Improving the Customer Experience on Your Web Site

Search Engine optimization and web design alone were not enough if you want to successfully improve your website and make it more easier to navigate. In terms of enhancing your current web page, customer experience is one of the aspects in Web development that often gets lost somewhere between the HTML and the FTP.

For most web developers, retaining their costumers or visitors isn't an easy job. One must need to constantly prioritize and refocus the customer retention strategies. Based on a study conducted in 2007, only 50% of the study group of employees from different companies was loyal to brands marketed by the companies they were working for. Given this fact, it's not alarming to think that not many customers would stick to the same products either.

In a report, "Why Web Sites Fail," analyst group Forester Research said that every customer who has a bad experience on a Web site tells 10 other people about it. And according to consulting firm Creative Good, you can kiss frustrated customers goodbye. In one of its e-commerce surveys, Creative Good found that 62% of online shoppers have given up at least once while looking for products on a Web site. And 42% of those shoppers actually abandoned the Internet and made their purchases through traditional retail channels.

Of course, once visitors come to shop at your online business store, you want them to have that smooth, risk-free experience. Actually it's not the big issues that cause the problem; it's the little things that make or break their shopping experience. As we all know, the more you improve the overall customer experience on your Web site, the more you'll improve your order-conversion rate, the metric used to describe the rate at which Web-store visitors become paying customers.

As we'll notice, there are several factors that affects the costumer's experience. That is why we've provided few things that you can do to make your Web site more customer-friendly.

• Most visitors prefer using the search tool. That's why a good search tool is essential. A good search tool for ecommerce websites should include the capability to use Boolean search terms such as "blue and pillowcase" to match only blue pillowcases or "comforter or duvet" to match either comforter or duvet.

• Also, being able to search within a set of search results will also help a potential purchaser whittle down a large number of search results to something more manageable without having to perform a new search.

• In some cases bracketing prices and displaying products within ranges such as less than $10, $10-$20 and so on, works better.

• Try showing the number of user reviews, popularity, the star rating, by brand or sorting the products by name in alphabetical order ascending and descending. The more opportunity you give your customers to sort the data in the order that they're most interested in seeing, the better service you provide them.

• When displaying search and filtered results, it helps to provide options in the number of matching items that can be displayed per page.

• Don't limit your customers' options by categorizing products in just one way.

• Avoid having categories that result in only one or two results. Instead, opt to use broader categories that encompass a larger number of products so you give customers more results to choose from.

• Always provide a clickable breadcrumb trail that shows visitors exactly where they are in your site as they search for products.

• Give customers a detailed production descriptions, provide plenty of photographs and, if you're selling products where size is a factor, then give them information about sizing such as how generous or otherwise a size is.

• Also tell them if the product is available now and, if it is on backorder, when it should ship.

Simple changes to your website search, navigation, product descriptions and checkout process can increase conversion rates and result in customers who love your site rather than tolerate its inadequacies or worse, shop elsewhere.