Improve the Customer Experience on Your Web Site

Whether you're launching a new Web site or enhancing your current one, consider how you can improve your site and make it easier to use. The customer experience is one aspect of Web development that often gets lost somewhere between the HTML and the FTP.

Ignore the customer experience

and you'll pay the price. In its report, "Why Web Sites Fail," analyst group Forester Research said that every customer who has a bad experience on a Web site tells 10 other people about it. And according to consulting firm Creative Good, you can kiss frustrated customers goodbye. In one of its e-commerce surveys, Creative Good found that 62 percent of online shoppers have given up at least once while looking for products on a Web site. And 42 percent of those shoppers actually abandoned the Internet and made their purchases through traditional retail channels.

The more you improve the overall customer experience on your Web site, the more you'll improve your order-conversion rate, the metric used to describe the rate at which Web-store visitors become paying customers.

There are several things you can do to make your Web site more customer-friendly:

Post Your Contact Information
Your customer service contact information (or a link to it) should appear on every page of your site. If visitors are confused or need additional information, they should be able to find your phone number and email address quickly and easily.

Along with your company's address, phone number, fax number, and email address, list your hours and days of operation. The Web gives people 24/7 access to your business, but that doesn't mean you can answer their questions and ship their orders around the clock. It's also a good idea to give customers a timeframe for processing their orders or email requests. Don't leave people hanging. Fast response time is an important feature of any Web site.

Hone Navigation and Search Functionality
If you expect your customers to make purchases and decisions, they should be able to find what they want on your Web site without difficulty. Make your site's hierarchy logical; base it on your customers' wants and needs, not on your company's organizational structure. Make it easy for consumers to find prices, information about products, payment methods, and return and exchange policies.

To get ideas on how a good Web site is structured, go to the site of a big e-commerce company, such as Amazon.com, and a catalog site, like L.L.Bean. Both of these companies have clean, uncomplicated designs that make it easy to locate products. You can also read our article for tips on strong Web site navigation and overall design.

And don't forget to tune up your search engine. Studies show that many Internet users don't bother to click through a site; they go directly to the search engine and type in what it is they want.

Improve Checkout
Creative Good concludes that nearly half of all e-customers abandon their virtual shopping carts without making purchases. In fact, the research firm identifies checkout as the No. 1 obstacle on Web sites. Why? The reasons are myriad, but it usually comes down to frustration: Customers get aggravated and abort their transactions.

To close more sales on your site, determine these points of frustration and fix them. Security remains a primary concern for many Web shoppers, so post your security and privacy policies. Moreover, consumers don't like surprises when they shop online. They want to learn about products before they buy them and see the total taxes and shipping and handling charges before they complete the transaction.

To systematically test the functionality of your site and find out where your visitors tend to drop off, you might try out some Web analytics software. Our Buyer's Guide to Web Site Traffic Analysis Tools explains the benefits of this kind of analysis and points you to the features that you might want to consider.

Set Up an FAQ Page
The goal of a frequently-asked-questions page is two-fold: It gives people on your site an immediate answer to some of their more straightforward questions, and it cuts down on the number of support requests you'll get. Cover the basics and base your FAQs on questions your customers have asked in the past. If you don't have customers yet, enlist friends to peruse your site and record questions they have about your company, its products, etc.