Improve A Customer’s Online Experience

To improve your customer’s experience online, consider these three tips.

Don’t make them have to hunt you down.

Online customers can easily get frustrated and give up and leave if they can’t swiftly find a way to contact you with questions about your products or services. Don’t make them scroll all the way to the bottom of your website to finally unearth a dusty contact link in grey, 3 pt. type. Don’t make them navigate away from your product page to the home page in order to find the contact link. Don’t force them to consult a site map to find a contact link either, unless you prefer to be completely unreachable.

Instead, at a minimum, have a clear, large contact us link that shows up on every page of your website, so customers can quickly get answers to impromptu questions.

Take a page from the old print catalogs.

Years ago when print catalogs were in style, customers were given multiple methods to place an order. Buyers could mail it in, phone it in, or fax it in. Do the same for your customers. People have varying favorite ways to place orders. Offer an 800 number as well as an online order form, and perhaps let them order via Live Chat. By doing this, you’ll appeal to a much broader range of customers.

Don’t make them wait.

Don’t make your site visitors wait for splash pages to finish, and don’t make them wait for pages to load. This is akin to making your customers wait outside the shop door while your employees finish their merchandising displays. By the time you open the front door, your customer could be long gone. Your website developer should be able to design a site for you that loads quickly, with web-optimized graphics that won’t hang up your customers’ ISPs. When in doubt, always choose faster download times over razzle dazzle.