Focus on the small things and keep it simple for online buyers

A MESSAGE TO TECH START-UPS

I want to encourage you to think about the journey you’re asking your customer to take–from the moment they come across your website, or product, to the point they try it, if not buy it.

Businesses spend a fortune developing products and services. Then they spend another fortune developing sales and marketing materials such as presentation and ROI calculators. With all that good stuff done, I sometimes find they’ve not spent enough time focusing on the little things.

Rory Sutherland is a great proponent of the importance for businesses to focus ‘on the small things.’ If you’ve never wanted his TEDTALK on ‘sweating the small stuff’ I thoroughly recommend it–for the laughs if not for the message! Watch it here.

We know from research that it doesn’t take much of anything to put a customer off from taking their curiosity all the way through to a purchase.

ROUGHLY 60 PERCENT OF ONLINE SHOPPERS ABANDON THEIR CARTS AT CHECKOUTSOURCE:

STATISTICA

This is another factoid you shouldn’t ignore…

SHOPPERS ARE NON-COMMITTAL – 23 PERCENT WON’T ATTEMPT TO PURCHASE IF THEY HAVE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNTSOURCE:

N-CHANNEL

Here are a few tips to make sure you don’t let yourself down:

1. RESEARCH (AND THINK ABOUT) WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR BUYER

To create an effective landing page experience, and to say the right things, you need to be absolutely clear on the persona of your target audience and, most importantly, the problem they’re trying to solve.

People go online to do one of four things: (1) Learn, (2) Solve a Problem, (3) Decide What to Buy and, (4) To Make a Purchase. At each of these states, your audience will be looking for different things, and they’ll expect a slightly different tone.

When learning new subjects, the last thing you need is someone trying to pitch their product to you. When solving a problem, we normally try to find ‘someone like us’ online and see how they solved it. To make a buying choice, we first need to understand what I call the ‘buying frame’–i.e. the meta-data that explains the ‘basis of your buying decision.’

Finally, when we want to buy something, we all have a sense of urgency. We know what we want to buy, we’ve made our decision–so now we just want to get it done.

Do your research by testing your target customer group. Once you’ve an idea of your prototype solution, run some A/B testing to see what works the best.

2. MINIMIZE THE CLICKS

Nobody wants to be clicking through screens or swishing up and down pages to find the information they need, or to complete a buying process. Mapping out the customer journey is incredibly important. Don’t leave it to chance. TALK TO YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS and find out how they think, and what they like (and don’t like).

It’s not just your website you should be considering. When it comes to registering for a product, how many steps must your customer go through? Is it 1, 2, 3… more?

3. DON’T MAKE LEARNING SOMETHING NEW PAINFUL FOR BUYERS

Think also about your training and education. Any product or service requires some degree of user orientation on how to use it. Creating an Academy for your product, service, or discipline not only makes your educational materials easily accessible you can also draw more people to your website by helping to answer the questions customers have on their minds with short video explainers!

4. PAY ATTENTION TO THE DETAILS

I’d always recommend adding touches to your process that show you’re a thoughtful company and you care more about your customers. One of the ways to do this is a thoughtfully designed email workflow, so that all buyers receive a personal thank you from the owner. It’s always nice to feel as a buyer that you have a personal connection to the guy or girl that runs the business! How about sending a postcard by snail-mail to mix it up? When I bought a car from Mazda they couriered me a gift box that contained product literature, two crystal cut glasses and a bottle of champagne. Then, I was able to track the progress of my car as it was being built, driven on to the ship and delivered to my local garage via an online video story–awesome! I won’t forget Mazda in a hurry!

And please, always remember that above and beyond customer experience is about doing more than your customer would expect and going that extra mile. Ask yourself: ‘What are the small things you can do to make that difference.

If you’re interested in finding some more tips, you can find my book on how to create an Above and Beyond Brand here.

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