How easy, useful, & friendly is your website? Your article? Your social media post? Each one of these is a touchpoint with customers and prospects. If you tweak for these three components you’ll grow faster and keep customers coming back.
I recently had a client who requested additional content for their website. So I could see what was already there, I visited the site and their Facebook page.
It was beautiful, modern, and trendy with a delicate pastel script font. But those same attributes made it fail in some of the basics.
Those small delicate colored fonts the fonts lacked contrast and made them hard to read. Ditto for the script. It looks pretty…but it’s hard to read.
The images are beautiful but they don’t directly relate to the product the company offers. It needs help to be simpler, useful and friendly in the customer experience.
Let’s look at what would help…
Table of Contents
Every customer experience starts with knowing that customer. What are they looking for? Information or a product? Have they used something like your CBD balm before or is this all new to them?
Are they male or female? Men are more transactional and want to get in, buy and leave. Women generally want more information to evaluate and feel good about their decision.
Do they like to do it themselves or prefer interacting with a live person?
Live is still the number one preference. That said, women are over-stressed, over-worked, multitaskers. They’ll happily take the buying journey on their own…as long as it’s easy.
The website needs to be logical and easy to get around. Home page choices that make options clear is essential.
Pastel fonts are trendy but hard to read. Intensifying the color of the font makes it easier to read. Avoid low contrast between the font and its background color. (Think white against pale blue.) They are the hardest to read.
Increasing the font size makes it easier to read. You don’t have to go giant. Ask a mature reader to take a look and ask their feedback on readability.
Break up blocks of text so the paragraphs aren’t too long. The longer the paragraph…the less likely the viewer will read it.
Breaking up paragraphs also makes for more white space which enhances quick reading.
Most of us don’t read full sentences or paragraphs. We skim. Our brains fill in the blanks.
So write/edit your content to make it easy to skim.
Contacting you needs to be easy. Your contact information should be easy to locate and to use. And easy means they need to hear back from you in a timely manner. Letting them know your normal response rate helps to manage their expectations.
There are two types of visitors to your website. New visitors and those that are returning. Make sure they can both find what they are looking for quickly.
Most viewers would happily trade fancy graphics for those that are useful. Useful has more value. Weed out things that may be pretty but are just taking up space with low or zero value.
Using stock photos may give you gorgeous professional images…but they need to tie directly into your offering. If they don’t, cut them or replace them.
Select useful images that share your brand and its benefits to the viewer. That gives more value.
The speed of loading and navigating is important. People don’t have a lot of patience to wait for a slow-loading website.
The most useful factor in a website is its content. If you have a beautiful site but weak content people may visit but won’t come back. Quality content is the key that enhances the value of the site to the customer more than anything else.
Today’s websites need to offer more value than a generic brochure. We demand more in-depth information to help us make our buying decision.
Inadequate content impedes the buying process.
Your website will never be one and done. It needs to keep evolving to be active with the search engines and help customers find you.
Useful also builds trust…a requirement to buying.
A well put together website that offers great information, regular maintenance, and stellar reviews makes a huge difference in your success.
More and more people are checking out businesses on their smartphones. It’s essential your website is optimized for all types of devices.
Desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones all need to be reviewed to see what your visitor is seeing. On each type of device you need to investigate the easy factors and see that they work well.
With multi-generational products, like CBD lotions and balms, I suggest clients have a millennial and a boomer independently explore their website. You want to know everyone that comes to visit can do it easily.
Do you have active links where they can connect with you on their favorite social media platforms? Are those portals kept up to date with regular posting?
Is your web focus transactional or engaging? Are you selling products or solutions?
The sale doesn’t start with a product. It starts with a problem. Content needs to focus on the consumer’s problem and position your product as a solution.
Stay with the customer during and after their purchase. Build the relationship and the connection to keep them engaged and coming back again and again.
Capitalize on the convenience of their smartphone to have easy, friendly ways the customer can stay in touch…learn more, and build their loyalty with you. Use it as a way to keep the conversation with that customer going and growing.
It’s a great way to convert them into a super-fan who will help your business grow.
If you aren’t at least a seven on a scale of one to ten, you may need to do some work. Not sure the best ways to improve your score? Reach out and let’s do a quick evaluation. For details on how to get this evaluation plus my three top recommendations FREE, contact me before 5PM, PDT on 3/13/2020.
Judith Culp Pearson receives three top honors
at the annual Society of Permanent Cosmetic Professionals in
Ft. Worth, Texas - October 7-9, 2023
