An improved user experience is critical to growth, sales, conversions and even search results. Though it is one of the most critical aspects of any business it is also one of the most overlooked.
Whether digital (web) or analog (brick and mortar), who wants to shop where the experience is sub par? Not me. Not you. No one.
Improved User Experience
We all need to experience our business in the eyes of the consumer. It’s not difficult to do. If it is, then you have some serious issues before you.
Simply pick up the phone and see if anyone answers. If they do, is it courteous, prompt, informative.
Complete your contact form and see if you get a response. Or even see if the form works. Please read Contact Forms for more.
Let’s look at some specifics we can all do for an improved user experience.
Online Support
Gone are the days of people wanting to speak to anyone on the phone. Millennials don’t like to talk on the phone. I don’t like to talk on the phone. Most people today don’t like to either. Please read Millennials In The Workplace and Millennials And Mobile for more.
So offer online chat. There are a lot of great, free resources out there. In minutes you can have a professional, online chat feature. At least try it for a period of time and see what questions result. See if sales increase or abandoned shopping cart rates decrease.
If you are not offering this, I would almost guarantee you are losing customers. Someone with a product in their cart and a quick question is likely to leave and shop elsewhere if they cannot get an answer immediately.
Navigation
I’m surprised how difficult it is to navigate across different websites. Basic steps like the product pages or testimonials and more, are easy to find. But where things get difficult is when you are drilled down within the site.
When you perhaps click “see more” for an expanded product description and you are re-directed to another page. Or the page refreshes and nothing new is shown.
Add as many internal links as needed. Not to make Google happy, but rather your customers. Remember, answers beget questions. An answer to a question often creates another question.
Offer links to product questions as they are likely to arise. Like warranty, return, shipping information at various stages of the checkout or shopping process.
Please read Learning From Wikipedia for more.
Personalize
We recently spoke about this in Personalized Website. Personalize your website as much as possible. A simple greeting based on the time of day to a more advanced geo-based personalization.
If a customer continually visits a specific product category, then help them on future visits. Rather than ask them to search through the entire product list, narrow down the search.
Show them only the categories they likely want to see. The ones they have continually looked at on previous visits.
One Billion
There are nearly one billion websites online today. Differentiate yourself. Wow your customers. Exceed their expectations. How else will you stand out?
An improved user experience will not only increase sales and conversions but will get the fly wheel spinning. It will produce organic, referral based traffic, inspired by happy customers.