Your Website is About Them, Not You: Digital Customer Experience

When you hear the words “digital customer experience” you probably don’t jump out of your seat and cheer, but maybe you would – if you knew it was a special ingredient for your success recipe.

Perhaps your web design is beautifully crafted and your e-commerce is ready to go. You are geared up for leads and online sales to roll in. What happens when you don’t see the closing bell ring? You have a perfect website, so what else could it be?

Pause for a moment and think: Was your website designed for your company, or was it designed for your customer?

Marketing 101 Starts with the Customer

Experienced marketers will tell you that before you start writing all of your content for a website, you need to define who your audience is. If you understand what your audience cares about and how they behave, you can create a digital customer experience that caters to that.

Some questions you might ask are:

• Where is your audience geographically?
• What level of Internet use and website savvy do they have?
• How do they usually communicate?
• What kind of problem do they have to solve?

These questions probably start with the business or community that you serve. But for many companies you can dig further when you think about the website visitor you likely have.

• Is the website visitor the decision maker?
• Does this website visitor usually look to buy online or by referral?
• Is the visitor coming to the website at the front-door, or were they led there through another sales process?

Web Design Trends

But what about trends in modern web design? Aren’t there cool tactics that every company should be integrating in their digital customer experience?

Sure, trends can often be a good place to look in your web design plan. But think about where trends come from – some are creatives trying out cool new things with technology and design that catch everyone’s eye, and others are trends because of users.

For example, it is common for users to expect a login or contact element in the top right corner of a website. This is from decades of user experience noticing “contact us” links in the top right of a navigation menu, and from years of applications in our daily lives (bank portals, social media) positioning a handy “login” link in the topmost corner.

But there are ways to stray from this common thing that still lend a quality customer experience. If there is much more visible and “comfortable” contact button placement that your average user would notice, in just the right size and color that catches their attention, perhaps it is more effective. Maybe in your audience’s industry there is a common style in the software tools they use on a daily basis, and the call-to-action that you design reminds them of that.

Website visitor clicking a login button on a website, illustrated with AI-assistance.

Mobile Web vs. Desktop Customer Experience

You should also have a solid grasp on the devices that your customers typically use when they are visiting your website. If you do not already have this data in front of you, try checking your Google Analytics or other website traffic marketing tool.

Here is a handy link to some tutorials and videos from Google Analytics.

If the majority of your audience uses a small mobile device (smart phones) to access the web and do all of their research and interactions, your focus on the mobile web design should be a priority.

If you know that your niche business-to-business website is utilized by specialized engineers working on giant desktop computers, you would probably focus your web design on a stellar desktop experience. (Of course, you should never ignore the mobile experience. Mobile responsiveness is a key factor in search engine performance.)

Audience-specific Web Pages

As you refine your website navigation menu, think about what landing pages will be most effective for your visitors.

If you have specific target markets, create a web page for each of those geographical areas. For example, a company that serves San Antonio, Austin, and Houston may have a separate web page for each of these cities with unique language that describes the services offered in the area, example clients served there, the closest office location, and the appropriate sales rep to contact.

If you identified three key personas who are visiting your website, you can create unique landing pages that speak to each of them. These different audiences could be completely different industries and types of customers, or they could simply be different roles in a business that you serve. Perhaps you solve different problems and provide different benefits to each of those people.

Here are some ideas for the type of information you might include on the page:

• What are the issues that this type of customer is facing?
• How does your product or service battle that problem?
• What kind of benefit does your services offer the website visitor that they didn’t realize?

Yes, It’s About You Too

Ok, so your website is not 100% about someone else. People are still going there to learn about you and whether they want to buy from you. Just realize that your elevator pitch may not be the most important thing to them. Maybe they appreciate ethics and values. What about your company culture would be important to them? Is the experience of your leadership team and the people behind the product important for these decision makers? Is the visitor going to be regurgitating your resume back to another executive? If you are in a saturated industry, how many other boring websites does this person see before they get to yours, and how can you stand out?

In conclusion, the digital customer experience that you create definitely has an impact on your business. Be mindful about what your website audience needs first, and use that knowledge to optimize your web design and content.