Intuitive Website = A Smarter Digital Course

Thinking of creating a Digital Course? Here's why your website needs to start with an intuitive plan. Designers call this UI/UX Design.

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UI/UX Design is really just a fancy way of saying “user experience” and “user interface design” and in simple terms, this means making sure your blog, website, and digital course are easy and intuitive for people to navigate so they can find exactly what they're looking for…quickly.

Over the last 9 years, I've built a handful of successful online courses for my clients. (Before I started my own business, I worked in corporate and agency marketing and built websites & digital marketing plans for global corporations for 14 years). Believe it or not, many people don't really consider user experience when they first create their website…and you're not alone…marketing directors at large corporations don't always consider it either!

Fast forward to 2019, where consumers now embrace mobile devices and seek information at their convenience, so the rules of brand engagement are continuously evolving. If your website isn’t set up to adapt and respond to visits from many different screen resolutions, you may miss out on opportunities. To achieve greater success with both your regular audience as well as your students, (and the search engines!) aim to make your website not only look fantastic on different screen sizes, but make sure your mobile navigation menu, header, and footer are set up in a way that reflect precisely what you want your customer to do next. When brands think about how to reach their consumer on the consumer's terms, in the right moment, with the right information…it feels less like sales and more like the connection you're aiming for.

Here are 5-Steps to building a successful digital course (based on Google’s best practices)

Step 1

Organize audience insights: The first step in the process involves a little research into your audience to determine exactly what information they are looking for. What pages get the most hits on your website? What time of day does your audience typically visit? If it's a course you'll be selling, you will want to measure your audience insights carefully to help determine when you might “go live” for a Q & A session, or what types of tools they will need for support as they navigate through your course. In thinking through delivery, will you use video? Video with screen capture? Audio podcasts? And what platform will you use to deliver the membership capabilities of your course? While it might seem simple to use Teachable or Udemy, the biggest drawback to these platforms is that you will not have control of your business. Watch this video to learn why I do not recommend using Udemy or Teachable to deliver your course:

Step 2

Design compelling creative. It's so important to make sure that both your website as well as your social media and the sales page you use for the promotion of your course or product is visually compelling. First impressions are everything online, so if you don't capture the attention of your audience within seconds, you'll miss out on the opportunity to sell to them. Even the most educational courses have to be compelling enough to capture attention first. There are a few ways to accomplish this if you're not a graphic designer yourself. Consider starting with a free tool such as Canva. With social sizes already built in, you can choose from a variety of free backgrounds and fonts.

If you need a more robust option than Canva to edit your own photos, but don't want to invest in an expensive app like Photoshop, PicMonkey (Click for a free trial) is easy to use and much less expensive than Photoshop. For free stock photos, I like Unsplash and Pexels. But most people run out of options there, so 123RF provides a library of stock art that is much less expensive than iStockphoto and Shutterstock. If you need some B-Roll for your videos, you can get access to over 25,000 stock videos at one low price with StockNation (it's also a membership site for a one-time fee, so you can go back to download more videos at any time).

If you prefer the services of a professional designer to create something custom (like a new logo or branding package), my recommendation is 99Designs which is a very inexpensive way to get a team of graphic artists to choose from to bring your brand alive visually and implement brand consistency across all channels, all without the crazy fee of hiring your own design team. Looking to hire a freelancer instead? Try Fiverr.

Step 3

Execute with integrated technology. It’s possible to fully analyze a consumer’s purchase path and understand which touchpoints are most likely to translate into action, however, it’s also important to have a good tool for measuring your data. I recommend different tools to different businesses, depending on the size and scope of your project.

For Bloggers and Solo-Entrepreneurs, to launch your first course, at the very minimum you'll need an automated email system such as AWeber for Email Marketing Automation. AWeber integrates easily with your WordPress Blog as well as your Google Analytics to gain a clear picture of your traffic and how your audience is interacting with the content you put out.

For small businesses looking for the best all-inclusive option for their course sales pages as well as course delivery, then I highly recommend Clickfunnels. It's a website and landing page builder with E-Commerce built in, so it really simplifies the online shopping experience if you have less than 20 products. Not to mention, it also has a membership site capability and marketing automation system all wrapped up in one, very easy to use package. Translation…you can sell your very own Digital Course without the need for a platform such as Udemy or Teachable. Those platforms severely limit your ability to sell, customize your sales page, connect with your audience, and keep profits that really should be yours, so if you are considering a digital course at some point, I very highly recommend Clickfunnels. I have used this platform for both my own online course as well for as my clients, so please…don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions about it!

