4 Ways to Improve Digital Experiences for Your Customers
Whether your company has been doing business for decades or is just starting, everyone needs to be online to drive growth and improve digital experiences. Customers today expect instant access to information about your company and products, to make purchases, and to communicate with you through digital channels. How you deliver the customer experience has a powerful effect on the success of your business strategy.
Why are some companies always winning, while others struggle to keep up? Successful digital experiences are built on a foundation of best practices. We’ll share 4 keys to improving the customer experience of your organization so you can gain greater traction this year.
#1: Clear, Customer-Centric Goals
A digital marketing plan without clear objectives is like driving in a car without knowing where you’re going. You might find what you want, or you might run out of gas.
To avoid wasting your money, set goals for your business, and align your marketing with them. For example, your goal could be to enter a new market or to drive signups for a new subscription service.
Each goal will require a different approach with different priorities. For example, entering a new market may require email campaigns, paid ads, and other marketing geared toward the region or demographic most likely to buy your product. On the other hand, driving new subscription signups will depend heavily on landing pages and data collection for lead nurturing.
Collecting customer data is essential for accomplishing the goals you set. You must learn your customers’ buying habits, preferred channels (social media, email, text messaging, telephone, among others), and other expectations to make interactions as frictionless as possible.
Data collection brings us to our next key.
#2: Data Security
Collecting customer data is a two-edged sword. With it, you can gain deep insights into customer behavior, allowing you to personalize experiences, generate new leads, and track campaign effectiveness to prove ROI. However, everyone is concerned about privacy, and failing to properly protect that data may cause your customers to leave in droves.
What is more, there are data privacy regulations in many countries around the world, such as the GDPR in Europe. Depending on where your customers reside, or where the data is collected, you’ll have to ensure you abide by the appropriate laws.
Inspire customer confidence through a careful and completely transparent privacy policy. Be upfront with your customers. Tell them what data will be collected and give them a straightforward method to accept or opt-out. Ensure that your technology (web APIs, data storage systems, etc.) is properly secured from attackers, and access to your systems is properly controlled.
#3: Reduce Friction
Customers will quickly lose interest if there are many steps between product discovery and checkout. eBay introduced “Buy It Now” and Amazon patented “1-Click Checkout” (and Apple licensed it) all to make the purchase process as painless as possible.
You must remove as many clicks from the buyer journey as you can. E-commerce sites that are aesthetically pleasing, innately intuitive, responsive, and hassle-free will always convert more prospects into sales. And don’t forget mobile – any site worth it’s salt should look equally good and function just as well on either paradigm.
Online experiences can be improved through testing. Look for slow page loads, high bounce rates, and the like to refine your site and please your clientele.
Don’t forget the backend. Making the purchase process a pleasure does nothing for you if order fulfillment and customer service are dreadful. Look for ways to automate backend workflows to reduce error and processing times, and ensure any client interactions receive immediate attention.
#4: Fully Utilize What You Already Have
Investing in new applications and technologies to enhance the customer experience is not always possible. However, most marketing, sales, and ERP software solutions have a broad feature set that can be leveraged to propel your business forward. Some infrastructure services might be underutilized, leaving areas for potential adjustment and savings. These things can be optimized to your advantage.
Ask yourself these questions to identify underused technologies and potential waste:
- Are you paying for cloud server capacity that you’re not fully utilizing?
- Have you seen a significant return on investment from your current applications?
- Is your spending for developer services growing?
- What marketing technologies do you want to introduce, and what return might they bring?
- Is your workforce sufficiently trained to leverage all major features of your tech stack?
Partner to Perfect Your Customer Experience
If your digital presence is well-refined, your customers will never notice it. It draws them in and guides them to a successful purchase without ever getting in the way. A customer might forget how your page was styled or how many clicks it took to make a sale, but they’ll never forget a bad experience. And they’ll never hesitate to tell others – both online and offline.
Apply these 4 pillars of Improve Digital Experiences perfection and you’ll certainly be ahead of most of your competitors. Keep innovating, keep refining, and you’ll reach your business goals sooner than you think.
Improving digital experiences is a complex undertaking, as it requires you to rethink your entire technology stack. Our experts at CogentNext have helped our clients to drive results while streamlining their workflows and optimizing their application suites. Contact us today and learn what we can do for you.
By Chandra Subramanian | CogentNext Technologies