5 Ways to Improve Your Customers’ Online Experience
The best brands see the customer experience as a two-way conversation. First, your customers engage with your site. As they do this, you use data-driven tools to understand their engagement and get a complete picture of what is working and what is not working on your site.
Then? You respond with a customer experience that meets these needs. You optimize and adjust until the interaction between your brand and the customer is seamless.
Data and technology strengthen this customer-brand relationship — and make it easier than ever to constantly enhance the customer experience. Here are a few ways you can go about improving the online customer experience:
1. Find actionable insights and know your customers.
First things first. Before you can begin improving the customer experience, you need to develop a deep understanding of your customers. Data-driven technology can generate reports that will tell you how your site is performing, what users are responding to and which areas need improvement.
2. Personalize the experience
You might find that — with your enhanced understanding of your users — you can create experiences specifically suited to their preferences. These are personalized experiences and they’re transforming the way brands engage with their customers. When you personalize your website, you’re telling your customers plain and simple: we understand your needs and want to cater to them.
3. Find add-ons that can improve your site
Add-ons and plugins make it easy to roll up your sleeves, get to work and quickly improve your site. No, you don’t need to make drastic changes to the code underpinning your website. Add-ons are easy to implement and pay dividends quickly.
Still, there are lots of add-ons and plugins to choose from. You might not want to test out a bunch of add-ons and potentially disrupt the user experience. So partnering with a team that has been around the block when it comes to finding useful add-ons can be hugely beneficial as you work on improving your site.
4. Embrace minimal design
Gone are the days of busy web pages with all sorts of bells and whistles. That was Web 1.0. Today more brands are emphasizing minimal design that prioritizes clear information and easy navigation. This is particularly important if your website is centered around a certain product. In that case, you want your product to do the talking. Minimizing distracting site copy and design elements put the focus on what you’re offering the customer — and makes it easy for the customer to make a purchase.
Minimalism is a strong “north star” when conceiving of an online experience. But on a deeper level, you want to practice empathy when designing a site. Try to understand the user on a human level. What is their frame of mind as they navigate your site? How can you build an experience that “understands” them and the way they think?
5. Make sure your site is highly functional
We’ve all been on websites that are slow and dysfunctional. It’s just about the easiest way to lose users and stand in the way of conversions. It also reflects poorly on your brand, making users think you’re unprofessional or unable to meet their needs. You don’t want that now do you?
To avoid this, make sure your site is being hosted on a platform that deploys a full range of optimization, security and risk reduction tools. This keeps your site safe from threats and ensures it functions at a high level. Then you can use tools like Site Speed in Google Analytics to measure performance.
The payoff of crafting better online experiences is pretty simple: more site visits and more conversions. You never want to fall behind the competition by offering a site experience that’s less than perfect. Partnering with a platform like Slight Revision can give you the tools and the confidence you need to engage your users and put yourself on the path toward great customer experiences.