User research is essential for an effective content strategy

User research is essential to content strategy. It provides a deep understanding of your audience, informs content decisions, enhances the content structure and on-page content, and drives engagement and conversion. This research both validates and negates assumptions as well as supports change management. Some organizations can be afraid of doing user research as it might bring up things that are too political or too big to change or too overwhelming. The more frequently you do user research, the more you can iterate without making full-scale revisions.

Understand your audience

User research is one of the cornerstones of an effective content strategy. It gives you a deep understanding of your audience and allows you to content that resonates and meets expectations. Identifying pain points during user research lets you address issues content structure and on-page content. You can also more effectively personalize content to different personas and user types, making the site more engaging and relevant.

Inform content and its structure

User research informs the structure of your site, how you write, and how you lay out content on the page. It ensures that the topics are relevant and reflect their interests and needs. Insights from user research also guide the selection of preferred content formats, whether blog posts, videos, podcasts, or infographics.

Enhance the user experience

User research helps you enhance the user experience. Research reveals how users interact with your website and content, highlighting where they encounter difficulties. This feedback guides improvements in site navigation and structure.

Improve engagement and conversion

It seems like everyone has the secret to engagement and conversion. But it’s not rocket science. Wen you create content that addresses audience needs and interests, your user engagement and satisfaction increases. Engaged users are more likely to get their questions answered or share your content. If you’re working on a customer support site, good engagement reduces support tickets. Knowing the user’s journey helps you create content that guides them through a conversion funnel and can lead to higher conversion rates. For example, you’ll know what questions they have and when they’re most likely to ask these questions.

Validate or negate assumptions

Many of my clients have a lot of assumptions about users, especially the further removed they are from talking to the users. Front line staff know users well. Managers and executives don’t have much exposure to individual users. The user research can be used to validate assumptions or negate them. It’s important that your organization have a clear picture of who your users are, so you can create relevant content. You can confirm or challenge your beliefs about the audience, leading to informed decisions instead of guesswork. Ongoing user research allows continuous testing and refining of the content strategy, ensuring it remains effective and relevant over time.

Support change management

Believe it or not, user research aids in change management. Onboarding stakeholders with user research findings ensures alignment with the content strategy and fosters collaboration and buy-in from different teams. Showing research results to stakeholders throughout a website redesign or content strategy process can help them grow accustom to a different paradigm.

Risks of not doing user research

Risks of not conducting user research can be substantial. I’ve had a few experiences where clients didn’t want to do user research or content strategy only to come back a couple years later due to ineffective content structure and on-page content. Without user research, important insights and opportunities may be missed; you might miss those tasks, topics, or scenarios that are crucial to address in your content. Essentially, a non-existent content strategy and lack of research leads to poor content, low engagement, and wasted resources and effort.

Overall, you risk more by not doing user research. Take the time to get to know your user, and your organization will reap the benefits!