Marketing

How to... Plan a User Journey

Lynn Tierney — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 14:11:41 +0000

How to... Plan a User Journey Lynn Tierney Tue, 03/28/2023 - 10:11

You may have heard of the terms "user journeys" and "marketing funnels" before. Both are critical concepts to think about when developing and designing websites. Let's explore these concepts and how they can help you better understand and engage with your website's visitors.

User Journeys

A user journey is the path that a user takes when interacting with a product or service. In the context of college admissions, a user journey might include the steps a student takes from initially researching colleges to submitting an application and ultimately enrolling in a school. Understanding a user's journey through your site allows you to see the user's perspective and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

Let's take a closer look at an example of a user journey in college admissions using a hypothetical college and its rocket science program:

The user traveling this journey is Jane. Jane is a high school student seeking to apply for college to earn a degree in rocket science. She wants to know that the university she applies to will have opportunities for her to take part in groundbreaking research. With this goal in mind, she is going to begin her journey by doing research into a variety of colleges.

When Jane stumbles upon our hypothetical college's rocket science program, she will move to investigate, searching specifically for content related to this college. Let's say she finds a landing page for the college's rocket science degree program. This page gives insights on the program, what research is being done on campus, and more. This page may lead Jane to delve into other pages around the college's website, learning more information relevant to her search.

If this site does a good job, Jane may be convinced this program is a good fit for her needs. At this point, she is looking for information on how to apply for the program, such as due dates, requirements, and forms. Presuming her search is successful, she will submit an application to the college. Her search has been successful, and she has achieved her goal.

As marketers, we need to take a look at how each step in this user journey plays out. Like a hiker on a forest trail, there need to be markers and points of interest along the way to keep the user on the correct path. Should they get lost along the way, we risk losing users as they do not achieve their goal. How do we make sure they don't get lost? We need to design our websites and pages with various user journeys in mind.

Marketing Funnels

Marketing funnels can help you plan how to walk a user from hearing of us to joining the Mason Nation.

While user journeys deal with the user's side of things, marketing funnels are how you can think about all the user journeys from a more designer side of things. By combining various user journeys together, we get an idea of the general stages different users might go through on their journeys through our site.

A marketing funnel is a way of visualizing user journeys in stages. The funnel metaphor represents how users will inevitably be lost at each step of the process, with only a percent of those who visit reaching their goal. Keep in mind that not all of this loss is negative. Your user may be looking for something that just does not align with what you are marketing. The goal is to prevent unnecessary loss.

There are many variations of the marketing funnel, depending on your industry and what makes sense for your team. However, for today, we're going to use this one:

Stage	Meaning	Related Concepts
awareness	the user has heard of us	SEO
interest	the user wants to know more	content connections
desire	the user wants to know the next steps	sitewide navigation, CTAs
action	the user is taking steps to be involved	user experience
success	the user has completed the goal

Using the example of Jane from earlier, we can see her in the awareness stage when she is researching which schools have a rocket science program. To capture her in the first stage of the funnel, we would need to make sure our school's website shows up in search results, or that it is well represented on social media. Anything that serves to get the word out there that we exist is a boon to this stage.

As soon as Jane heard of the program, she entered the interest stage as she seeks to learn more about the hypothetical school's specific degree program. In this stage, we are most interested in making sure we present ourselves well on our marketing landing pages, that we have related information easily findable from there, and that we are showcasing as many potential areas of interest as we can (within reason).

Once Jane decides she is interested in applying, she enters the desire stage. At this point, Jane wants specifics on how to apply and what the timeline looks like. Having easy calls to action that point to admissions information will go a long way here.

After Jane starts the application process, she enters the action phase. This step is complicated, as losing users here can be as simple as "their wallet was across the room and they didn't want to get up." However, you can cover your bases by making sure things are as easy to use as possible.

Once the application is completed, Jane is at the success stage. She is what we would call a "conversion" now, someone who has completed the transition from visitor to customer, to use more consumer-minded language.

Ideally, this is where a savvy marketer will aim to preserve loyalty from converted users. For example, emailing Jane with details on the admissions timeline will keep her informed and watching for updates. In the long run, Jane may be entering another marketing funnel as she debates accepting the offer of admission to this college. And so the marketing life cycle goes on!

Utilizing This with Your Sites

By understanding the user journey and the marketing funnel, you can create targeted campaigns that address the needs and concerns of potential users at each stage of the journey. Here are some steps to consider:

Define user personas: Define user personas based on your target audiences. This will help you understand how users might interact with the website and design journeys that meet everyone's needs.
Define the goal of your content: Determine the overall goal of your page (or series of pages) and consider the journey your user would take to achieve that goal. What do you want your users to do on each page? What information do you want them to find?
Map the journey: Lay out the intended journey step-by-step. Make sure the journey is clear and easy to follow, with clear calls to action and visual cues to guide users through the content.
Analyze user behavior: Take a look at your metrics at every step of the user journey to identify areas for improvement. Using analytics tools, you can track things like where users click and how long they stay on each page. Use this information to make data-driven decisions to optimize the user experience.
Optimize for mobile: With more and more users accessing websites on mobile devices, it is essential to design user journeys that are optimized for mobile. Make sure the user journey is just as easy to follow on small screens!

