Turn your digital design into a lead generating machine. This checklist will help you design for user experience, and increase your marketing effectiveness.
It’s not uncommon for people to write design off as a frilly, artsy extra - just a means to spruce up a website or landing page by adding some colour and a picture here and there… But this mindset can be detrimental to your business.
Why is design such an important part of your marketing strategy?
Design can be the determining factor between a good or bad user experience, which ultimately affects whether or not you make that sale.
It’s important to keep in mind that great design is not based purely on whether or not something looks good. Remember, if you can’t explain why something exists as part of your design, then chances are it doesn’t have a clear purpose. This can create confusion and lead to a frustrating user experience.
Austin Knight, senior user experience (UX) designer at HubSpot, gave a very helpful explanation of the difference between design and art during his talk at the Digital Summit (2016).
Whether you're creating an infographic, designing marketing material for social media or building an ecommerce store, you need to ensure that your design talks to your buyer persona and their unique buyer’s journey. You need to design with purpose, measure and analyse the data and constantly revisit and improve on your design to eliminate weaknesses.
Get started with growth-driven design and optimise your digital marketing strategy for success using these six simple steps
- Evaluate your business goals. Your first step towards great digital design is to determine the goals of your project, how it will benefit and add value to your customers and how it will benefit and add value to your business.
- Brainstorm your ideas. Next, you’ll need to spend some time brainstorming your ideas. This is best done as a team, so that everyone can contribute ideas and ultimately understand the project in terms of its goals and execution.
During this step you’ll need to:
- create a style guide,
- analyse any existing data and research,
- determine your buyer persona and their buyer’s journey,
- determine how you plan to distribute your design,
- set SMART goals,
- define how you will measure your design’s success.
- Plan your content. Write your copy, select relevant images and colours and make sure everything is in the correct format. Make sure that you include a clear call to action so that your users know what next step you expect them to take.
- Check that your design is functional. Make sure that you test your design for functionality. If it includes links, do they work? Is your design displayed correctly across various platforms and devices? If not, go back and fix any bugs which could create a bad user experience.
- Check that your design is fully optimised. Your content needs to be found in order to start generating leads. Make sure that you optimise your digital designs (e.g. following SEO best practices) before you start distributing your content.
- Review your design against its objectives. Once you’ve distributed your design, you’ll need to continue reviewing it against its original objectives. Is it being found? Is it functioning correctly? Is it ranking efficiently? If you notice any areas that could be improved, go back to your original checklist and start brainstorming how to overcome any shortfalls.
The key to growth-driven design is to start small, test, review, make changes, rinse and repeat. Download a copy of the 
and create a better user experience.
Photo credit: Lauren Lokker
