Improve customer experience immediately with these tips
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Customer experience (also known as CX) is quite simply what it says on the tin – the experience that your customers have when browsing or interacting with your website. Customer experience can sometimes be overlooked, however, if you get it wrong and leave a bad impression, it could be extremely detrimental to your revenue figures and brand reputation. Let’s delve into the importance of customer experience and how you can improve your CX immediately.
The importance of customer experience
When considering your website’s revenue-driving performance and digital marketing, some businesses will make the fatal error of not factoring in how a user interacts with the website. If your website is difficult to navigate, the checkout process is overly complex and the potential customer can’t find the information they’re looking for – you may just lose that customer entirely! And not just that, they may pass on that experience to their friends and family, giving you a poor reputation that you don’t want.
On the other hand, an extremely positive experience could lead to word-of-mouth recommendations and customer loyalty. This is hugely important considering that the cost of acquiring a new customer can be five times higher than that of retaining an existing one.
All that considered, your customer experience can make or break your business, so here we have 5 tips to ensure you get it right.
If a user can’t easily find your products or navigate the checkout process, you’re probably going to lose them. Here are a few tips:
- Have a clear menu structure: a navigation bar that contains the actual categories that users are searching for will go a long way to driving more website browsing
- Breadcrumbs: this is the trail that potential shoppers leave behind as they move around the site. These allow your user to be able to see different categories, move forwards and backwards, and as an extra plus – they’re great for your SEO!
- Search bar: this may sound like a basic one, but having a search bar that actually shows the relevant items is extremely important for site navigation.
- Be consistent: a potential customer is most likely looking for ease. Product pages that follow a template and display information in similar formats mean that a user doesn’t have to think too much to gather information.
Optimise for mobile
It can seem a little redundant to be discussing mobile optimisation in 2024, but it is still more important than ever. It isn’t good enough to just be shrinking your desktop design for a smaller screen – your website needs to be just as functional, if not even easier to navigate, on a mobile device.
When optimising your website, make sure you’ve mapped your customer journey and remembered the basics: your mobile site needs to be responsive, relevant, actionable, and frictionless.
The faster your website, the better
When was the last time that you waited longer than 5 seconds for a website to load? Probably a long time ago … right? It’s very clear – if your website is too slow, you will lose your potential customers.
A fast website can reduce your bounce rate – the number of users who leave your website without taking any action. This, in turn, increases your engaged users on-site and therefore potential customers.
Not only can a fast website improve your conversion rate, but it is also vital for your organic performance – any good SEO will tell you that your website speed is a core ranking factor for Google.
Quality content is key
You can have a fast website that is responsive and easy to navigate, but if your content is lacking, you aren’t giving yourself the best shot at driving conversions.
Quality content is the cornerstone of any successful customer experience. Content that is engaging, regularly updated and addresses the customer’s needs will help drive conversions due to engaged audiences.
When writing content for your website, make sure you consider the SEO requirements to improve rankings but also understand the customer journey and the content that they want to see. By writing content that is actually relevant to the user, you will improve their experience on the site.
Introduce real-time support
Now that you’ve created a website that is optimised, easy to navigate and engaging, it is worth considering more real-time support options, such as Live Chat and FAQs.
Real-time support is becoming increasingly commonplace on websites and users are relying on this option to provide them answers more frequently. In fact, research has shown that 44 % of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live agent while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.
Live chat and real-time support can help your user feel supported throughout their journey. If your website provides all the answers to their questions, they do not need to navigate elsewhere and remain more engaged on your site.
It’s definitely worth considering this, but again, understand your customer journey before jumping headfirst without the relevant setup.
A positive customer experience is extremely important, as we’ve demonstrated throughout this blog. By following these 5 tips to improve your site and improve that experience, you are likely to see increases in conversion rate, brand reputation and also your SEO. If you want to find out more about designing the optimum website for conversions or improving your Google search rankings, get in touch today.