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How to... Connect Content Together

Lynn Tierney — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 13:54:55 +0000

How to... Connect Content Together Lynn Tierney Thu, 03/23/2023 - 09:54

Learning Journey: Working with Content Hub

Every piece of content, every page, every link, is a piece of the Mason story.

An example of a top-down content tree. Each piece of content relates back to the top level piece of content, rather than being a focus on its own.

You may be used to thinking of content from a top-down view. However, content is not just a tree you navigate to reach the fruit. Content forms webs, networks that are forged by in-page links and other such connections. The easier it is for guests to navigate these connections, the better their stay will be and the better their understanding of our story.

An example of a content web. Notice how you can start anywhere on the web and get to any other piece of content by navigating between pieces of content.

Think of a piece of content as a dot, a single point of content in a sea of unconnected articles. Now think of what happens when you create a link from one piece of content to another. Suddenly there is a one-way street from one piece of content to another. However, should you come in at the “wrong” end of that connection, you cannot find your way to the other piece of content. If you take the time to add a link back to the previous content, you create a two-way street.

This new two-way connection is good, but not the most solid. You might go from one page to another and back, but there is no telling where a user might journey next, especially if the content is purely informative. Instead, let’s add a third piece of content to the mix. Now we have a triangle, with links between all the pages going in both directions. Someone at any point on the triangle can get to any other point on the triangle easily enough. It is a solid shape with a solid narrative.

See the Example Article

Putting it into Practice

Implementing these changes is relatively easy but can take some thinking outside what you are used to. Consider the following scenario:

There is a news story planned to talk about Professor John Doe and his project to launch a rocket made of only recycled materials into space. This is a very important rocket launch that will get a lot of community attention, with potential for high schoolers to take an interest in the university. We want them to know how the university made this possible for Doe, how Doe teaches classes at Mason, and that they too can do the sorts of things Doe does by studying here.

To make this content set glow as much as possible, we need to start with some planning. We are, of course, going to investigate the usual things that we can feature in a news story: images, quotes, potentially a video… but we also want to showcase Doe himself. To do this, we’re going to include in our interview process a few questions that are more evergreen. For example, let’s get a quote on what John Doe loves most about teaching at Mason. That would work well to feature on his faculty profile.

See the Example Profile

When we write the article, we are going to make sure to add in John Doe’s profile as a person featured in the article. Then we are going to make sure John Doe’s profile is as good as it can possibly look. We can add in a box titled “research spotlight” to showcase the news article about the rocket launch. This creates a strong connection between the two pages as related content.

Now we need to make sure we connect John Doe and his research to the corresponding academic program. On John Doe’s profile, we’re going to add a section titled “Related Programs” and add a link to the academic program page for the rocket science program that John Doe teaches for. We can also add a link to this page in the body of the news article. On the academic program page itself, we can add another “featured research” or even a “featured faculty” section to showcase John Doe and his rocket project, linking to his profile and the news article as mentioned. With this, we have the third point of our triangle, connected with strong, two-way connections.

See the Example Program

Benefits for your Content

Payoff is what makes the effort worth the while, and we don't expect you to put in this level of effort where it isn't going to give returns. However, here are some of the benefits that can come from going through these sorts of steps for your content.

Improved SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical component of any successful online strategy. By linking news articles to relevant people profiles and program pages, we can signal to search engines the relationships between different pieces of content on our website. This, in turn, can help improve our website's search rankings and increase our organic traffic.

Enhance User Journey

When visitors come to our website, they are often seeking information about a specific topic or program. By linking news articles to relevant people profiles and program pages, we can provide visitors with a more comprehensive and engaging experience. This allows visitors to seamlessly navigate between content that is related to their interests and ultimately leads to a more positive user experience.

Increase Discoverability

Linking news articles to related people profiles and program pages can also increase discoverability. Visitors who are interested in a particular program or topic may not be aware of related content that exists on our website. By linking content together, we can expose visitors to a broader range of relevant information, which can ultimately lead to increased engagement and support for our mission.

Boost Engagement

Finally, linking news articles to related people profiles and program pages can help increase engagement. When visitors come across content that they find interesting, they are more likely to spend more time on our website and engage with our organization in other ways, such as investigating academic opportunities or making a donation.

Topics

Content Hub

Content Hub News Items

Content Strategy Tutorial

How to...Create a Marketing Landing Page

Kelly Hansen — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 18:53:08 +0000

How to...Create a Marketing Landing Page Kelly Hansen Fri, 07/22/2022 - 14:53

Whether it’s called a landing page, lead capture page, single property page, or squeeze page - the purpose of a marketing landing page is the same - prompt a visitor into completing a specific action, or ‘conversion’.

Building a marketing landing page within SiteMasonry is as simple as building a regular page. In her Quick Start Guide to Marketing Landing Pages, Kristin Heydt, OUB's Digital Strategist, explains the basics and walks through a sample SiteMasonry marketing landing page layout.

Topics

Marketing Area Page

Marketing Landing Page

SiteMasonry

Marketing

SiteMasonry Tutorial