For greater creative control over your membership site in terms of having multiple courses or dripping content on a specific schedule, you can incorporate WishList directly into your WordPress Dashboard. You will need to also implement the e-commerce plugin WooCommerce in order to sell your course, so if you're fairly comfortable with WordPress and Plugin Integrations, you will be able to use these options instead of Clickfunnels. If you're super tech-savvy, then WishList will be a great option for your course and membership site. Keep in mind that you may need the help of a professional for a more custom look and feel if you don't know basic HTML/CSS.

For businesses with between $1 Million and $4 Million in Annual Revenue, I recommend using HubSpot (Click here for a 30-day free trial), in conjunction with either WishList or Clickfunnels because of the automated intelligence that HubSpot offers. This platform combines your website, blog, email marketing, seo research, analytics, and social media marketing in one comprehensive but intuitive dashboard, giving a crystal clear picture of your traffic. Now HubSpot does not offer a membership capability on it's own, so this is why it needs to be implemented along with either WishList or Clickfunnels, but, HubSpot easily integrates with both, so if it's insight you're looking for, then this is how you'll get it done. Again, I have used this tool myself as well as for clients. Getting it all right can take time depending on the size and scope of your business and your project, but don't get discouraged, if you have questions, just ask me!

Step 4

Reach audiences across screens. Plan for the mobile world we live in now, not the world you grew up in. Now that your site is intuitive and responsive across all devices, implementing programmatic advertising affords brands to take a big leap toward actionable measurement. Optimize your images and ads for mobile too…not just your theme.

Responsive Design

Recently, Google publicly announced that their search engine algorithm will take both quality content as well as the mobile-readiness of your website into consideration when listing your website in its index. What this means is that your website needs to retain both quick loading speeds as well as easily readable content. This core functionality is especially important when accessed from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Even if search engines weren't partially judging your site based on its responsiveness, it would still be a great idea to build your site in a way that optimizes the user experience. After all, now that you've engaged a customer enough to buy your course, you want to make sure to continue delivering a great experience.

Good developers already build sites to be intuitive and responsive right out of the gate, but if your site hasn't been updated for a year or two, it’s definitely worth your time to understand how the research and planning process works, and why it’s important to the success of your digital course (or whatever you're ultimately selling.) Not to mention, if you take a short cut and use a platform such as Udemy or Teachable to deliver your course, you're really going to miss out on the real benefit and longevity of an online business. Lets talk about that more.

Step 5

Measure the impact. How will you know what high level decisions to make and what KPIs to tweak unless you implement a plan to measure the progress? Whether it's just you evaluating your metrics or other key decision makers and stakeholders, you want to be armed with a way to understand the metrics. Consider implementing Google Analytics at the very least, and for greater understanding of your metrics, implement the Google Tag Manager and Data Studio to bring your metrics to life.

For an easier to use experience in researching your competition as well as your own online data and measurement, check out my affiliate partner SEMRush who provides much more sophisticated intelligence to help you understand your audience and their behaviors on your website. You will no doubt get better answers to your questions and be able to make more informed decisions about your marketing spend and creative direction with good measurement tools.

A closer look at intuitive UI/UX Design & Site Architecture

A very important component of usability is site architecture. More recently referred to as UI/UX design, planning for proper organization and structure will allow your users to easily and intuitively find exactly what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. Instead of sending them in loops without a clear-cut path to finding the information they need, you can use what industry professionals call a wireframe plan to help you organize your structure. A wireframe is simply a visual representation of the flow of your website design.

This step is easy to overlook, yet without a carefully planned site architecture, many website redesigns will only yield a “prettier” version of your old website…without improving upon usability. Using a wireframe as a guide can assist with constructing the page schematics and visual blueprints. While most professional designers and creative agencies will provide a wireframe report during the research and planning phase to help organize your project before any development takes place, there is no reason why bloggers can't do this too! If you would like to play around designing your own wireframes for free, check out Wireframe.cc.

Once your website is organized in a way that makes it easy and intuitive for your visitors to get answers to their questions, you then take complete control of the sales process. Instead of being “salesy” you instead become helpful because you've provided a solution to their problem, and you've done it in a way that makes it esy for them to find the solution. This makes their experience and their interactions with you much more pleasant, and shareworthy!

Interested in learning about how Email Marketing has the highest ROI of all forms of digital marketing? Check out my Ebook for the latest strategies to help you sell your digital course to your audience in a way that truly increases your changes of being successful: The Power of Email Marketing