5 key initiatives to create a customer-centric website
The website is an integral part of the initiative that is required to provide a superior customer experience. Pursuing the need to create better websites, numerous inventive techniques to enhance the site features continue to hit the market regularly. The proliferation of new technologies has played a vital role in improving the appearance, functionality and performance of sites to a great extent. Some of them such as responsive web design have been already been widely accepted as the key technique to address the basic need of mobile-first web development strategy.
However, the increasing numbers of tools and technologies have rendered the design and development teams with too much to handle. Hence, identifying the ideal methods that focus on customer-centricity has become necessary. Discussed below are some of the effective ways that can be really useful in the achieving the objective.
1. Identify the precise requirements
Every website has a purpose, which is based on the primary requirements. For instance, the purpose of a hotel-booking website is to help the users find the finest rooms at best prices. The design and development teams must always focus on this primary objective. While adding other attributes such as searching for nearby marketplaces close to the booked hotel can be helpful for users, the spotlight must remain on its core requirements. Getting carried away by secondary features can and neglecting the primary objectives can leave the users confused.
2. Make it accessible
Most people today are increasingly using their smartphones and tablets to browse the internet. Hence, a site that cannot be browsed on the mobile device is as good as futile. Also, just creating a miniature version of your site for the mobile that has been specifically created for desktops, may not be the ideal thing to do, as this can affect the browsing experience of the mobile users. A responsive site that is fluid and easy navigable across all screens and platforms is the need of the hour.
3. Site and its info should be found easily
The main idea of creating a website is to channelize all the vital information at one place. A website with profound and relevant information for users can always score high on customer-centricity. However, most users start their search mechanisms through a search engine. This makes it necessary for developers to pick the right keywords for all the information on their site, which can help the users to find it easily. Making the website as SEO-friendly as possible must be the core objective when trying to achieve better customer experience.
4. Focus on visual appeal
Web sites with a dull appearance can appear lethargic to users. On the other hand, using a creative and vibrant mix of colors, visuals, and graphics can get the users interested, ensuring they stick on to the site for much more time. The arrangement of engaging content in an amusing style can enhance the visual appeal of the site. It has been regularly observed that websites leveraging innovative ways to illustrate their value proposition along with smart call-to-action phrases can minimize the bounce rate and prompt the users to complete the intended task much more effectively.
5. Emphasize on communication
The website is an incredible platform to initiate and manage communication with customers and other stakeholders alike. For this reason, having an effective feedback mechanism integrated into it can make a huge difference to customer-centricity of the site. Apart from the regular information, organizations can ingeniously add some resource documents such as e-books, whitepapers and demonstration videos catering to the knowledge demands of the users. Having an FAQ page with a profound collection answers to the recurring queries about the organization and its offerings can permeate the approach of self-help among the users. Also, websites can be integrated with various popular social media channels that can ensure the users are able to share the information on the go.
In addition to these effective ideas, the search engine optimization must go an extra mile to ensure the website loads on the user’s screen as quickly as possible. Hence, optimizing every bit of content on the site becomes necessary. While these are some of the common methods that can go a long way in creating the customer-centric site, they are surely not exhaustive. The advent of newer features and techniques would continue to add consumer-centric functionalism to the process of website development and design.