The Customer Experience and Your Website - Is Your Website Building Customer Relationships or Turning Customers Away from Your Small Business?

 By Barbara Silva

The customer experience – what is it your visitors take away from a visit to your website? Did they find what they were looking for? Did they find good information or was it just another sales page? What was it they saw in the first 8 seconds which made them decide to stay and read more…or to click out never to return?

Your Website is a tool for building healthy customer relationships

Having done your research and written your articles with the proper keywords so that your target audience can find your website in the first place; you must now turn your attention to what it is they get when they arrive.

Go to the home page of your site and look at it through the eyes of your visitors.

Do they know immediately what solutions they will find there?

Does it seem like you are trying to sell them something or help them?

Is it clear what the website is about?

What is your customer’s experience when they visit – is it easy to find information or do they have to hunt around for it?

Your home page must deliver a good customer experience within 8-12 seconds or your visitor is gone!

I recently evaluated a home page for a client. Here is what I found:

1. Ten advertisements before I even got to the home page article
2. A three paragraph article at the bottom of the page which was very general – it would be difficult to know who the target market was from this article alone
3. The side bar contained these categories: 3 sections on income, income opportunity, and a network marketing company. This was followed by 4 sections on training materials on network marketing.

Here is what I didn’t find:

1. Anything about the owner of the blog – no name, no photo, no bio – when was the last time you purchased something or joined something without knowing who or what you were dealing with
2. I found nothing to tell me the purpose of the blog and if it was going to solve my problems. The title of the blog had to do with affiliate marketing – so if I had found it on my own it would be a safe assumption that I was either looking for information on how affiliate marketing works, or looking for reviews on products with affiliate programs. But I saw no articles about affiliate marketing except for the short one saying affiliate marketing was a good thing to do.
3. No explanation as to what the articles on network marketing had to do with affiliate marketing which presumably is what brought me to this blog.

No worries – these things are easily fixed once you know what it is you are trying to do that will provide the best customer experience possible.

What is an effective website for building customer relationships? Our own Super Guide, Vesone Dean, and his 1^st place Home Page

Let’s contrast this with another home page by our own Super Guide, Vesone Dean, which was recently voted as the most powerful at a live workshop I conducted on how to build healthy customer relationships through effective websites.

1. The title is: How to retire in your 20’s and the first headline is: NextGen Entrepreneurs – Training for the Young Internet Entrepreneur. There is no question as to who this website is for. If you are a young person looking for ways to start a business online, you know this is a site that is designed specifically for you.

2. The top of the page has a photo of two friendly looking young people – Vesone and his girlfriend.

3. Next is a short paragraph telling you exactly what the problem is and the solution that will be provided:

“Most young entrepreneurs have no idea how much power they really have. The sky is the limit when it comes to the amount of growth their internet business can have. The key to success is re-engineering the brain to use the social sites that we use everyday like Twitter and Youtube to start attracting people to our businesses...”

4. Then there is a sampling of the most recent article titles:

· How To Leverage Social Media To Generate Traffic: Developing A Plan Of Attack

· The Importance of Starting Your Day Off Right

· It’s Time To Break The Mold, Get Serious About Your Business, And Learn How To Market

· Putting Your New Found Leadership To The Test…On The Phone

Just by scanning this home page, Vesone’s visitors can make a quick assessment as to whether or not this is the information they were looking for.

Scroll down the page and there is a video of Vesone Dean discussing Video Marketing. As a new visitor, you get to watch him, listen to him, and see if he is speaking your language.

He is building trust and credibility here.

Enhancing the customer experience by meeting their needs

After that…guess what? You can sign up for his newsletter. How does he get you to do that? By letting you know the solution he will provide for you: “Do You Use Social Sites On A Daily Basis - But Don't Know How To Use Them To Drive Traffic To Your Website?”

He offers a free consultation, gives you a place to leave a comment, and has a survey question posted. All of these things are designed to

1. Get you onto his email list

2. Learn more about you so he can better serve your needs

3. Develop a healthy customer relationship with you by letting you know who he is and what he has to offer long before there is any attempt to “sell” you on anything!

So what does a guy like Vesone have that you don’t? He has a good deal of internet marketing training under his belt, the tools to help him get the message out, and understanding of his own strengths - he is most comfortable doing video marketing – and, most important; he knows his target market well.

The good news is that anyone can learn to do what Vesone has done to build an effective website.

So I will suggest again that you look at your own home page through the eyes of your potential customers. Is it clear who you are writing for and what they will get from your content? Please, please don’t go for the obvious sales pitch. Develop a trusting relationship with your customers first.

When you do lead them to a sales page, be sure that it is for something that will provide high value at a good price. You are staking your own reputation on the products you recommend. Choose wisely. And then give your customers clear instructions on the action they are to take. “For more information go to this page.” “Sign up here to take advantage of this offer.” “Enter your email address to receive updates here.”

If you want to build health customer relationships that convert into sales – look at everything you do from your customer’s viewpoint and make the customer experience as user friendly as possible.

Barbara Silva heads up the Coaching Program at Renegade Professional as well as being a trainer and Superguide.

Barbara is the author of Romancing the Sale: How to Build and Maintain Highly Profitable Customer Relationships That Last and co-author of Attraction Marketers: Six Successful Women Share Their Best Internet Marketing Tips and Warn Against Common Marketing Blunders.

Comments

[Marie Leonard]

Great advice Barbara. I especially like how you used Vesone's site to bring out all the relevant points website owners should be concentrating on. The steps are clearly explained which can make it easy for anyone marketing online to follow and apply without difficulty.