HubSpot Inc.

07/15/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 07/15/2025 05:17

Building a great content experience — how design can bolster your message

Building a great content experience - how design can bolster your message

Written by:Clinton Joy

HUBSPOT'S FREE CMS SOFTWARE

A free suite of content management tools for marketers and developers.

Learn More

Updated: 07/15/25

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

  • What is Content Experience?
  • Content Experience vs Content Marketing
  • Elements of Content Experience
  • How to Build a Content Experience Strategy
  • Best Practices for Creating a Great Content Experience
  • Content Experience Examples
  • Creating Delightful Content Experiences is Crucial

What is content experience?

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.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

  • Build a website without any coding skills.
  • Pre-built themes and templates.
  • Built-in marketing tools and features.
  • And more!
Get Started for Free

Content Experience vs Content Marketing

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.

Content Marketing

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.

Content Experience

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.

Elements of Content Experience

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.

Visual Design

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

  • Colors, fonts, and iconography: Depending on the kind of content you are putting out and your brand voice, colors, fonts, and iconography can play a huge role in reinforcing brand identity.
  • Imagery and spacing: Strategic use of imagery can break monotony, support storytelling, or clarify abstract ideas. But spacing is just as important; cluttered pages overwhelm users. White space (or negative space) gives content breathing room and helps focus the reader's attention on what matters most.
  • Clear visual hierarchy: Visual hierarchy guides the reader's eyes. When done right, it directs attention where it matters most, like your value proposition, CTA buttons, or key takeaways.

Layout and Structure

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:

  • Sectioning & Scannability: Break content with headings, bullet points, and visuals. Use whitespace to avoid cognitive overload.
  • Grid Systems: Align elements (text, images, CTAs) to a 12-column grid for consistency across devices. Tools: Figma, Adobe XD, or CSS frameworks like Bootstrap.
  • Sticky Elements: Floating headers, progress bars, or sidebars keep key CTAs (e.g., "Subscribe") visible during scroll.

Interactivity and Engagement

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:

  • Expandable elements (like accordions or tabs) to keep layouts clean while offering depth.
  • Hover states and microinteractions that provide feedback and visual cues.
  • Interactive infographics or charts that let users explore data themselves.
  • Quizzes, polls, or calculators that personalize the experience.
  • Embedded social media feeds or live comment sections for real-time reactions.

According to Demand Gen Report, 93% of marketers say interactive content is effective in educating buyers, compared to just 70% for static content.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

  • Build a website without any coding skills.
  • Pre-built themes and templates.
  • Built-in marketing tools and features.
  • And more!
Get Started for Free

Performance and Load Speed

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:

  • Image optimization: compress images and use modern formats like WebP. Use responsive sizes so images don't slow down mobile devices.
  • Lazy loading: only load images and videos when they come into view, not all at once.
  • Code minification: remove unnecessary whitespace and comments from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  • Fast hosting and CDNs: serve your content from servers geographically close to your users.
  • Limit third-party scripts: too many plugins, widgets, or analytics tools can create bottlenecks.
  • Preloading and caching strategies: speed up repeat visits and reduce server strain.

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.

Navigation and Accessibility

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:

  • Reduce bounce rate.
  • Improve scroll depth and time on page.
  • Support content performance analysis with cleaner user flow data.

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:

  • Use clear menus with recognizable labels.
  • Add internal links and table of contents modules.
  • Show related or recommended articles at the end of posts.
  • Proper HTML semantics (using headings correctly, labeling forms).
  • Alt text for images.
  • Keyboard navigation for interactive elements.

Pro tip: Tools like WAVE or Lighthouse can help you run quick accessibility audits.

How to Build a Content Experience Strategy

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.

1. Start With Audience Intelligence

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:

  • What are their pain points?
  • What devices are they using?
  • What stops them from converting?

This helps me shape not just the message, but the entire delivery.

2. Map the Customer Journey

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:

  • Awareness: engaging blog content, visuals, and explainer videos.
  • Consideration: interactive guides, comparisons, and user stories.
  • Decision: demos, CTAs, testimonials, and calculators.

3. Design with Experience in Mind

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:

  • Clean, mobile-friendly layouts
  • Skimmable formatting (headers, bullet points, bolds)
  • Responsive visuals and interactive elements
  • Fast load times and accessibility

"Design is not decoration. It's how your content works." - Me, after watching engagement drop from a bloated page layout.

4. Optimize for Engagement, Not Just SEO

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.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

  • Build a website without any coding skills.
  • Pre-built themes and templates.
  • Built-in marketing tools and features.
  • And more!
Get Started for Free

5. Build Feedback Loops

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.

6. Maintain and Evolve

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

  • What's driving results?
  • What's outdated?
  • Where can I improve the experience (loading speed, design, structure)?

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.

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.

1. Design for the Skimmers First

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

2. Use Multimedia With Purpose

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.

3. Prioritize Speed and Mobile Optimization

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.

4. Make Navigation Seamless

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."

5. Write Like a Human Talking to Another Human

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.

6. Measure the Right Metrics

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.

7. Refresh and Refine Often

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.

Content Experience Examples

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.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

  • Build a website without any coding skills.
  • Pre-built themes and templates.
  • Built-in marketing tools and features.
  • And more!
Get Started for Free

HubSpot's Blog

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's Help Center and Guides

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

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 Delightful Content Experiences is Crucial

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.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

  • Build a website without any coding skills.
  • Pre-built themes and templates.
  • Built-in marketing tools and features.
  • And more!
Get Started for Free
Topics:Content Management System

Don't forget to share this post!

HubSpot Inc. published this content on July 15, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on July 15, 2025 at 11:17 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io