Results by Design: UX Insights for Business Leaders

Description: In this episode, hosts Craig Nishizaki and Michael Woo discuss the essential elements of a successful B2B web strategy and explore the importance of grounding the strategy with clear business goals, defining target personas, and casting a visionary UX and web content strategy.

Learn About:

• Where teams go wrong in developing their web strategy
• Finding the right data and insights to inform the strategy
• How UX strategy and Web content strategy are Interrelated
• How UX strategy and Web content strategy are related to a successful web strategy

Interview Participants:

• Craig Nishizaki, Head of Business @ UpTop
• Michael Woo, Director of UX @ UpTop

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Results by Design UX Insights for business leaders, the podcast that dives deep into the world of UX design, strategy and insights. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.

Craig Nishizaki:
Hi, I’m Craig.

Michael Woo:
And I’m Michael. And we are your host for the Results by Design podcast. Hey, Craig, how are you doing today?

Craig Nishizaki:
I’m doing well, thanks. It’s starting to be spring here. The cherry blossoms and the plum blossoms and the apple blossoms are out. It’s a pretty time. Yeah. How are you

Michael Woo:
Doing? Pretty good. I’m just excited. We have a couple days till spring break, get to spend some time with the family. I’m sure you are as well.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, it’ll be nice to take a little time off. Yeah.

Michael Woo:
So what are we going to talk about today?

Craig Nishizaki:
A few episodes ago, you and Deborah talked about changes in today’s B2B buyer journey and these changes in the buyer journey and buyer behavior directly impact a company’s B2B website strategy. So I thought it would be interesting to talk with you about the elements that make up an effective B2B website strategy from a UX perspective. How does that sound?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do this.

Craig Nishizaki:
Okay. Thought I’d frame it by this. If you were to Google or ask chat GPT, what are the elements of an effective B2B website strategy? You get a definition and then a list of elements that make up a web strategy that sounds something like this. And I printed one off and it says, an effective web strategy encompasses various elements that work together to achieve specific goals, whether they’re related to branding, marketing, sales, or customer engagement. Here are key elements to consider when developing a comprehensive web strategy. And then there’s usually a list of 10 to 15 things that encompass business goals and objectives, target audience analysis, user experience design, content strategy, SEO, technical performance metrics and analytics, security and compliance, accessibility, social media, marketing integration, et cetera.

By addressing these components, a website strategy can create a strong foundation for a digital presence that effectively serves its intended audience meets business objectives and adapts to the evolving digital landscape. So pretty standard playbook, but in my mind or in our minds, what separates an effective web strategy from the standard playbook is digging deeper into four areas that lay the groundwork for the other six to seven elements. And to think about it in this way, to ground the strategy, you need to have clarity on business goals and objectives and the target personas and buyer journeys. And then to cast that vision, you need to define the UX strategy and the web content strategy. So Mike, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, grounding the strategy and casting the vision. I like how you frame those. We’ve been doing a lot of work around these four that you just named, which I really think have contributed to our client’s overall web strategy and success.

Craig Nishizaki:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Both are equally important. So if the strategy is not grounded, it’s not defensible, and if the vision isn’t cash, you don’t get buy-in at all levels. And then the initiative tends to lose momentum and energy because people don’t remember what the reason they’re working on this over time unless that vision is strong. So I’d love to ask you this, Mike, in your opinion, where do teams go wrong in developing their web strategy?

Michael Woo:
A few things come to mind. First, basing strategy on a lack of data or bad data. And what I mean by that is even in the presence of good data, which I would say is a good balance between quantitative and qualitative, it’s being confident that you have people to analyze and interpret the data first and foremost, and being able to tease out the actionable insights that will help inform your decision making. Another thing that comes to mind is not putting the users first, or at least having them part of the conversation. So there’s every organization at different levels of UX maturity. And do you remember Craig, the six levels of UX maturity from Nielsen Norman where  stage one is an organization that’s absent of UX and it goes all the way to stage six, which is an organization that is completely user-driven. Even if you are at the lower end of that scale, good web strategy should include users as part of their strategy. And if you want to be successful, I think they should definitely be a part of your strategy. The last one that comes to mind is not thinking big enough. So what this means is having a vision for where you want to be three or five years out, not just the current year, making sure your web strategy aligns and scales to that.

