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How to Improve Your Website's Customer Experience (CX)

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By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on October 4, 2022

In the era of the customer, companies are hyper-focused on providing amazing experiences at every touchpoint to differentiate themselves from the competition. One of the most important touchpoints to improve Customer Experience (CX) is your website since it is often the first point of interaction a potential customer has with your brand.

To further highlight just how significant CX is to your business, a PWC study found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. The more expensive the item was, the more they were willing to pay. With this in mind, it's clear to see that improving the customer experience (CX) on your website is essential to success in today's market.

However, many businesses fall short when it comes to providing a great CX on their website. For one reason or another, they're not able to provide the level of service that their customers expect and as a result, they lose out on potential sales and their branding suffers.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to improve the customer experience on your website, and some of them may be a lot easier to implement than you think. On that note, here are some quick-fire tips to get you started.

Focus on web accessibility

According to a study by WebAIM, 97% of websites have at least one major accessibility error. This is a big problem in the CX world since web accessibility is all about making sure that everyone can use and interact with your website, regardless of their abilities. If visitors experience flaws and technical difficulties on your website, it's going to reflect poorly on your brand as a whole. However, they will be very unlikely to convert to paying customers, never mind returning for repeat purchases.

There are several ways to make your website more accessible, but some key considerations include:

  • Using clear and concise language
  • Optimizing your website for assistive technology
  • Including alt text for images
  • Using a clear heading structure
  • Avoid using CAPTCHAs
  • Using captions and transcripts for videos

With that said, maintaining an accessible site is an ongoing process, so it's important to regularly test your site and make sure that it meets the needs of all visitors. To check the current accessibility of your website, you can use accessScan, which is a free tool developed by accessiBe. Simply enter your site's URL into the search bar and the tool will run a full diagnostic on your website. After a minute or two, you will receive a full audit of the current level of accessibility of your website, which you can then use to guide your future efforts.

Include a live chat feature

Another great way to improve customer experience on your website is to include a live chat feature. This allows visitors to get answers to their questions in real time, without having to wait for a response via email or phone.

Not only does this improve the overall customer experience on your website, but it also helps to increase sales and conversion rates. According to a study by Zendesk, live chat has the second-highest satisfaction level of any customer service channel, with 85% of customers reporting that they're satisfied with the experience. Therefore, if you're not already using live chat on your website, it's definitely something to consider.

Make use of customer testimonials

Customer testimonials are a form of social proof, and they can be extremely useful in boosting the customer experience on your website. This is because they provide first-hand accounts of other people's experiences with your product or service. When potential customers see that other people have had positive experiences with your brand, it helps to build trust and confidence, which in turn increases the likelihood of a sale.

Furthermore, Trustpilot revealed that 89% of global consumers check online reviews as part of their online buying journey, with 49% considering positive reviews one of their top three purchase influences.

Watch out for website speed

The speed of your website is a key factor in the customer experience. In fact, a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% loss in conversion, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. To put that into perspective, if your website takes 10 seconds to load, you could be losing out on nearly half of your potential customers.

Therefore, it's important to regularly check the speed of your website and take steps to improve it. Some ways you can do this include:

  • Use a content delivery network (CDN)
  • Optimize images
  • Minimize HTTP requests
  • Enable compression
  • Use a caching plugin

Keep in mind that website speed is a significant ranking factor for search engines, so not only will improving the speed of your site benefit the customer experience, but it will also help you to rank higher in search results.

In summary

As the business world becomes more competitive, it's more critical than ever to focus on the customer experience by finding new ways to tend to consumer needs, such as removing any barriers that may be preventing users from accessing your content.

In addition, things like improving website speed, adding live chat, and incorporating customer testimonials are all great ways to improve the digital customer experience. Just keep in mind that customer demands are always evolving, which means you must keep your finger on the pulse and make sure you're always up-to-date with the latest trends.