What Your Website Is Missing That Could Lead To Better Customer Perception

A small business website can have a few missing elements. These don’t necessarily have to impact how well your website performs, but it’s always best to be sure. After all, even just one missing feature could impact how well your website is perceived, and as we all know, the better the perception, the more satisfied the customer. 

It’s why it’s crucial to look into your current customer perception, and pay attention to what your online signals are telling you. Dig into your analytics, make sure you track how well your social media posts are performing, and think about what could be letting you down. 

Most of the time, the experience your website offers is at the core of what’s going awry. What a person discovers when they click your link will immediately inform them of the kind of business you are – whether that judgement is true or not. 

It’s why a messy homepage will never boost your traffic, and why misspelt words and a lack of grammar can make customer trust plunge straight to zero. But you don’t want your visitors to have a lack of faith in your products based on this misguided perception! 

Thankfully, this can be quite an easy fix. Figure out what your website is missing, add it in, and then focus on the customer experience. And to set you off on the right track, here’s a few suggestions for the features you may need to include to make your site one of the best on the web. 

A Simple Layout

Every website needs a simple layout. No matter your target audience, you need to ensure your pages are easy to use, simple to navigate, and there’s little to no clutter to distract. The skill of the person on the other side of the screen should not matter; if they want to buy something from you, they should be able to do so without any hassle. 

Of course, this may disrupt your desire for the website’s design, but it’s a key consideration to keep in mind. You can still be visually interesting without overwhelming the user! 

And remember, the less the webpage has to load, the faster it’s going to load. That’s a metric many online users measure a website by, and you don’t want to fall short of their expectations here. 

Keep your images high definition but as small as possible, and make sure the color scheme you’ve gone for truly works with itself. ‘Clashing’ colors don’t make for a great first impression, and if they’re bright enough, the visual load they cause could even result in headaches. 

Proper Product Specifications

Customers want to know what they’re buying. That means providing them with proper product specifications, no matter what you’re selling. Clothing is the most obvious product for this, and it’s natural to assume every website that sells clothes makes specifications easy to access. 

But once again, you should be careful about the quality of the information you’re giving to your website visitors. For example, not only do you need to list the product material and sizing, but you should include various measurement types to ensure every visitor can understand what size would fit them. 

It’s no good just saying something is ‘XL’, even if you include the specific inch measurement for chest, abdomen, and leg under the heading. Think about the most common sizing codes your visitors are likely to know, such as if something is a ‘12’ or a ‘16-18’, and include them as well. 

This leads to a much better customer experience overall, and less emails about how to use your sizing chart! 

A Well Integrated Chatbot

When people come to your website, what are they supposed to do when they need some advice from you? They may be able to reach out directly, of course, and that’s why your number, email address, and social media links are at the bottom of the page. 

But what if you have a less than immediate response time via these channels? That’s not going to be truly helpful to the customer at all, and they could take their business elsewhere while they wait. 

But seeing as you’re a busy business owner, with perhaps only one or two other members of staff (if any!), you’re not going to be able to get back to everyone immediately. 

That’s why chatbot integration is such a common move for modern websites. If there’s a chatbot for customers to ‘speak to’, the onus is taken off of you and your response time. Instead, there’s a chatbot available to screen any questions or comments a customer may have, and the more FAQ responses you can plug into the bot, the better the service will be. 

You’ll want to work with a powerful chatbot company to achieve this, but otherwise, get a chatbot installed into your website code as soon as you’re able to. 

Make sure it’s not an intrusive pop-up when a customer first clicks through to your website, but don’t make it too subtle either. You want your visitors to know they can talk to the bot to find what they’re looking for, but at a pace that suits them! 

Social Media Links

We mentioned social media links on your website in the point above, but that’s something we should double check through this post as well. How well integrated are your social media channels with your website, and vice versa? 

The traffic either side gets can benefit the other, but only if there’s a clear pathway back and forth from the two of them. Your website’s link needs to be clearly outlined on your social media profiles, and all platforms allow for this at this current time. But your website should have clear and prominent social media display buttons for customers to use too. 

Not only does this make it easier for followers to become customers, but it gives anyone who found you via the search engine a chance to see your marketing in action. They get to know your products from an outside viewpoint, especially if you’ve been sharing user generated content, and that can provide both a legitimacy and relevancy boost. 

Genuine Reviews

Genuine reviews are those from real customers, who have come back to leave feedback on their experience with you. Hosting these on your website is good – as long as they’re positive testimonials you want future customers to see – but the best place for reviews like these is Google itself. 

The more Google reviews a business has, the more trustworthy their website is going to look. Even if there are a few negative or simply neutral reviews in the pile, new visitors can trust that these reviews are genuine – as is the business they’ve been left for. 

Try to encourage the leaving of reviews for your website every time a successful order goes through. Be sure to follow up with the customer (if they’ve given permission for you to do so), and collect as much feedback as you can. 

Not only is this a good look to show your new customers, but it gives you more information on what you do well, and what you could do better. A business that’s always trying to improve is the kind a customer will trust from the beginning! 

Strong Performance

A website with a strong performance will always outperform the competitors it is up against. That’s why you need to focus on strong performance for your website, and double check you’re not holding it back in the way it’s been designed.

After all, this will mainly lie in how long it takes for your webpages to load, and whether a user can make their way through your website in a matter of seconds. If it takes longer than that, you’re going to lose the chance to convert before anyone has even evaluated your products.

Don’t make someone wait for you. Using the online world to buy new products is all about convenience, and you can be sure someone won’t wait for a buffering page to finally bring up the product they might be interested in. 

They might just find a similar item elsewhere, and if that page loads faster, they’re not going to come back. You can test how long this load time takes by accessing your website via wifi, with data, and on different devices. 

What Do Customers Think of Your Website?

When customers click on your website link, what’s their first thought about the website they’ve discovered? You want that thought to be positive, even if they don’t buy anything from this first visit. 

That’s not something you need to worry about either, as you’ve opened the door to them, set the right impression, and they’re likely to come back for more. 

So make sure the customer experience is smooth, makes sense, and there’s plenty for someone to interact with. At the same time, keep it simple, and don’t overload anyone with a little too much design. And yes, that is possible!