How to Improve the Customer Experience (CX) of Your Website
In the age of the customer, companies are heavily focused on delivering amazing experiences at every touchpoint to differentiate themselves from the competition. One of the most important touchpoints is your website, as it is often a potential customer’s first point of interaction with your brand.
To further underline how important CX is to your business, a PWC study found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. The more expensive the item, the more they were willing to pay. With that in mind, it’s clear that improving the customer experience (CX) on your website is vital to succeeding in today’s market.
However, many companies fail when it comes to providing a great CX on their website. For one reason or another, they are unable to provide the level of service that their customers expect and as a result they lose potential sales and their branding suffers.
Luckily, there are a few things you can do to improve the customer experience on your website, and some of them might be a lot easier to implement than you think. With that in mind, here are some quick-fire tips to get you started.
Focus on web accessibility
According to a study by WebAIM, 97% of websites have at least one major accessibility error. This is a big problem in the CX world, as web accessibility is all about making sure everyone can use and interact with your website, regardless of their skill level. When visitors find bugs and technical difficulties on your site, it will reflect poorly on your brand as a whole. However, they are very unlikely to become paying customers, let alone repeat purchases.
There are several ways to make your website more accessible, but some important considerations are:
- Use clear and concise language
- Optimizing your website for assistive technologies
- Includes alt text for images
- Using a clear heading structure
- Avoid using CAPTCHAs
- Using subtitles and transcripts for videos
However, maintaining an accessible website is an ongoing process. Therefore, it is important to test your website regularly and ensure that it meets the needs of all visitors. To check the current availability of your website you can use accessScan, a free tool developed by accessiBe. Just enter your website’s URL in the search bar and the tool will run a full diagnosis of your website. After a minute or two, you’ll have a full audit of your site’s current accessibility level, which you can then use as a basis for your future efforts.
Add a live chat feature
Another great way to improve the customer experience on your website is to include a live chat feature. This allows visitors to get real-time answers to their questions without having to wait for an email or phone response.
This not only improves the overall customer experience on your website, but also helps increase sales and conversion rates. According to a Zendesk study, live chat has the second-highest level of satisfaction of any customer service channel, with 85% of customers saying they are happy with the experience. So if you’re not already using live chat on your website, you should definitely consider doing so.
Use customer testimonials
Customer testimonials are a form of social proof and can be extremely useful in improving the customer experience on your website. This is because they provide first-hand accounts of other people’s experiences with your product or service. When potential customers see that other people have had a positive experience with your brand, it helps build trust, which in turn increases the likelihood of a sale.
Additionally, Trustpilot found that 89% of consumers worldwide check online reviews as part of their online buying journey, with 49% considering positive reviews as one of their top three buying factors.
Pay attention to the website speed
Your website speed is a key factor in customer experience. In fact, a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% drop in customer satisfaction. To put that in perspective, if your website takes 10 seconds to load, you could be losing almost half your potential customers.
Therefore, it is important to regularly check your website speed and take steps to improve it. Some ways you can do this are:
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Optimize images
- Minimize HTTP requests
- Enable compression
- Use a caching plugin
Remember that website speed is an important search engine ranking factor, so improving your website’s speed not only benefits the customer experience, but also helps you rank higher in search results.
in summary
As the business world becomes increasingly competitive, it’s more important than ever to focus on the customer experience by finding new ways to address consumer needs, such as: B. Removing barriers that may prevent users from accessing your content.
Additionally, things like improving website speed, adding live chat, and including customer testimonials are great ways to improve the digital customer experience. Just remember that customer demands are constantly evolving, which means you need to keep your finger on the pulse and make sure you’re always up to date with the latest trends.
