A good UX designer should consider the whole user journey to improve the user experience. Every user touchpoint adds up to a good/bad user experience, and social media is one of the major touchpoints. Marketers advertise their products to get the customers’ attention. Today, social media apps get maximum attention from people, and hence it makes sense for businesses to have an online presence, and the UX in social media apps becomes crucial. According to October 2021 global snapshot:
- 4.55 billion people around the world now use social media, 400 million new users have come online within the last 12 months
- 5.29 billion unique mobile users mean more than two-thirds of the world have access to a mobile phone.
When the maximum Population interacts with your brand on social media, designing your website/ app and to up your digital game with a better UX/ UI design becomes imperative. Social media is a critical component of organizations’ omnichannel user experience, and users have different expectations, wants, and needs when engaging with a company on social media. Currently, User experience is the most important thing for digital success. As part of the UX Design process, UX Research is important to understand your users and design social media pages.
Following are a few UX techniques to improve the social media game:
Readability of content:
Has it ever happened to you that you scroll through or skip some of the blogs/articles while you read some till the end? One of the reasons for this is the readability of the content. UX designers take care of readability when designing an app/web page. They are aware that the Users first read in a horizontal movement, then move down the page, then read across, and finally scan the content’s left side vertically. It creates an F-shaped reading pattern (which can sometimes look like an E).
The F-shaped way influences how we design and organize the content on the web and social media pages. Hence, it is beneficial to use the technique of readability to gain more traction on social media pages/apps. F-pattern also applies for notifications, private/inbox messages list, etc.
Personalizing the Experience:
Presenting the information to the User at the right time in the right place has become crucial. Empathizing with your User to curate content they desire will lead to a personal experience. A better UX through content and design personalization on the social media pages/websites will differentiate familiar from unique businesses. Providing the Users with a UX that lets them in and doesn’t let them go is the future formula for success.
User Testing:
Social media pages have multiple forms of content like visuals, audio, text and to understand which one gives the best results, you need to experiment and analyze the results. Do user testing, an essential part of the UX design process. It will tell you about the User’s likes/dislikes and frustrations with aspects of their interaction with your web/app page.
Some User Testing methods are Guerilla Testing, phone interviews, session recording. Once this is done, derive the users’ pain points, organize them, and filter the valuable information from the multiple data points. Discuss them with your team and prioritize them based on need and urgency. User Testing will help understand the factors that influence retention and attrition of followers.
Today, it is common to have an online presence on social media apps to drive traffic to your website and up your business sales. The importance of UX in social media apps is a success determinant. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter are some of these social media apps. Doesn’t it take an immense amount of time to create content, publish, follow back and track the analytics? This entire experience feels cumbersome.
