Blog

The Importance of the Listeners’ User Experience

By David Kidd, BPR

The user experience (UX) is described as how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person’s perceptions of utility, ease of use and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to companies when creating and refining products because negative user experience can diminish the use of the product and, therefore, create lasting negative brand images. User experience is subjective but the attributes that make up the user experience are objective.

In short, UX is all about how you can make the experience of the listeners to your radio station as meaningful and valuable as possible.

As an example, let’s look at station websites. We’ve all seen radio station websites that are too busy, too cheap looking, too clumsy, too hard to navigate…in other words a poor UX. We’ve also seen those that provide a great UX.

Consider the websites of the “Big Four”….. KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PwC. These are huge global consultancy firms with a lot of money to spend on designing a website. Yet all four websites have a very different look and feel. All four websites have a very different UX.

A good user experience for a radio station would mean that:

• the listener visited your website;
• scrolled through the different pages;
• understood what the website is all about; and
• found what they wanted with ease.

So what’s the UX of your station’s website?

One way of finding out is to use Google Analytics which can reveal metrics such as:

• Users
• New users
• Sessions
• Pageviews
• Bounce rate
• Average session duration
• Average time on page
• Amount of new vs. returning visitors
• Devices used
• Sessions by Geo Location
• Clicks
• Opens (newsletter)

Other tools used to measure engagement are:

• Hello Bar
• Web Engage
• iPaper Displays
• HubSpot
• Optimizely
• Marketo

However, sometimes measuring your website’s UX is as simple as getting everyone at the station to access the website and see what experience they had in finding what they were looking for….. celebrity news & gossip, podcasts, contests, show information etc…. and how satisfied they were with the result.

The next step would be to do a short survey on the website and gauge listeners’ opinions.

There are many factors that can influence UX which in turn can impact your station’s brand image. They include:

• Value: Does your online content make their time spent on the website worthwhile?
• Usability: Is your website easy to use and navigate?
• Usefulness: Does your website satisfy listeners’ needs?
• Desirable: Does the station website strike an emotional chord with the listener?
• Credible: Does your website support your overall brand promise?

Don’t take it for granted that your station has the best website possible. Remember, the website is part of the overall UX your listeners have with your station.