For a business to succeed, it needs happy, loyal customers. If someone visits a website for the first time and has a horrible experience, they are not likely to return.
We’ve all had a bad experience with an eCommerce website that turned us away from the brand and, more likely than not, drove us to one of their competitors. As a business owner or marketer, you never want to put your customers in this position.
Creating a positive user experience (UX) will help you capture the attention of new visitors and turn subscribers into loyal customers.
Simply put, UX is people’s overall experience when engaging with a brand’s website. Brands that deliver top-notch experiences tend to see more email subscribers, engagement, and sales.
The thing is, there are a ton of different factors you need to consider when optimizing your site for UX. Today, we will explore some of the most important things you can do to ensure everyone visiting your website has a positive experience.
Let’s get started!
Use Buyer Personas to Segment Your Audience.
The first thing you should do is build detailed buyer personas (also known as marketing personas). Buyer personas are representations of your ideal customers. These fictional profiles cover the goals, needs, pain points, and demographics of the people who are more likely to find value in your products, services, or content.
It’s possible to create personas by reviewing on-site analytics and customer surveys. For instance, a marketing firm would develop personas based on their audiences’ major pain points and products available on their site. If you look at internal data, you’d likely find personas for people interested in email, website, and social media marketing.
Each group has a distinct set of needs, so it’s important to understand what each customer expects from your business.
You may be asking, “Why is this important?”
Here’s why: a whopping 61% of marketers say generating leads and traffic is their biggest challenge. I firmly believe this is because many leaders are not creating and updating their marketing personas.
Once you have a list of personas, you can start segmenting your audience. This process involves sorting users based on their interests and creating relevant marketing campaigns, content, and offers, which leads us to the next tip.
Create Unique Experiences with Personalization
Now that you know more about your customers, you can start personalizing content and offers for each one. You might be surprised to learn that 4 out of 5 people want businesses to use personalization in the future. This sentiment is particularly true as it relates to location-based search results.
You can personalize content and promotions in countless ways. One broad way to improve engagement and your email click-through rate is to address your subscribers by name. This seemingly small addition can have a tremendous impact on UX.
I also recommend sending users offers relevant to their history with your business. If a user buys one type of product on your site, their promotions should reflect their buying habits.
It’s also possible to use personalization to build a better experience by sending emails when users take a specific action on your site. For instance, a cart abandonment email campaign goes out to users who visit our site and add items to their cart but choose to leave without checking out.
Feedback forms, on-site analytics, and other data points can help you hone in on each individual’s needs, resulting in a better experience for everybody.
Streamline Your Site Design
Next, let’s talk about the design of your website. People favor simple, functional designs over slow, clunky websites. If a user lands on your site and can’t find something simple, like how to get to the checkout page, they will likely leave before taking action.
You’ll be happy to know that there are quite a few ways to streamline your site design for a better UX. I recommend keeping the following tips in mind:
- Use a responsive, mobile-friendly theme.
- Don’t be afraid of a little blank space; this gives readers time to breathe.
- Ensure your website’s key parts (blog, customer support, product pages) are visible and easy to navigate.
- Rework your navigation menu, so users never have to travel more than 3 pages to find a specific destination.
- Test your website on multiple devices and operating systems so you can rest assured that users will have a positive experience.
Invest in a Rich Onboarding Experience
Onboarding is getting new customers familiar with your product or service. I’ve met far too many business owners who decided not to invest in an onboarding program, and they paid for it with their churn rate.
If users can’t figure out how to effectively use their product, they will complain, ask for a refund, and probably tell others about their negative experience. Now, compare this to a customer with access to everything they need to succeed with their new purchase.
The difference is clear. Users who have onboarding tools at their disposal are happier and trust the company more than those without.
The type of onboarding program you create will vary based on what you sell and the needs of your audience. For example, the owner of a marketing SaaS should include onboarding in their software. When new customers open the tool for the first time, they can go through the step-by-step tutorial and learn the ropes.
Meanwhile, a brand that sells physical products could create a resource center on its blog where users can get answers to key questions and learn how to maximize the value of their new purchase.
Engage with Your Audience Across All Marketing Platforms
A massive part of building a positive user experience is engagement. People are not drawn to brands that don’t try to connect and stay in touch. This trend is partially due to social media, but competitiveness in certain industries has also sparked this need for engagement.
If you could buy from a company that responds to your tweets and engages with you when you ask questions, you would. On the other hand, brands that are radio silent tend to lose more customers over time.
As a result, more companies started using social media, email, and their website to engage with customers.
By now, you know social sites like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are excellent places to connect with your customers. Across all platforms, there are nearly 4.7 billion users. Once you find your intended audience, you can keep them interested in your brand by sharing helpful, interesting, or just plain funny social media posts.
A skilled live chat team is an excellent first step when it comes to engagement on your website. People will want to talk to your team, even if they’re not ready to make a purchase. Fast, responsive service will help you win over more people. Compare this method to traditional email support, which can take 2-4 days for a response.
I recommend merging social media with your website by adding a social wall to your sidebar. Social walls make it easy for users to engage with both platforms without leaving your site. As a result, you’ll have an easier time building rapport and creating a top-notch user experience.
Another big part of engagement is user feedback. We like to stay in touch with our audience across all platforms so we can learn how to improve over time. You could send your email subscribers a quarterly survey, while social media users get a monthly poll.
The more you engage with your audience and ask them to share their thoughts, the more brilliant ideas you’ll see in your inbox. You can then take hot features or requested changes and roll them out during future updates. When users see that you not only asked for their feedback but took the initiative to implement the changes, they are more likely to have a positive experience with your brand.
Final Thoughts
Building a stellar user experience is one of the best things you can do to improve your revenue and skyrocket customer satisfaction. The tips presented today will help you outline a UX strategy regardless of your industry, size, or target audience.