Craig Nishizaki:
Got it. These are great points. I’d love to expand on them. Could you dive deeper into the idea about not thinking big enough?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, so I think back to a quote that I saw by Richard Branson that reads something like, if people aren’t calling you crazy, you aren’t thinking big enough. The way I see it is customers have really high expectations when it comes to digital experiences, and so sometimes you just have to make bets on where you think the tech is going to be. Competition, as you know, is fierce out there. And tech and UX have become differentiators for many. It amazes me though that we work with so many folks and we’re in the year 2024, and there’s just so many companies that feel like they’ve fallen behind with respect to both of these areas. So when I say think big, a lot of what organizations should be thinking about are actually table stakes. They need to think past a year or two, like I was saying, and start thinking about where they want to be without being bogged down by the constraints because everybody does have constraints, but they really need to establish that vision or north star of where they want to be. And the organization agrees on that vision. Then you can work on the impediments that might keep you from getting there, but otherwise you’re just incrementally inching forward and that approach does not scale and it just may not be enough to survive out there.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that’s a great point because I made some notes here that thinking big in terms of three years out, when we talk about a North Star, the reason I feel like that is so important is the average tenure of A CMO is typically around three years. The average corporate website, not average. The corporate websites in the B2B space typically get redesigned every three years or so. And if you’re not casting your vision and setting your goal out that far, then when you start looking at doing a workback or a roadmap, you’re always going to be aiming short of that. And then I think the other part about thinking big, and you can correct me on this, but a lot of times when you’re working in a corporate environment, you start getting institutionalized to all the boundaries and the constraints that you have to work within. And so your expectations get shrunk. And so your ability to think beyond that think it’s really impacted. So those are two things I took down from what you were saying.

Michael Woo:
Absolutely.

Craig Nishizaki:
In those cases, things like that, how do you help teams expand their thinking?

Michael Woo:
I’ll be honest, organizations, they use external agencies or consultancies like us, even when they have their own design teams, the rationale is that agencies and consultancies are jaded or institutionalized, like you were just saying, they bring a fresh outside in perspective, and we’re just trained to think big, but ultimately it’s really a partnership between the clients and the agency. The clients are the subject matter experts while we provide the framework, the experience we have working with others and the methods to help tease out what we need. Do you agree with that?

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I think there’s two or three main points about using external resources. So we did a panel discussion with four leaders in the product and UX space, and all four of them, including yourself. When I asked the question, did you feel like you were able to have more impact when you were an external consultant or as an internal FTE? A hundred percent of you said as an external consultant. And when we went around the panel and asked why, the common thread was once you’re in a corporate role and you’re kind of building your career path, you start thinking about things in a more safe way or thinking about it more about the negative impact that you might have if you make a mistake. So having that consultant or agency come in where their measure of success is, whether the project is successful or meets the outcomes that are measurable, it’s a lot different mindset. Then I think the outside in perspective allows for creativity and fresh perspective. Like you said, I think about it a lot where our own personal consumer experiences drive what we expect from any digital experience that we interact with, whether it’s a enterprise tool, a website, a CRM, an app, and having that outside in perspective of working with end users in different industries or different surfaces and bringing that into a solution really helps to have people think outside the box. So I definitely agree with you on those.

Michael Woo:
Good points.

Craig Nishizaki:
So you said two other mistakes teams can make when developing their web strategy are basing the strategy on bad data or a lack of data, and then not speaking to end users or customers. I’d love for you to expand on these two as well.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, let’s take the first one. A reliable or no data at all. So how can you create a solid strategy with no evidence to back up your decision making? We’ve seen the full spectrum of how much data is collected by companies, but even companies who collect a bunch of data, rightfully admit to us that they have no one to interpret what it means, or in many cases, this critical data point or that one is unreliable. So look away, don’t make too much of it because of maybe how it was set up by their IT or their developers. I know you’ve heard that Craig a lot, but even if you had good data and the resources to analyze it, there needs to be great collaboration between the data analysts and the website team or the product team and the UX team, so everyone is in alignment.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There’s so much data available and it’s teasing out the actionable insight that you really want from it that I think is the art to the science. So then how do you help them find the right data and tease that out, tease the right insights to inform their strategy?

