07/15/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 07/15/2025 05:17
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In 2021, I published my first technical blog, and over the past four years, I've published over 50 blogs. I've come to realize that content experience isn't just a buzzword; it's the difference between being heard and being ignored.
I once published what I thought was one of my best blog posts, deeply researched, expertly written (so I thought), and full of value. It tanked. The reason? The content felt heavy. The layout was cluttered, the fonts were tiny, and there was no visual breathing room.
That's when I learned great content means nothing without a great content experience. This post is everything I wish I knew back then about how design can make your message not just heard but felt.
Table of Contents
Content experience refers to the environment in which content meets the audience; it's not just the message itself, but the way it's written, designed, structured, and delivered across devices. It's the difference between content that gets skimmed and content that gets remembered.
In simpler terms, if content is the message, content experience is the vehicle that drives it home.
A great content experience eliminates friction. It makes your blog, guide, landing page, or resource feel effortless to consume, no matter how complex the information may be. When done right, it boosts everything from engagement to conversions to content performance analysis metrics like time on page, scroll depth, and bounce rate.
You may already be familiar with the concept of content marketing and wondering, what differentiates content marketing from content experience? Well, let me answer this question.
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When we discuss digital content, two terms often get tossed around interchangeably, but they serve very different roles in your content strategy: content marketing and content experience.
This is the strategic creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content (blogs, videos, podcasts) to attract and retain a target audience, ultimately driving profitable customer action.
A good example of this is a SaaS company publishing a "Beginner's Guide to Cybersecurity" to generate leads.
This is the environment in which content is consumed, shaped by design, usability, personalization, and interactivity. It's how content is structured, delivered, and felt by users.
For example, the same cybersecurity guide is presented as an interactive quiz with dynamic visuals and easy navigation.
Content experience ensures the delivery of your message is smooth, engaging, and friction-free.
Here are the main differences between content marketing and content experience:
Aspect |
Content Marketing |
Content Experience |
Purpose |
Attract, educate, convert. |
Engage, retain, delight. |
Focus |
What is being communicated. |
How it's communicated and consumed. |
Scope |
Campaigns, topics, distribution. |
Design, UX, personalization, and tools. |
Metrics |
Traffic, leads, share. |
Time on page, bounce rate, CLTV. |
A brilliant piece of content, if poorly presented, will underperform. And a beautiful content interface, without strategic messaging, won't move the needle either.
Content marketing and content experience are connected. They're two sides of the same coin. Content marketing fuels the engine (ideas, messaging), while content experience steers the journey (how users interact with those ideas). When content marketing meets content experience, you transform from shouting your message to hosting a conversation. It's not just about being heard, it's about being remembered.
If content marketing is your goal, I recommend checking out HubSpot's AI content writer, which can help you generate blogs, website copy, and social posts, thereby scaling content creation without additional resources.
Creating a meaningful content experience means designing every part of your content environment with intention. Below are the key elements that work together to shape how your audience perceives, navigates, and engages with your message.
At first glance of this blog, what came to mind? Those first thoughts or perceptions you have on a piece of content you haven't read are formed by the visual design of that content. It plays a major role in how users feel about your content and brand at large.
Some of the components that make up a content's visual design are
Layout is the architectural blueprint of your content. It determines how information is organized, guiding readers through your message with intention. A well-structured layout not only displays content, it orchestrates attention. For instance, most blogs start with a hook (problem statement), build with evidence (data, examples), and end with action (CTA). This layout helps provide a great content experience for our readers.
Example: Intro → Pain Points → Solution → Benefits → CTA.
Layout and structure includes:
Interactivity and engagement are one key element of an effective content experience. Static blogs are no longer enough as audiences crave content that feels alive. With interactivity and engagement, you can create interactive elements that respond to users' actions.
Think of interactivity as a feedback loop. The more a user engages with your content, the more tailored their journey becomes, and the more likely they are to return.
To create a sense of engagement, here are some things you can consider adding to your content:
According to Demand Gen Report, 93% of marketers say interactive content is effective in educating buyers, compared to just 70% for static content.
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You can craft the most beautiful, interactive, and informative content in the world, but if it takes too long to load, users will never see it. Performance and load speed are the unsung heroes of a great content experience.
