Give Online Customers Reasons to Love You

If you really want to make your online customers happy, you need to pay attention. Listen to what they want. Think about how they navigate, what they search for and what they really need. I can’t tell you how many times I have clicked away from a site in frustration. It could be due to poor navigation, bad site search software, or wanting too much information from me too early.

So when I came across 32 Tips To Make Online Customers Love You on Conversation Marketing, I found myself nodding to many of the points Ian made. Many of these tips can apply to just about any type of web site, but they are especially important for e-commerce sites.

Here are just a few that made me nod vigorously:

1. Make sure your site loads in 3-4 seconds on a standard broadband connection.
There’s a local YMCA site that takes forever to load. It’s one of those “come back in 5 minutes and maybe it will be up” sites. I have a decent connection and it’s frustrating to wait so long for the site. Don’t make customers wait for your server to get with the program. If they have to wait, they’ll get impatient and move on. Quickly.

2. Provide clear, easy-to-find contact information.
Seriously. I don’t mind an email address if I have a reasonable expectation that you’ll actually get back to me. But if it’s easier to explain on the phone, why not let me do that? Too many businesses are afraid of phone contact when it is an excellent opportunity to build on a customer relationship and make it better. Sorry, Google, but you are one of the worst offenders.

5. Don’t make them log in before checkout.
Oh, this is another pet peeve of mine. Give customers the option of creating an account if they plan to buy from you more than once. I know you like to collect e-mail addresses and everyone tells you not to let a customer leave without it. From the customer side? It stinks. It’s annoying.

11. Give your customers all the pricing information up front.
As Ian mentions, especially shipping information. Customers need to know if the shipping for the item is going to be reasonable for them. Some real estate sites are especially bad about not showing pricing until you sign up for an account. Let the customer look at a property before deciding to give you their info. It could be that the listing is out of their price range, but they can’t tell that until you let them look.

20. Save their work.
Ah, yes. Another pet peeve. Have you ever filled out a really long form to find you missed one little field? Or maybe you didn’t put your phone number in correctly? And then the page reloads and you lose everything you just typed? Hate that. Yes, that is losing you customers right now.

26. Name stuff for your audience.
Look for terms your customer will use. Not your or your industry’s jargon. Real everyday words for objects. Customers hate playing keyword roulette.

30. Be accessible.
And by that, we mean accessibility. Is your site navigable using a screen reader? Do you use more than just color for visual clues – so someone with a vision problem can still figure things out? Have you ever tried to access your site using a reader? Brush up on accessibility guidelines – way too many companies ignore this.

Make sure you go and check out the rest of the article for more details on the ones I mentioned and the entire list of 32 tips. This would be a good start for a checklist when you’re in the planning stages for a site. I previously worked in software development and so many of these items were key points in not only the planning stages, but for testing and quality assurance. Do you have any other items you would add to the list?

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