web site usability to brand experience and provides evidence that a positive user experience has a direct correlation to positive brand perception. More recently, authors such as Dirk Knemeyer have expanded on this theme.

• recognizing that both online and offline customer experiences contribute to brand image
• highlighting the importance of consistency between the customer experience across all touch-points
• working from the premise that an organization engages in a broad, complex set of interactions with its customers, of which the brand experience portrayed through its Web sites is only one
• acknowledging the fact that brand is inherently something we can only influence, not control

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Today’s consumers have growing expectations for higher quality and ease of use in new products. They typically evaluate brand values and product specs before paying top dollar for products. Companies are scrambling to align their brand touchpoints and gain loyal customers for their current and future product lines. Without strong brands, consumers buy with their wallets, not their hearts. They may miss product innovations companies have designed to fill major gaps in their markets and increase their market shares—even products they’ve painstakingly tested with users.

In today’s market, user experience is a key differentiator for products. Companies are innovating more creative approaches to product definition and design and rushing to add talent to their existing product design organizations. Many business leaders are struggling with the issue of where to place new UX processes and professionals within their organizations. Read More