The essential hacks to improve customer experience across your website
As a business, your website can be the most powerful marketing tool at your disposal. Operating 24/7 to promote your brand and products it needs to be at the forefront of your marketing strategy.
What’s more, first impressions are crucial. Your website will often be a customer’s first touchpoint with your brand, and – whether it delivers an excellent or frustrating experience – it will leave a lasting impression.
Research by Stanford University shows 75% of customers make a judgement on a business’s credibility based on their website design.
So, the experience you offer your customers on your website couldn’t be more important.
Here are five key tips on how to make sure your site is a powerful showcase that delivers for your brand:
Keep it clutter-free
No-one wants to land on a website and to be immediately inundated with information and multiple moving elements. In fact, 38% of people stop engaging with a brand because the layout of their website is unattractive.
This art of website design is actually to keep it simple and avoid any unnecessary components that could distract users from your core message or product.
Remember, whitespace is your friend – don’t be afraid to use it generously! This will ensure your essential imagery and content have room to shine.
Each page should have a single definitive purpose
To ensure a fluid customer journey, users must be able to immediately understand the function or purpose of each page.
Separate landing pages should be created for each different element of your business and for each different stage of the user journey to convert. (Separate, yet connected – see tip 3!) For example, the basket or checkout page should be clearly identified and contain only what is absolutely essential for that function. It needs to be instantly understandable to the user, without any need for an explanation.
Avoid dead-end pages
Dead-end pages are those that don’t lead the customer anywhere and require them to double back, which can lead to confusion. In many cases frustrated customers will simply abandon your website in search of a competitor.
To avoid these, think carefully about the journey you want your customer to take around your website and how you want them to build knowledge of your brand and products.
Every page on your website should lead somewhere, encouraging information scent – the process whereby customers are intrigued to keep clicking to find out more. To do this, always ensure there are button links at the bottom of every page, and at the bottom of content sections, to provide the next logical step on for the customer.
It is also essential to clearly indicate where on the website the customer is, so they have a clear understanding of their own path. This includes ensuring the page being viewed is clearly highlighted on the main or sub-navigations.
Remember also that most customers do not land on the homepage first. Due to your SEO or paid search and social campaigns they may well enter on specific product or information pages, so the customer journey with these pages as the starting point needs to make sense.
A distinct search bar will also ensure that any customers that do get ‘lost’ can easily navigate their way back to their intended focus.
Check your site speed and mobile responsiveness
According to Google, a staggering 53% of users will abandon your website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. If that’s not an incentive to focus on site speed as part of your website design, I don’t know what is!
To keep your site load time in check, ensure images and motion graphics are not too large and are scaled for the web. Don’t try to be too clever with your graphics and components by adding too many glitzy features – you risk overwhelming and distracting the user when your focus should be on engagement and quickly drawing them into your brand story and products.
With more than half of traffic now coming from mobile devices, it’s also essential to ensure your website is fully mobile-optimised. Users today are very unforgiving – a mobile-optimised website is an expectation, not a nice-to-have. Not only does this instantly create a more positive experience for your users, but Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor, meaning your website will appear more prominently in search results if it is fully mobile-optimised.
Ask for customer feedback
Finally, it’s important to appreciate that website design is not a finite thing. It’s a process of constant iteration. Before you embark on your design project, seek feedback from your valued and trusted customers to ensure your plans align with their needs. Then, once your designs have been implemented, be sure to check in again and be open to suggestions of any tweaks that might be needed. Ask, test, implement, repeat.
If you need advice on your plans for a website build or redesign get in touch.
