Tips on Designing a Great Customer Experience for Your Website

Owning a highly functional, easily accessible website with wonderful aesthetics is quickly becoming a necessity in the modern business arena. Without it, your company might be missing out on a wealth of online opportunities.

Company websites work well when they can offer the customer a seamless experience from start to finish. Designing the ideal customer experience is a task in constant motion, which is partly down to the ever-evolving technological landscape and potential shifts in customer expectations.

For many potential customers, the very first time they come into contact with your brand will be via your company website, yet in some ways, their experience starts before they approach your digital storefront.

If you would like to find out more about the value of a great customer experience and how to start designing one in the first place, here are some tips you might find helpful to your efforts.

Before the Website

The best customer experiences are often cohesive across a range of channels. These channels, be it social media or TV advertisements, can enrich the customer experience and let them know what to expect before they step foot in your digital store.

To ensure that the multichannel approach is an all-encompassing one, working on a recognizable and distinctive brand voice is important, as is building a unique aesthetic that draws the eye and continues to synergize throughout your website.

Communication Is Key

Imagine your customer is interested in one of your products or services, but they wanted to know a little more than the online description lets on. If they cannot contact you for this information, they may very well head elsewhere for their needs.

To make sure that this does not happen and that the customer is given all of the support they need throughout the duration of the time spent on your site, implementing opportunities for two-way communication is vital.

Chatbots and instant messaging platforms are a great help in this regard, as it puts an emphasis on your brand’s transparency and gives your customers a direct channel through which to contact you for support.

Chatbot marketing can be incredibly effective. Just check out these business use cases to find out how to effectively utilize it in your overall strategy.

It is worth bearing in mind, however, that customers who feel as though you are pestering them can quickly get annoyed, particularly in a world rife with popups and spam emails. Finding the right balance is important, so letting them know the support is there should they need it can make all the difference between a frustrating, hard sell and a customer-oriented approach.

Make Your Products Easy to Find

There is no use playing hide and seek with your products when in fact, they should take center stage and shine out in all of their glory.

If the customer cannot find your products on the page, they will either have to make an extra effort to search or turn their attention elsewhere.

The customer experience needs to be seamless if you hope to direct your visitors around your website with ease.

This might mean decluttering your pages, embracing the value of open space on the page, and using small visual cues to help them along their way.

Visual cues might take the form of links to other pages on your site, arrows that direct your visitor’s attention, or even an image that people can interact with.

This can support your customer from the second they enter your website to the moment they leave. If you can manage to make the experience completely stress-free and straightforward, there is a good chance people will start coming back for more.

A Perfect Point of Sale

When the time comes for your visitor to turn into a customer and make a sale, it is crucial to make sure that the act of actually making the purchase is as easy as possible for them.

If your customer makes their way across your entire website, fills up their basket with goodies, then has to jump through an overly complicated set of hoops, you will have likely lost yourself a sale.

To make the point of sale as perfect as possible, you should offer them a range of payment options, or if you cannot afford to support multiple payment platforms just yet, implementing an option that best suits your target audience.

Obstructing the point of sale with popups and offers that attempt to upsell to your customer can not only be distracting but might damage your brand image. This is because this tactic can look cheap and underhanded, factors you will certainly want to be avoiding when developing your presence.

The customer experience does not necessarily end at the point of sale, nor does it end after they have left your website.

Follow-Up Marketing

Follow-up marketing can be an important part of the overall experience, as it essentially helps remind people of your brand, potentially increasing the odds of them returning to your products or services.

Sending personalized emails is still a fantastic way of doing this. Offering vouchers and discount codes in your emails can also work in convincing people to return, provided you do not accidentally annoy them in the process.

Considering the vast number of spam emails sent every day, making sure your email looks legitimate and personal is a must if you aim to avoid the virtual trashcan.

Feedback

You may struggle to develop your customer experience without any feedback from your target audience. After all, they are the people who you need to impress, so why not find out what they think by offering them incentives to make comments?

These incentives could be loyalty points, VIP status, early access to products, or discounts. There are so many options to consider; going for what you feel suits your brand best is vital.

Criticism can be hard to listen to, but it is nonetheless important if you aim to grow as a company that looks after its customers and delivers the best experience possible.