If you have only recently made the switch from a brick-and-mortar store to an online store or are interested in expanding your existing online presence, you may be wondering how you can ensure your customers are happy with the service they are receiving from your brand on an ongoing basis.
It can be difficult to know where to begin, especially if you are unfamiliar with carrying out daily operations online as opposed to in-person, but by familiarizing yourself with a number of tips and tricks to maximize the user experience for your online customers, you can become the best in the business and improve your reputation in the process.
Include simple colors and fonts
It can be tempting to get lost in the excitement of establishing an online presence for your brand and experimenting with various colors and fonts throughout your website, but this is only likely to deter your customers as they struggle to perform a basic task without getting distracted or misled in a different direction. To encourage your customers to purchase your goods and services, you must include simple colors and fonts throughout your website with simplicity the key to ensuring your brand speaks for itself and that your products are the main attraction.
It must be able to strike the right balance between looking attractive whilst also achieving a particular function with typography, layout, background, and color having a fundamental impact on the overall customer experience for your online customers.
Avoid features that will slow your website
If your website has a particularly high bounce rate, it may suffer from slow loading speeds with your bounce rate potentially increasing by up to 50% of your website takes longer than a couple of seconds to load. This can lead to consumers abandoning their decision to shop with your business and, as a result, deciding to continue their search elsewhere or with one of your closest competitors. It can be triggered due to a wide range of reasons but is most commonly caused by website designers and builders failing to compress files, including elements that occupy excess bandwidth and forgetting to fix errors in their code.
This can lead to your website suffering from slow loading speeds which is one of the main contributing factors of potential customers exiting your website before they have even had the chance to browse your various goods and services and, perhaps most importantly, complete a purchase.
Provide a wide range of online payment methods
In today’s increasingly digital landscape, consumers are more likely to pay for goods and services with online payment methods as opposed to traditional methods. It may, therefore, benefit you to familiarise yourself with a number of key definitions, including the ACH payment definition, ahead of time to ensure you are as prepared as you possibly can be to start selling products over the internet with little to no obstacles standing in your way.
This can improve the user experience for your online customers by reassuring them that you value their customer experience by monitoring and tracking their shopping habits over time and continuing to cater to their fluctuating needs and wants as consumers. It can also allow you to provide greater safety and security for your existing customers that may be unfamiliar with shopping online and, as a result, parting with their personal details over the internet with little to no manual intervention involved throughout the entire process from start to finish.
Avoid large chunks of text
If a consumer has taken to the internet to browse for a specific good or service, they may be pressed for time and, as a result, unlikely to spend time reading an entire webpage comprised of text with little to no breaks. It may, therefore, benefit you to avoid including large chunks of text if and when necessary to ensure your website remains scannable and easy to consume for customers on the hunt for a particular product or hoping to find exactly what they are looking for in as little time as possible.
This is especially important considering it takes the average customer only 15 seconds to decide whether to continue exploring your website or continue their search elsewhere. In addition, it has also been revealed that the average customer only has the time to read around 28%, although this could be as little as 20%, of a single page on your website before moving on. If your layout is devoid of large chunks of text, however, your visitors are more likely to find your website easier to consume and, as a result, spend more time browsing your various goods and services.
If you are looking for several ways to maximize the user experience for your online customers as they browse your business website, there are a number of steps you should follow. To do so, remember to include simple colors and fonts, avoid features that will slow your website, provide a wide range of online payment methods, and, last but certainly not least, avoid large chunks of text if and when necessary.
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