The design of your website is one of those key elements of modern brand building that has the power and potential to make or break customer experience and satisfaction. Quite simply, without a responsive, intuitive, and customer-centric design that boasts a customer success mindset, your site has no chance of competing with the winning web designs in your industry. Without a modern design, your online presence will suffer, and your will lose potential as well as existing customers in the process. After all, search engines reflect the preferences and needs of your target audience, so they will penalize a site that provides a subpar experience.
Another fact that adds significance to the look and feel of your web presence is the simple human tendency to make decisions based on impressions. Simply put, if they don’t like what they see and experience, you can rest assured they’ll leave your site. Since experience plays such an important role in the decision-making process, let’s see how you can elevate your web design to enhance customer experience and attract more loyal shoppers.
Optimizing your site’s structure
Craving for a Mojito, you enter a sleek cocktail bar, but the menu lists all kinds of sips, including something that may as well be a Mojito, by the name of “Rum and Mint”. How likely are you to get annoyed and go to the next bar in line that actually has a menu you understand? Some experiences are meant to be simple and straightforward, your website included. It turns out that you have less than ten seconds to convey a clear message to your website visitors before you lose their interest.
Your site needs a simple layout that’s easy to navigate, quick to load, and intuitive to follow. Even if you have a multitude of different services and content to offer, you need to make it all easy to find. Starting with clear, brand-specific labels, all the way to intuitive categories and a detailed site map, your site’s structure plays a vital role in the overall design. Keep it simple, and you’ll keep them happy.
Weaving the brand into the design
Without actual face-to-face interaction and human contact, it’s difficult to inspire genuine emotions from your customers based on your digital experience alone. And yet, that’s precisely what you’re expected to do. One simple, but profoundly powerful way to do that is to brand your web design all the way from your logo, every image you post, to consistent font and color usage throughout the site.
Your content doesn’t start or end with blog posts or product descriptions. Your visual identity needs to be a reflection of your values, and it represents a key piece of your storytelling puzzle. Using brand-specific design solutions means you weave your brand identity into your visuals and your language alike, both of which will inspire an emotional reaction and create an overall image of your brand, one your customers can relate to.
Emphasizing site speed and responsiveness
If 70% of your customers consider loading speed to be a deal-breaker for making a purchase form your brand, it makes perfect sense to devote more time and attention to providing a no-delay experience. We live in the most hectic of times, and we won’t waste a single second waiting for your site to load properly – because we then expect the same delays on other pages and a slow checkout experience to match.
Even though speed and responsiveness are so vital for decision-making, few brands take them into account when designing their web presence. One of the main factors that affects website speed is the size of your files. The larger the files, the longer it will take for it to load, so make sure to optimize your files and reduce the size of your pages as much as possible.
Traffic volume is another thing that can slow down your website. Having a high traffic volume might sound like a great thing, but many websites actually have a limited bandwidth which means that your website might not be able to accommodate all of your visitors. Make sure that there are enough resources on the server. Shared hosting might be the best solutions for smaller websites, but larger websites need to use a VPS, or even dedicated hosting, so they can have more control over the resources. Follow these simple web hosting guidelines when choosing the right hosting provider to avoid sluggish performance that could drive your customers away from your website.
Leveraging stellar content to boost CX
The cliché that content is king has become a cliché for a reason. It still stands true, making it a crucial segment of customer experience. Although the substance you provide matters the most, the format in which it is presented can either inspire your visitors to promptly leave the page or continue reading and enjoying your site. Is your content accessible and easy to find? Are the images, videos, and animations quick to load and relevant to the written content? Is your content readable and digestible? Do you add graphics to make it easier for them to consume the content you present?
All of these and many other design elements affect your content quality and presentation. When you publish your content, always keep its appearance and accessibility in mind to ensure better customer experience.
Wrapping up
Remember that customer experience is a dynamic, ever-changing concept. You need to follow these fundamental web design principles as well as other industry-specific best practices in order to ensure higher engagement rates and greater success. Let your web design strengthen your brand presence and provide extraordinary customer experience for years to come.
[“source=customerthink”]
