Change Your Website Without Frustrating Your Clients

As humans, we’re creatures of habit. Throughout life, we tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar to us. This is a well-documented social phenomenon known as the mere-exposure effect.

If you’re updating or redesigning your website, you’re disrupting the status quo, and it can cause your clients frustration. No matter how well thought out or tested your changes are, introducing a new experience to your clients can cause hesitation or even worse, abandonment.

When you’re adding new functionality or changing the design of your website, you risk confusing your customers. This confusion leads to a reduction in conversions and overall satisfaction. In fact, 94% of people said web design was the reason they mistrusted or rejected a website. Frustrated clients mean lost revenue and higher support costs.

Website updates and redesigns are an inevitable part of doing digital business. As you learn more about your clients and as expectations change, you adjust must your digital storefront to create better experiences for visitors.

Rather than avoid a redesign or updates, ease your clients through short-term uncertainties about changes by providing the guidance they need to successfully complete digital transactions. You can supplement your new or updated website features with proactive guidance to ensure your clients have a seamless experience.

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Here are three tips to support your clients through the learning curve that accompanies website updates and redesigns.

1. Anticipate your clients’ struggles.
   
   Your online experience is the cornerstone of your success. Research shows that competition between 89% of businesses is based on customer experience alone. So how can you provide your clients with an online experience that sets you apart? Anticipate and eliminate their struggle.You can avoid your clients’ struggles altogether by anticipating them. Start by determining where your clients hesitate online by studying your site analytics and consider where hesitation might happen as clients encounter website design changes you’ve made.

Once your updated site rolls out, it’s time for education. Take stock of what parts of the customer experience have changed and what information you need to communicate to ensure your clients have a seamless, friction-free experience.

2. Guide your clients proactively.

A recent consumer survey found that 58% of consumers expect to be provided proactive information during their digital transacting experience. Proactive engagement is contextual, personal, and flexible direction that addresses specific customer questions as they arise. The proactive nature of this type of guidance means your clients’ questions are answered before they have to reach out and ask.

Timing plays a crucial role in proactive guidance. It’s best to implement proactive guidance as you launch your website updates, because 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. You only get one chance at a satisfactory customer experience, so focus on empowering your clients with the information they need to have successful digital journeys.

In Step One, you determined where your clients are struggling. Now you can offer suggestions to help them, which will simultaneously improve conversion rates, lower bounce rates and increase client satisfaction. Proactive guidance saves your clients from frustration and abandonment due to website changes by providing helpful information where they need it, when they need it.

For example, if your client support team is receiving frequent questions about the online quoting process, use that information to proactively guide your clients with relevant information to answer those questions and prevent inbound questions going to your contact center or being abandoned.

Answering your customers’ questions before they reach out for help or even realize they have an issue is a win-win. Your customers enjoy a seamless online experience, and your customer support team’s time is reserved for answering meaningful, high-touch questions.

3. Let the data show you the way.

Do you know which parts of your digital experience work well and which fall short? Once you’ve implemented proactive guidance and launched your new website, your analytics can determine their performance. Cultivating excellent customer experience means making thoughtful, data-driven decisions about your website.

Start by capturing questions, feedback, frustrations and praise along with the specific place the event occurred. This data can tell you what’s working and what needs some works.

Take your data-driven decision making one step further by leveraging more-advanced artificial intelligence to fuel the client insights needed to effectively understand customer service issues and proactively offer recommendations on how to resolve them. Advanced AI can help you better identify where your clients are struggling and then enable you to take the critical next step of guiding your clients through those friction points.

The moral of the story is all website redesigns are not created equally. You can set your brand apart by taking proactive steps to guide every customer to success to increase transactions, strengthen satisfaction, and build long-lasting customer loyalty.

Tara Sporrer is senior vice president of marketing at goMoxie. She may be contacted at [email protected].  

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