Load speed directly affects user satisfaction, SEO rankings, bounce rate, time on page, and lastly, conversion rates.
Improving performance means designing with efficiency in mind. Here's what to focus on:
Fast content is usable content. When users can navigate and interact without lag or stutters, every other content element, from visuals to CTAs, becomes more impactful.
In the image above, you can find the performance of HubSpot's website using Google's PageSpeed Insights.
Your content may be top-tier, but if users can't find their way around or struggle to interact with it, your message won't land. That's where navigation and accessibility come in. These aren't just UX concerns; they're essential pillars of a great content experience.
Navigation is how users move through your content. When it's intuitive, they stay longer, consume more, and convert at higher rates. Strong navigation helps:
Accessibility, on the other hand, ensures your content is usable for all people, even those with disabilities; it improves the experience for everyone, including users on mobile devices, in low-light environments, or with temporary impairments.
Some ways we can improve navigation and accessibility:
Pro tip: Tools like WAVE or Lighthouse can help you run quick accessibility audits.
To build an excellent content strategy, you should think of what you want to say "content," whilst focusing on how you want to say it "delivery," and to whom you are going to say it "audience." These three points are the major points I have learned and used to deliver my best-performing content. I like to make my content not just informative but also immersive, intuitive, and human-first.
The two keys to my content experience strategy are data and empathy. Here is how I approach building a strategy while keeping those keys in mind.
Before I craft experiences, I need to understand the people experiencing them. I like to begin with a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, user interviews, customer feedback, and behavior tracking. Tools like Hotjar and GA4 give me real-world insights into how people interact with my content.
"You can't design a great content experience without knowing your user's expectations, frustrations, and habits." - Ann Handley, Digital Marketing Pioneer
Key questions I ask:
This helps me shape not just the message, but the entire delivery.
Every piece of content should meet your audience where they are in their journey. Some customers might be discovering you for the first time, and some might have known you for a while and are ready to buy. Regardless of what the case may be, you have to create content tailored to meet their needs.
I usually map content touchpoints to funnel stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Then, I ask, what kind of experience would help them move forward naturally?
For example:
This is where UX and content collide. I've made the mistake of over-prioritizing copy in the past, forgetting that presentation is part of the message.
To build a truly effective content experience, I focus on:
"Design is not decoration. It's how your content works." - Me, after watching engagement drop from a bloated page layout.
While I always optimize for keywords, I treat engagement metrics as my north star. Are users scrolling? Clicking? Sharing?
This is where content performance analysis comes into play. I look beyond rankings to see session duration, scroll depth, event tracking (e.g., form fills, button clicks), and return visits.
Using tools like HubSpot, GA4, and even heatmaps, I can fine-tune the content experience post-publish.
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Your audience is your best strategist. I always build in ways for users to talk back, whether it's a survey at the bottom of a blog post or tracking comments and shares on social media.
Feedback has helped me uncover hidden friction points and user expectations I didn't even consider during the first draft.
One of my favorite mantras: "Good content gets updated." A content experience strategy is not a one-off project; it's iterative.
Every quarter, I revisit my top-performing and lowest-performing content to understand
Sometimes, a small tweak (like embedding a video or adding anchor links) can significantly improve performance.
Your content experience strategy should feel like a product, thoughtfully designed, continuously tested, and built for real humans. Let's take a look at some best practices for creating a great content experience.
Over the years, I've realized that great content is only as powerful as the experience wrapped around it. It's not just what we say, but how it feels, reads, and functions for the user. Here's how I create content that doesn't just inform, but it connects, converts, and keeps people coming back.
Let's face it, not everyone is reading word for word; I myself most times don't. That's why I start with scannability in mind. Clear section breaks, short paragraphs, and strategic bolding make it easier for readers to quickly pick up the value of the page. I've seen bounce rates drop significantly just by improving readability. As I always say, "Designing for readability is designing for reality." People scroll fast, so why not make it easy for them to land on what matters?