Michael Woo:
The data folks need to focus their efforts on the questions that the data can help answer. And so oftentimes when assessing a digital experience, UX designers or researchers will often list out questions based on their observations. So for example, are users, you’re looking at a webpage or a landing page and you’re asking yourself, are users distracted by this particular module? That seems to be just breaking the flow of the content on the page, which when you click it because there’s a CTA attached to it, it takes them away from their primary action. So you might note a question of, is this why the conversion rate is so low? Or in another example, you’ll want to know how many users are using the internal search on your website and what are the key words that they’re using because is there any correlation maybe between this behavior and statistics, excuse me, behind that and the low clicks that we’re seeing in the primary navigation.

Those are questions that again, that when you go through a website and you observe these things, you really need data to help answer these. It’s these thoughtful questions that will help translate data into strategic decisions that can improve the overall user experience and help meet business objectives. Now, for the second part of your question, not speaking to the users or customers, I think it goes without saying that if you’re not involving the key component to your business, which is your customers, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Similar to what I was just talking about regarding data, customer needs, wants, demands or desires. There they’re just more data points that you should be using to help inform your decision making. And organizations should be regularly collecting these insights as they often change. And this could be sending out surveys, conducting one-on-one interviews, maybe mining product reviews or any other feedback mechanisms that you have. But companies that have a customer first approach have a proven track record of success. What would you say to that, Craig?

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I totally agree with you on the companies that have customer first approach, seeing results and having success. And it’s interesting to me because when you think about a cx, a customer experience program, the three core elements to have are the voice of the customer, the personas and the buyer journeys, but not just have them, but have them updated and fresh. And a lot of times I think companies go through the process of building the personas, building out the buyer journey, and then they have some sort of voice of the customer, whether it’s NPS or some sort of a survey mechanism out there, but they’re not connected. They’re really not capturing information that’s showing real sentiment. A lot of times I think you’re incented to show positive sentiment, and in the end, that breaks the data is not correct. It’s just not accurate. And the way I look at data or the way we look at data is the quantitative data will show the signals and trends, but the qualitative data talking to people will tell you the why of that human behavior and understanding their mental model and what they’re trying to accomplish and how they’re looking at things at a deeper level is really how you tease out those insights.

And so I think that what you said there is really spot on as people are thinking about building out their strategy, looking at that playbook or their approach as a checklist of things to do. It’s really learning more about once you know what your goals and objectives are, really learning more about your target audience or your personas, your prospects and buyers, and what it is that they’re experiencing currently with your site, and then how to improve those things to then create a better outcome. So yeah, so I think you’re spot on with all those things. Now that we’ve talked about, again, grounding your strategy with that evidence and where people do run into challenges or teams run into challenges, I’d love to talk about UX strategy and web content strategy, and how those are interrelated?

Michael Woo:
Well, in short, web content strategy is deeply interrelated with UX strategy. Lemme try to separate the two out real quick. So web content strategy focused specifically I think on how content is used to communicate and engage with users to meet both user needs and business objectives. While UX strategy, which is broader in scope, focuses on the holistic interactions between the user and with the company’s product or service, making sure that there’s consistency, there’s cohesiveness and aligning user’s needs with business objectives. So you can see where the overlap and distinctions are.

Craig Nishizaki:
So then from your perspective, I’d love to hear how the work of creating the UX strategy and the web content strategy can build consensus for the web strategy.

Michael Woo:
So if we start at the beginning, when clients come to us, they typically have an outline for their web strategy, which they walk us through in those sales conversations and in the web strategy portion of the decks, there’s typically a gaping hole where UX and web content strategy goes, and that’s the reason why they come to us. So it’s through our process and our methodologies that we help them build a case, if you will, just like a lawyer collects evidence to build their case. We build our case by laying the groundwork for defining goals and objectives and collecting data around users and their behaviors. This evidence or research and data-driven insights is the objective reasoning that the UX and content strategy is based on. What do you think about that?

