If you’ve ever sat down to an exquisite meal, your experience is the final moment in a myriad of carefully-orchestrated events leading up to it. The chef has designed each bite to build on the one before, creating a delicate, yet alluring balance of the senses. Meticulous detail poured into the preparation all comes down to the moment you put it in your mouth and consume it. You finish the meal with the sensation that it may have been the best meal of your life.
You are purely delighted.
You walk away and find yourself telling everyone you know (who appreciates such a thing) how extraordinary the experience was. You explain how you savored every single bite down to the last one.
What are you serving?
As the owner of your web or mobile product, you should create a user experience that has the same affect. But it takes careful consideration, preparation, and presentation to make it right for the user.
What are you serving? Is it going to bring your customers back? Will it make people so happy to use it that they can’t help but tell others?
Just how are you looking at the content you serve to your customers? Like the chef, you’re proud of what you’ve done. But how does the user feel about it? She may encounter your content in a way you didn’t intend. How you feel about what you’re serving up is different than how she feels about it.
Good Content Done Right
If you are honest with yourself, you’ll recognize that it takes effort to provide the right content for your users.
In Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach explain:
“It requires real people and real resources to get it right, and it’s not easy. That’s why so many of our organizations are constantly looking for shortcuts to getting the content done. When we take that attitude, we start to see content as piles and piles of stuff that can be acquired at will.”
It takes time to produce the right content for the right user in the right context.
Like preparing a good meal, the steps it takes to do this correctly can be summed into 3 basic tasks:
- Consideration – Create a plan. What do your users really need and want?
- Preparation – Gather the resources and ingredients. Hire the right people.
- Creation – Put it together in a meaningful and irresistible way.
The more you consider the true needs of the users, the more you will meet their needs in the end. Meeting the needs of your users is the ultimate measure of whether you’ve created a good user experience. Users don’t lie.
Making the user experience good is the start of creating delighted users. When the user is delighted, they naturally develop a passion. When they become passionate, they become your greatest advocate. From this, everything else will follow — increased user base, increased sales and return on investment, word of mouth, better usage, etc.
Don’t you think it’s worth spending a little time making sure you’re providing the things that will make your users happy?
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