Source
There was a time when I treated images as filler. Now, they're an essential part of my planning process. Instead of just explaining something, I ask, "Can I show this?" A short explainer video, a chart, or even a well-labeled screenshot can elevate the experience dramatically. Neil Patel once said, "If you can show it, don't just say it." That stuck with me, and now, it's part of my content DNA.
As a software developer, I have found speed and optimization to be one thing that affects users' experience. One of the humbling experiences one can have is launching a beautifully designed page that tanks in performance. Why? Slow load times and a poor mobile experience. Since I experienced this, I test everything on mobile first, compress media before uploading, and always run my pages through Google PageSpeed Insights. It's not glamorous, but it's mission-critical.
Good content should feel like a guided journey. If your user doesn't know where to go next, they won't stick around. I like to build intuitive pathways into every piece, whether that's through well-placed CTAs, anchor-linked tables of contents, or internal links that nudge them naturally to the next insight. One of the best analogies I've heard came from Oli Gardner: "Think of your content like a museum. If visitors can't find the next exhibit, they'll walk out."
There's a reason I've shifted from formal, "corporate-speak" content to a more conversational style. People engage with content that sounds like it's written by someone who gets them. Now, I write the way I talk: clear, confident, and maybe even a little witty when the topic allows.
Traffic is a vanity metric unless you know what it's leading to. These days, I care more about scroll depth, time on page, and interaction than I do about views alone. Content performance analysis is my GPS, and it tells me what's working, what's not, and where I should go next. I rely heavily on GA4, HubSpot, and Hotjar to get the full picture.
Content isn't static; it ages, breaks, and falls behind. That's why I build in regular check-ins to revisit what I've published. Sometimes it's as simple as swapping out an old stat or fixing a broken link. Other times, I'll completely reframe a piece because user behavior has shifted. Great content doesn't live in the past. It evolves.
Some of the best ways I've learned to improve content experience have come from studying what others are doing well. In this section, I will show you three examples that stood out to me, not just for their design, but for how they made me feel as a reader. That emotional connection is where real content performance begins.
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The first time I landed on HubSpot's blog, I didn't feel like I was reading a traditional blog; it felt like walking through a well-designed knowledge hub. Their posts are clean, structured, and rich with internal links that guide you from one relevant topic to another without feeling overwhelmed.
What struck me most was how their content "talked" to me. It wasn't robotic. It felt like an experienced marketer was coaching me through a challenge. And the embedded videos, charts, and templates made it easier to act on what I just learned. Reading a HubSpot blog post is like having a mini-masterclass built right into your scroll. And now, as I write for HubSpot, I will say I've adopted a similar approach in my own writing, layering different formats and making each section actionable.
Notion turns its documentation into an experience. Most help centers feel like a wall of text, but Notion's is full of visual breathing room, collapsible sections, and short GIFs that show instead of tell.
In my opinion, what works so well here is the harmony between minimal design and high-impact guidance. As Marie Poulin once tweeted, "Notion's tutorials feel like the product itself, calm, efficient, and empowering." That stuck with me. Now, when I build content experiences, I ask; Does this feel like the product I'm trying to represent?
Webflow University is hands-down one of the best educational content experiences I've ever encountered. Every lesson feels like it was crafted by someone who not only understands the platform but also understands how creators learn. There's a light tone, clever illustrations, seamless video transitions, and yet it never loses its professional edge.
I remember thinking, this isn't just content; this is onboarding for a whole way of thinking. Their course on animations completely shifted how I approach interactions on the web.
Creating content experiences is so much more than publishing articles or designing assets. It anticipates what the user needs before they even articulate it. It aligns with their emotions, their stage in the funnel, and their unspoken expectations. That's what makes an experience stand out in a sea of noise.
To create that kind of resonance, I always start by getting obsessed with the audience. What are they searching for? What's slowing them down? What motivates them to click, scroll, or convert? When content hits those marks and delivers it all through a seamless, beautiful experience, that's when it performs.
And yes, having the right tools helps. Content experience platforms that enable personalization, performance monitoring, and dynamic design make it possible to scale content experiences without losing that human touch. But ultimately, strategy trumps software. If your foundation is audience-first, the tech only amplifies it.
Always remember, content experience requires your message delivery to be smooth, engaging, and friction-free.
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