Is your website earning its keep or are visitors bouncing off like ping pong balls? Grabbing a visitor’s attention is the first challenge, then you need to take them on a journey that ends with customer retention.
Stop bouncing, start engaging…
Websites have shifted from passive to active mode, where nothing is left to chance, where bouncing visitors are seen as an admission of failure and the ability to respond instantly to market conditions is paramount. So if your website just sits there gathering cobwebs, maybe it’s time to wake it up and put it to work.
The concept of the customer journey was developed to map customer experiences such as booking airline tickets but has been refined by major brands to guide potential customers towards engagement and potential sales. Signing up for motor insurance or credit cards are typical examples. Thinking in terms of a customer journey (rather than navigating menus) is a more constructive approach not only to web design but to managing your overall engagement process.
No time for self indulgence…
First you need to catch your fish. According to an article in Nature, it takes someone just 50 milliseconds to decide whether or not they like the look of a landing page. That animation or spiralling graphic could be doing more harm than good. That’s not to say you cannot communicate creatively but there’s literally no time for self indulgence. The good news is, if you can grab their attention with an appealing design, visitors are more likely to explore your content. Once you have hooked your visitor, your website should achieve four goals:
| ENGAGE |
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Demonstrate how you can meet your customers’ needs |
| INSPIRE |
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Offer content that’s relevant and interesting |
| INFORM |
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Provide information about your product or services |
| SUPPORT |
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Demonstrate first class customer service |
Engagement is the most important of these and the hardest to measure. Forrester Group has broken it down to the now widely accepted four ‘I’s:
| INVOLVEMENT |
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Visitors, page views, time per session, repeat visitors |
| INTERACTION |
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Interaction with site at a deeper level than URL |
| INTIMACY |
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Affection for a brand, blog comments, feedback |
| INFLUENCE |
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Brand advocacy, Facebook fans, Net Promoter Scores |
Creating the Customer Journey…
The five stages of the customer journey funnel towards a retained customer. This progressive, more layered approach to customer engagement has the power to turn visitors into prospects.
The customer journey doesn’t start on your site, it starts out there in the real world in conversations, interactions via social media as well as Internet searches – the so called touch points. And in many cases it won’t end on your site, whose role may simply be to initiate sales meetings.
The customer journey is aligned with the traditional buying cycle and there will be a stage at which you need to capture customer details. The most common way is to exchange information for value. This could be a white paper, a survey or a freebie of some kind.
| Buying Cycle |
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Customer Journey |
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Engagement |
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| Identify business need |
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- Customer profiles
- Customer personas |
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| Research solution |
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Awareness |
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- Raise awareness
- Demonstrate relevance |
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| Evaluate different solutions |
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Future consideration |
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- Encourage consideration
- Nurture relationship |
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| Purchase |
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Acquisition |
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- Reinforce preference
- Facilitate purchase |
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Support & assistance |
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Customer retention |
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Customer Need
The starting point for designing a customer journey is a customer need. Based on your skills and understanding of the market, you have identified specific customer needs you are able to fulfil. Customer needs may vary so it helps to develop customer profiles to highlight the differences. Whatever bracket a customer falls in, they need to know you have something to offer them. Moreover, this information should be readily accessible from the landing page.
Customer Personas
You have thought about customer needs; now think about the customers themselves. Customers with similar needs may have very different perspectives. These can be summarised as customer personas. What does each persona require to encourage them to engage?
| PERSONA 1 |
PERSONA 2 |
PERSONA 3 |
PERSONA 4 |
| Sceptic
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Fact finder
|
Interested |
Ready to go |
- Demonstrate you have relevant products.
- Encourage reappraisal |
- Put the facts up front.
- Enable comparison
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Final bit of info to
tip the deal:
- Functional offer
- Peer approval
- Incentive |
- Call to action
|
Keeping score
Thanks to tools such as Google Analytics it’s now easy to monitor bounce rate (35% good, 75% very bad) and visitor behaviour below the level of the URL. Agencies that manage major brands follow these metrics like cricket scores and tweak constantly to improve performance. A subtle change of language can generate a flood of enquiries.
What else are customers looking for?
Customers will want to know about your culture and ethos, about your history, about the way you value your people (are they featured?) and your professionalism. They expect to find customer testimonials and case studies. Customers will be encouraged if they find useful information, not just about your products and services, but about latest industry trends and environmental best practices. This gives an insight into your vision and values. They also want to get a feel for the personality of the company, are you the type of organisation they could do business with and trust? Personality and trust are topics I cover in my blog Coming out as yourself
Make it the best it can be…
My understanding of narrative has relevance to planning websites. I have been involved in several web design projects and managed commercial sites. I will work with you to establish clear goals, messaging and journey structure and develop detailed wireframes for the landing and internal pages. I can also suggest how a blog and links to social media sites such as Twitter can help raise your profile. Should you require, I can manage the entire project on your behalf, to make your site the best it can be.
I agree fees up front for each stage, as required:
- Initial assessment – FREE
- Strategy and designer brief
- Project management
- Content: web pages, blogs, articles
As a copywriter, I will ensure your site content is of the highest standard and communicates your vision with creativity and style. As a scriptwriter and producer, I can also help with things like video, animations, podcasts and email marketing.
References
Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye: Nature Magazine
What engagement means for media companies: Forrester Group
