People, technology and life

Don’t hide what you are doing

You are a passionate company. You do something and you do it well. Your customers are pleased with your products and you are doing well. And you ran a basic site telling about your product and how your customers can enjoy it. But as you grew, people felt you needed to become more serious. You contacted an advertising agency and they told you, you needed to restyle your site to grow and better reflect what you do.

After two months of intensive meetings, numerous designs and many changes, you are ready to launch your site. A great moment and a great step forward for your company. You strongly believe it is the right thing to do. However, when a client visits your site, they learn more about your commitment to your internal processes than they do about the products you build. They find out more about your last annual sales report and your chairman than about the service you give. It turns out your new site kills customers´ interest instead of cultivating and growing it.

Three rules for your new site:

Show your products
An open door you might think, but many sites have turned into corporate mazes. Show your products on your front page. Make it specific as well. Start with your main sellers and make other versions quickly available from your home page. The quicker people can get to their product, the more they are triggered by it.

Make yourself available
Do not hide your support, your sales services or other contact details somewhere in the seventh level of your fancy menu. Make sure it is easy to ask questions. Make sure your visitors can see how your support treats its customers. And be there. Don’t just offer a form. Offer a possibility to chat, to get called or to call your offices. Be available. It will take time, but it will deliver customers.

Facilitate their wishes
Your customers have clear ideas of what they want to be able to do. Both with your products as well as on your site. Facilitate it. You should not jump through their every hoop, but often small changes go a long way.

Just a couple of quick ideas you can benefit from. Right now, I am waiting for a parcel. If I want to see where it is right now, I need to use their track and trace option. However, that is not displayed on the home page. I need to do a search on the site, as that seems to be the only way to find it. As a customer, that is a way of working that will put me off. It means that I might choose another shipping firm next time. Make sure your customers choose you. Again. And again. And again.

3 Comments

  1. Hoof

    Looks like we did a nice job with the new http://www.rauwcc.nl site then 🙂

  2. Ray Vermey

    @Hoof: slim! Ik ging gelijk kijken en bleef even hangen op je site! 🙂

  3. Nico

    Excellent article!

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