Web Usability: How to Take a Customer From the Net and Keep Them in Your Pond

One of the areas often overlooked when looking at online marketing is the importance of web usability and the impact it has in converting and retaining customers. The topic of usability itself is a massive one (whole books have been written on the subject) and it is best done at the website design stage, however there are still some things that well established sites can do to help themselves.

Imagine you had just walked into a supermarket and there were no signs up to indicate which section to go to for the product you are looking to buy. The chances are you would struggle on because the nearest other store is probably across town and the chances are it is more than likely raining anyway.

The case is rarely the same online, with search engines becoming ever more sophisticated in presenting relevant sites to users, we can now type in the name of a product before walking down a virtual high street of shops catering exactly for what we are looking for with ease.

Competition has become intense in the online e-commerce world and it is becoming a trend for users to do comparison shopping. This highlights more than ever how important it is to make sure that once a user has clicked on your site, they stay on it until they have easily found what they want and hopefully purchased it.

Web users are ultimately lazy, not because it is in their nature to be but because it is all too easy to use the back button and click on another site. It is up to us as internet marketing experts to make sure that they use the minimum amount of energy necessary to find what they are after.

Let me illustrate what I mean with an example. You are running a pay per click management campaign and one of your adverts is promoting the fantastic discounts you currently have running for the leather shoes you sell on the website. The only problem is that you have put the landing page down as the overall fashion section. At the time you thought this was a great idea because not only will your potential customer look for the leather shoes but they may purchase other items like wallets, belts or shirts.

To make this assumption is wrong. People generally use the internet in the first instance to find a specific product, not for window shopping. Not only do you risk distracting the searcher to the point that they forget why they clicked on the link in the first place but you risk leaving them with the unbinding memory that your site was hard work and difficult to navigate.

If you put enough hurdles in front of somebody they will inevitably stumble at some point. Ask yourself this question – Is this likely to get my site saved into their favourite’s folder? Instead of selling them the shoes and leaving it open to them to return you may end up with nothing. Make the process as easy as possible for them.

The first step would be to make the web page as uncluttered as possible. Use tabs to clearly indicate where to find things and how to purchase. If the landing page doesn’t have exactly the shoes they were looking for then make it clear that there is more choice only a quick click away. Make the process as simple as possible so the customer doesn’t have to work things out for themselves.

When the next stage comes, hopefully, and you are asking them for payment details then don’t make the mistake of trying to harvest any extra information from them. Only ask for what is needed to complete the sale. Asking them to input unnecessary data will only lead to a sense of bewilderment and suspicion that may lead them to change their minds at an already sensitive time (i.e. giving out bank details).

Making this process seamless by having a concise checkout page that simply explains what happens next as well as thanking them for their custom, followed of course by the prompt dispatch of the goods, will all help towards generating a repeat customer who has trust in your site and will visit you for all those other items. Remember online marketing is not just about search engine optimisation (SEO). Existing customers are as important, if not more so than new ones.