Marketers and web developers face a significant challenge in meeting customers’ high user experience and website usability expectations. However, they can conquer this challenge by prioritizing customer experience.
An enjoyable customer experience makes it easier for consumers to choose your business over the competition. Usually, a solid customer experience is reliant on whether they enjoy interacting with your website. This is because they’ll spend lots of time in this digital space finding out about your business and what your brand is all about.
If someone can visit your website, find what they need, make a purchase and enjoy a lasting relationship with a reliable brand, they’ll likely report a positive customer experience. On the other hand, they’ll be more likely to form a negative overall brand view if they had a terrible experience navigating the website.
If the goal is to prioritize customer experience within your web design, you must address how you want a person to feel when they interact with your website and how to make your site easy to use.
Read on for six ways you can prioritize customer experience within your web design.
Find Out What a Solid Customer Experience is for Your Audience
To prioritize customer experience within your web design, you must first define a solid customer experience for your particular audience. Explore the following questions to determine what a solid customer experience is for your audience:
- How do they navigate websites?
- What are their expectations regarding website design?
- What are your customers’ needs, and are you fulfilling them?
- Why does someone in your target audience become loyal to a brand?
- How is their brand loyalty connected to their user experience on a website?
Next, strengthen your brand identity.
Strengthen Your Brand Identity
A quality customer experience relies on your brand identity. In other words, when you have a strong brand, your customers know what they can expect from you.
You can strengthen your brand identity by working through the following:
- What are your brand values?
- What is your brand’s mission?
- Why did you create your business?
- What quality standards can customers expect?
- How are you making people aware of your brand?
- How are you ensuring that they recognize it everywhere they go?
Also, be consistent. Ensure your visual branding elements like your logo, brand colors, typography, imagery and videos are the same ones used throughout your business. In addition, ensure your content quality, brand voice and structure are cohesive as well.
Another way to prioritize customer experience within your web design is to use top-tier tools and tech.
Use Top-Tier Tools and Tech
The functionality of your website is just as necessary, if not more, than its look. Using top-notch technology and tools to build, manage and maintain your website can help ensure your website’s usability is on point.
Pay special attention to:
- Loading time
- Clear navigation
- Your site’s performance
- Readability of your content
- A carefully designed home page
- Choosing a high-quality web hosting platform
Furthermore, your top-tier technology should include cybersecurity tools.
Invest in Cybersecurity
Safety and security are huge for ensuring your customers have an excellent experience on your website.
The last thing you want to do is go cheap when it comes to cybersecurity. You’ll end up spending more money in the long run because you have to upgrade your systems after a cybersecurity attack or because you have to add more tools because your business grew and your current tools can’t scale with you.
So, invest in cybersecurity tools that make your website a safe, secure space to engage online. Although some of these tools can be expensive, it’s best to find room in your budget for them.
Start with a search on the internet for cybersecurity tools that best fit your business model. Also, get recommendations from your business owner friends.
Next, prioritizing customer experience within your web design may be a lot easier with the help of experts.
Enlist the Help of Experts
As you grow your business, you’ll learn that you can’t do it all alone. You may start with complimentary advice and support from friends who are business owners. However, you’ll eventually want to explore hiring experts and specialists who can take your business to the next level.
These experts will likely include a website designer, developer, marketer, sales manager, administrative assistant, IT support, and customer service associate.
You’ll also want to consider working with a market research analyst. A market research analyst can help you define your customer’s needs, wants and desires through quantitative and qualitative studies. Then, when you understand your target audience, you can build a website that caters to them.
Finally, finding issues before your customers do and making improvements to eliminate those issues is terrific for the customer experience.
Find Issues Before Your Customers Do and Fix Them
Sometimes the person making the website isn’t the one using it. As a result, the site may lack the key features and functions necessary for a positive experience.
Instead, become an actual user. Navigate and interact with the website yourself. See what’s easy and what isn’t.
Not only will you learn the best parts of your website, but you’ll also run into issues before your customers do, and you can fix them before your customers ever have to run into them. When users run into any bug, it throws off their experience. They can’t complete the action they need to or find the information they’re looking for.
So, mitigate that frustration by doing a bug bash. A bug bash can help you bring your teams together to find and fix bugs before your customers have to encounter them.
Ultimately, continually improving your site and fixing issues as quickly as possible is integral to successfully prioritizing customer experience within your web design.
Prioritizing customer experience within your web design is the best pathway to guaranteeing a wonderful, overall brand experience. Use the tips above to put your customer experience at the forefront of your web design.
