What makes the ideal customer journey through your website? You must nail every aspect of the path a person travels through your site, or you risk losing visitors. Creating a positive UX starts with understanding the needs of your users and refining details until you hit on the perfect mix.
Business owners understand the importance of good customer experience (CX). Brightback’s 2020 State of Industry Report showed 93% of leaders felt customer retention was equally as important as acquisition.
If your UX doesn’t win over your customers, though, they likely won’t hang around. They’re much more likely to bounce to one of your competitors. To build loyalty toward your brand and keep the clients you have, take these steps to ensure your UX shines.
1. Add Engaging Content
Customers need a reason to stay on your site. Excellent content provides value. You should be seen as the go-to authority in your field. You can offer a variety of information types, including articles, infographics and videos.
Make sure your content is relevant to your product or service. For example, if you sell nuts and bolts, you might create an article about which ones to use for a home improvement project. Think through the reasons people buy what you sell.
Your content should cover a variety of topics within your niche. Analyze your customers’ pain points. What problem drives them to seek a solution? How can you address the issue with your content?
2. Understand the Competition
You must capture the imagination of potential customers, but you also have to offer something your competitors don’t. Study those who sell what you do. What do they do particularly well? What can you do better? Make sure you understand your unique value proposition (UVP) and what you bring to the table no one else does.
You can also figure out what areas your competitors serve by using a business map model. Outlining sales territories and where other companies have a stronghold gives your company a measurable edge over others.
Start by meeting unmet needs. What pain points does your target audience have that you can solve? Bigger companies may not have the ability to personalize services the same way you do.
3. Check Your Layout
Your site’s layout has a big impact on the user experience. Does your website’s user interface (UI) meet customer expectations? For example, most people expect the home button on the left of the navigation bar and a contact button to the right. Don’t stray too far outside the norm.
Is your site easy to skim over? If you have too much clutter, it’s hard for the user to focus on any one thing. Get rid of any element not meeting the goal of the page. When you give clients what they expect, you’ll keep them happy. One study found 80% of businesses delivering a good customer experience outperformed their competition.
Spend time looking at how your page measures up on mobile devices. More people are using their smartphones to access the internet, so make sure your site is responsive to smaller screens. Is it easy to tap buttons? Are forms short enough to fill in easily on a small keyboard?
4. Get to the Point
People are busy. They don’t have time to waste on a bunch of fluff, so get right into the main point of your page. Does your headline effectively summarize what each page is about? The user should know immediately if it applies to them.
Learn to cut the fluff when writing and replace wordy phrases with shorter ones. Don’t repeat points or use redundant words. For example, in a description of little and tiny, get rid of one of the words.
You should also understand where your buyer is on the journey. Not everyone is in the awareness stage. If a user is already in the decision stage, create a simple CTA so they can skip over other steps and go right to the order form.
5. Make Customers the Center of Your Efforts
If you want clients to stay with your brand, you must put them at the center of your efforts. Studies show two-thirds of people wouldn’t care if most brands disappeared tomorrow. Get them invested by creating a customer-first approach and going above and beyond to meet their needs.
The only way to truly match what your customers want is to survey them. What are you doing that works for them? Where are you failing? Once you know your areas of weakness, work on solutions to keep your clients happy.
6. Check Your CTAs
You need a clear call to action (CTA). Does yours serve your purposes? Your CTA must reflect the goal of your page and meet the needs of site visitors. The language should be concise and clear.
Some ways of improving your CTAs include adding first- or second-person language, keeping the text short and adding the action you want the user to take. For example, “Get My Free Book” works well as a lead magnet CTA.
It’s crucial you split-test your CTAs to see what language, placement and colors work best with your audience. The CTA should be easy to find and pop against the rest of the page. Experiment until you get the conversion rates you want.
Be Proactive
It’s much easier to keep a customer you already have than seek a new one. Take the time to survey your current clients and find out what they need that you’re not providing. Make improvements where necessary to better meet their expectations.
If people seem to bounce away from your page the minute they land there, your UX isn’t winning anyone over. Test every small and large factor and make adjustments until your conversions improve. Creating a site with excellent UX takes time but is worth the effort in increased results.
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