Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
Catch issues before your customers do
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I went to Boston earlier this year and went on several tours. There was one in particular that stuck with me. The tour guide was endlessly knowledgeable, charming, and funny. His business was also new. I went to leave a review on his website and the link was broken. When I went to contact him, the contact form was also broken. Most people aren’t motivated enough to try again. Once they hit a single issue, most customers will leave. One easy way to prevent this is to test your own site. (It sounds intimidating, but I promise that if you can use a site, you can do these kind of tests.) 1. Start by writing down every task you want someone to do on your website. Examples: Buy a physical product, buy a download-only product, leave a review, search for a product 2. Take one task and list out, step by step, what should happen. Repeat this for each task. Example: When a customer lands on a product page via an ad, they look for information to confirm this is the right product, they might change quantity, then they tap add to cart. 3. Follow your own list by actually doing the steps. Click on each link on the page while pretending you’re a customer. 4. List what went wrong. These are your opportunities. 5. Fix the critical issues first so that the customer journey is smooth. Do this for each task and you’ll catch mistakes you missed while creating it in the first place. You've got this. Have a great week! |
Ed, Cagebreakers Creative
Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
Internet customers have very little patience. If they don’t find what they’re looking for at first glance, they will leave. You can help yourself by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. 1. Look at your analytics. Somewhere you should be able to see a list of the most popular sizes (mobile and desktop) people are using to look at your website. 2. Choose the most popular sizes and look at your site in that size. Note: You don’t really need precise sizes, but knowing most of your customers...
Barry the mascot for Serious Business company. Meet Barry. (All names have been changed for privacy reasons.) Barry was the mascot for Serious Business. Serious Business helped smaller companies run their business. Barry was everywhere. He announced sales in emails, appeared on every page of the site, and was in a decent chunk of the printed catalog. Employees even had Barry-sonas. A lot of time, energy, money, and love was spent on making Barry happen. There was a problem, though: Barry was...
Last time we discussed 3 ways you can impact accessibility without touching code. Today, we'll go over 4 ways to write in more accessible ways. All of these elements combined help make your website clearer. Every bit of clarity helps your customers decide on your product over others. Use plain language Flowery and fun descriptors are great for a game. Using "Journal" to describe your customer's past purchases will make it harder for them to find information they might need to reorder. Basic...