How do you build an effective website and meet customer expectations? Becoming more user-centered requires planning and attention to how your target audience responds. Not every customer segment is the same. The features working for one type of business may not work for another.
Many people base their buying decisions on customer experience (CX). They’re more willing to stay loyal to a brand with their happiness in mind compared to one that doesn’t.
Creating a better customer experience on your website helps make a positive impression on your site’s visitors. When you meet your users’ needs, you up the chances they turn from browsers into loyal fans.
1. Keep It Simple
It’s tempting to offer every possible feature on your website to meet the needs of everyone who comes to your page. Unfortunately, this results in a cluttered page. Users may not know what step to take next.
Instead, think about who your target audience is. What is the goal of your page? Remove anything not directly related to the purpose or the buyer persona. Even if you love the idea of adding a fun game to your home page, if it doesn’t speak to the audience segment you’d like to reach, it must go.
The Friday Habit is the website for a business podcast by the same name. Notice how simple the elements on the page are. You have the name of the brand, two navigation links and a call-to-action (CTA) button. There is a headline and a few bullet points. There is little to distract from the purpose of the page. Anyone landing here understands the objective is to listen to the podcast.
2. Choose Easy Payment Options
If you sell products on your pages, figure out the simplest payment options for your users. If people have to fill in endless fields of information or give up too much personal data, they may abandon their shopping carts. Look for integrations with third-party sites so that users can click once and fill in the fields or pay from a platform such as Payfast or PayPal.
3. Provide Practical Details
Consumers don’t want a lot of fancy marketing language. They want to know what you can do to solve a pain point they might have. Be upfront about what you offer, the different benefits and features of an item and its costs. Your product descriptions should include photos and every detail someone trying to make up their mind about buying would want.
Think through some of the questions people ask most often of your salespeople. If you answer those queries upfront, you save the customer time and reduce the stress on your sales team.
One Point Partitions offers an outline of the colors they have available. The wide selection of choices answers the question a customer might have about whether they have a shade that will match current decor. They also separate the finishes by the type of material. They offer stainless steel, powder-coated, solid plastic, laminate and phenolic. Separating each section allows the customer to jump to the kind of material they want.
4. Speed Up Load Times
People are impatient and won’t wait around for your site to load. In a recent study, researchers found the average page load time is 4.7 seconds, and as high as 11.4 seconds on mobile. This fact is a little concerning since the likelihood of someone bouncing away from your page increases 90% if it takes just five seconds to load. Anything you can do to improve how fast your website loads increases the chances that people stay on your site.
5. Share Your Story
Put yourself in the shoes of the average site visitor. They don’t know you and may have never heard of your brand before. They have no reason to trust you’ll stand behind your product. One way you can gain their trust is by being open and authentic. Share your story about why you started the brand, struggles you’ve overcome and your customer philosophy.
Haus places a link to their story at the top of their landing page, highlighting the importance of their background. They explain who they are and how they make their products. You even get a photo of the family behind the brand. They explain they wanted a better drink and were determined to create their own. They also say how they make their alcohol differently than others in the industry and why they choose that method.
6. Consider Accessibility
Think about the different types of visitors landing on your page and any particular need they might have. For example, if someone who is colorblind lands on your page, is there enough contrast to make the text viewable? What about the vision impaired? Are your alt tags up to par so that a text reader can describe the page to the person? Make a list of possible special needs and how well your site meets those concerns.
7. Utilize Videos
Videos tell a story faster and with more power than words alone. Today’s consumers are extremely busy. They may have five minutes while in line at the store to search for a new product. If you offer a video, you increase the chances they’ll absorb your information and make a purchase. Streamline the process by adding informational videos or even just videos highlighting your products in 360-degree views.
Haerfest highlights its new Apollo collection with a video showing work bags and people wearing them, using them and commuting through the city. It offers a sense of the sleek, business professional style. Users can see if they like the design before shopping the collection.
8. Stick With Familiar Navigation
It’s easy to get so caught up in a beautiful design that you forget users are most familiar with specific elements. They’re comfortable with a navigation bar at the top and a logo linking to the home screen.
If you start changing what may seem like minor details, the site visitor may grow confused. It’s frustrating to click on the logo because you think you’ll go to the home page only to see a signup form. Don’t go too far outside the box with your navigational hierarchy.
Keep Your Customers in Mind
The most successful websites are those with fully developed buyer personas that keep the target audience in mind throughout the design process. You can create a beautiful looking page, but if it doesn’t meet your viewers’ needs, it isn’t useful. Conduct split testing, trying different tactics and watch your conversion rates rise.
Very nice article, exactly what I was looking
for.