UX for MarketersAttention earned, not taken

Why marketers need UX now#

Marketing used to end at the click. The media plan delivered a visitor and the website was someone else's problem. That division no longer holds. Paid media costs, privacy changes and fragmented channels mean every visitor is expensive, and the experience after the click decides whether that expense returns anything.

UX, or user experience, is the discipline of making products useful and usable for the people who use them. Marketers do not need to become UX designers. They do need to recognise usability problems, commission the right research and stop requesting features that hurt the people they are trying to persuade.

Every pop-up you add is a question you are asking the visitor before they have asked you anything.

Where marketing instincts and UX instincts collide#

Marketing tends to optimise for attention and capture: more messages, more offers, more chances to collect data. UX tends to optimise for completion: fewer steps, fewer distractions, clearer paths. Both are legitimate. Problems start when one side wins every argument.

The resolution is usually sequence. Let visitors complete the task they came for, then ask for something extra. Offer a newsletter after they have read the article, not before. Ask for company size after the demo request, not during it. Sequence turns conflict into a journey.

Five principles worth memorising#

• Recognition over recall. Visitors should not need to remember information from one screen to use the next. Repeat key details where decisions are made.
• Consistency. Buttons, links and labels that behave the same way everywhere reduce thinking. Inconsistent patterns make people hesitate.
• Visible system status. Tell people what is happening: loading, submitted, added to cart, what happens next.
• Error prevention and recovery. Design forms that prevent mistakes and, when errors happen, explain them in plain language next to the field.
• Minimal cognitive load. Every choice, word and visual element costs attention. Remove what does not help the visitor decide.

These ideas are adapted from long-established usability heuristics used across the design profession. They are not new, which is the point: they have held across technologies for decades, and most sites still break several of them.

Cognitive load is the marketer's real enemy#

Visitors arrive with limited attention and an unfinished task in mind. Every extra decision you place in their way, such as a carousel, a choice of five calls to action, or a navigation with twelve items, draws on that limited budget. When it runs out, people do not make a careful choice. They leave.

For marketers this means resisting the instinct to say everything. A page that makes one argument well beats a page that makes six arguments adequately. It also means writing for scanning: front-loaded headings, short paragraphs, meaningful link text and bullet points that each carry a complete idea. Website navigation and information architecture apply the same logic at the scale of the whole site.

Research you can run without a UX team#

UX research has a reputation for being slow and expensive. Much of the value comes from cheap methods that any marketer can run in a week.

1. 01Five-person usability test. Ask a handful of people who match your audience to complete a real task on your site while thinking aloud. Watch, do not help. Recurring stumbles show up quickly.
2. 02Five-second test. Show the first screen of a page briefly and ask what the company offers. This tests clarity of the value proposition.
3. 03One-question survey. On key pages ask 'What, if anything, is stopping you from going ahead today?' Read every answer.
4. 04Search log review. What people type into your site search tells you what they cannot find in navigation.
5. 05Session recordings. Watch real sessions for hesitation, rage clicks and dead ends. See heatmaps and session recordings.

Writing briefs that respect users#

Marketers shape UX most through briefs. A brief that says 'add a banner for the festive sale to every page' has already made design decisions. A brief that says 'festive shoppers need to find sale items and delivery cut-off dates quickly' leaves room for a better solution.

Good briefs name the audience, the task they are trying to complete, the business goal and the constraints. They state what success looks like in user terms as well as business terms. They avoid prescribing the solution unless there is a real reason to.

Measuring experience, not just outcomes#

Marketing dashboards report outcomes: sessions, conversions, revenue. They rarely report whether the experience was good. Adding a few experience measures helps explain outcome changes before they become problems.

• Task completion rate for key journeys in usability tests or surveys.
• Form error rate by field, which reveals confusing questions.
• Site search exits, where people searched and then left.
• Rage clicks and dead clicks from session tools, which flag elements that look interactive but are not.
• Customer effort, asked simply: how easy was it to do what you came to do?

None of these needs a large budget. Together they give marketers early warning that a campaign, redesign or new feature has made life harder for visitors, often before conversion data is clear enough to show it. Report them alongside conversion data in monthly reviews, and conversations about the website shift from opinion to evidence.

Accessibility is UX, not compliance#

Designing for people with visual, motor, hearing or cognitive impairments improves the experience for everyone: clear contrast helps in bright sunlight, captions help in noisy places, keyboard support helps power users. Treat web accessibility as a design quality, not a legal box to tick at the end.

Published by Fabulous.Media, a network of specialist marketing agencies. Updated 9 October 2026. Platform features change often; check current official documentation before acting on platform-specific detail.