At a point in time where more customers are viewing your company online than going instore, your website has a lot of legwork to do. It doesn’t just have to sell to online customers, it also has to make up for some of the things that go missing when customers don’t visit you in person. One of the biggest of these is creating a connection between your customers and inspiring loyalty. With no one to offend if you click to leave the website and go to a customer, it can be hard to create the kind of brand loyalty that stores have been inspiring for centuries. But there is one way websites can improve loyalty and that is through great UX. Here is how you can do it too.
Before we look at the benefits of great user experience, let’s look at what happens when companies get it wrong. Customers don’t enjoy using a website that has a bad user experience. Typically, these sites are hard to navigate and use and end up being more of a frustration for customers than a help. When this happens, customers are likely to leave and never come back. Even if it’s the website of their favorite store, there’s a good chance they will shop online elsewhere. With so much choice online, it’s not worth sticking with a company that offers bad user experience. How can you generate loyalty with no online customers?
A lot of the focus of websites is on converting users into new customers. But what about the customers that you already have? If you have repeat customers coming to your site—if you’re an online store, for instance—a good user experience will ensure that you design the site with return users in mind. This means making it easier to find what they are looking for and even personalizing the site by using cookies. If customers keep having a good experience every time they come to your site, they will keep coming back.
Do you know what people do when they find a great site that is easy to use and gives them exactly what they want? They tell their friends about it. And their friends tell their friends. And that site gets loads more customers. The ultimate goal when building customer loyalty is to create brand advocates, the kind of people that tell everyone they know about your brand. Great user experience helps create brand advocates who are happy to recommend their site. After all, no one wants to recommend a site that isn’t easy to use.
You can only really develop customer loyalty when your brand is consistent across all mediums and especially throughout your website. How else will users really understand your brand enough to become loyal? Great user experience makes sure that wherever they are on your site, a user will have a consistent experience with a consistent message.
If you think your user experience could be improved, our team are here to help. Get in touch today.