Craig Nishizaki:
I love how you use the metaphor of building a case. The evidence comes from the facts, the research, the analysis and insights that inform the recommendations. And if you think about it just in a checklist, if you will, even though this isn’t, but goals and objectives, those are facts. Personas are backed by qualitative and quantitative research. The buyer journeys are again backed by research, quantitative and qualitative, and then reviewing the current state, whether that’s the content audit, the analytics, the UX review, allows you to then do a gap analysis to see where there’s gaps in achieving the goals and objectives based on the personas, their mental model and where they are in the buyer journey. One thing I know that we typically deliver as part of this is a recommendation for IA and navigation that’s backed with research, using card sorting and tree testing, and then envisioning key pages in a critical flow so that they can start to buy in or start to envision the future. And then all of that is wrapped up in recommendations for UX and content. And so I love how you talk about it as building a case because really they’re able to take away this deliverable, a report or a deck that then they can take and incorporate the rest of the web strategy components and then build out their greater strategy. Yeah, this is really good stuff, Mike. Any final thoughts?

Michael Woo:
It can be a big effort definitely for companies to take on, but again, I think with the right partnership, with the right guidance, it’s not impossible to get through.

Craig Nishizaki:
So Mike, the process that you laid out in the areas of focus that you laid out in terms of getting to the UX and web content strategy, through that process, you’re really able to start gaining alignment, which is one of the biggest challenges with large enterprise or enterprise in general because there’s all this internal politics, if you will, between the product team, the marketing team, the portfolio team, the brand team, et cetera. And as you’ve gone through this numerous times, do you feel like a company could do this internally on their own? Or is there value in having an expert come in and guide them, at least provide the framework, maybe lead the workshops, maybe build out the report of findings and the recommendations, and then pull in members from the internal team, the FTEs to help fill in the gaps and then really teach them a new way of doing things?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I almost feel like you kind of answered your own question there, but I’m a little biased. Being on the side of the agency and consultancy, I feel like we play a huge role in helping clients achieve what they’re looking for. This is not a small undertaking. There’s a lot of work here for any organization to take in in-house, but again, I do want to stress it is a partnership. But I think to your point, the biggest value that organizations have when working with an outside agency or consultancy is being that neutral party because there is a lot of internal red tape, there’s a lot of politics. Different groups may be having different visions for what their product or service should be, and oftentimes it is the UX strategy, the content strategy, and all the groundwork that we put together and this package that you keep referring to, but it contains all of the evidence to help them make decisions, sound decisions, not just subjective ones. So I really do feel like there is a ton of value bringing an outsider in. And to your point, we can’t do it alone. The companies we work with, they know their product, their service well, having them augment our flow and we augment their flow in order to achieve that vision is I think a requirement throughout. So that’s my thoughts on that.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s great. Yeah, I agree. It’s definitely a partnership where you’re working side by side and the client, the marketing leader, is really helping to orchestrate working with the internal teams and the external consultant to really get to the end goal of creating a solid B2B web strategy that’s going to help them achieve their business business goals and objectives. So Mike, that was solid guidance. I mean, I think I’m going to listen to this one over and over because I’ll learn a lot every time I listen to it. And I think marketing leaders, again, in my opinion, should leverage UX to help do the groundwork for building their web strategy, focusing on that, gaining clarity around the business goals and objectives, defining the target personas and buyer journeys, and then building out a UX strategy and web content strategy in partnership with your internal team. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. You can find us on LinkedIn or go to our website at uptopcorp.com. And with that, we’re going to wrap it up for today. Join us again next time as we explore innovative approaches to enhance your products and services, optimize your customer interactions, and ultimately drive success for your organization. Tune in, take action and design your way to success. We’ll see you next time.

Outro:
Thanks for tuning in to Results by Design. If you liked this episode, be sure to share and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are also playing on all your favorite audio streaming podcast platforms, so stay connected and join us for the next one. Results by Design is brought to you by Uptalk. Our mission is to equip business leaders like you with the knowledge and tools needed to leverage UX methods and strategies to achieve tangible business outcomes and create lasting value. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or just starting to explore the world of ux, results by Design is your go-to resource for unlocking the potential of user experience to achieve remarkable results. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.