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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The key to creating brand loyalty is developing a consistent and salient brand perception through the association of specific emotional experiences with a product or service. A classic example of this is the emotion of wonder and happiness people associate with The Walt Disney Company’s films and theme parks. By crafting amazing experiences for the people who enjoy their products, Disney has created such a favorable association, leading consumers to feel they can trust the brand and know what kind of experience to expect from a visit to a park, hotel, or movie theater. People can appreciate their intense focus on the user experience, whether watching Mary Poppins, meeting characters like Goofy and Minnie Mouse for the first time as a child, shown in Figure 1, or watching Toy Story characters leap to life in the amazing and spellbinding zoetrope at the California Adventure theme park. Read More