Thought Leadership Monday Mashup: Creating User Experience

Perhaps the biggest challenge for business owners who are struggling with their online presence is making sure their customer and website visitors and their user experiences are up to snuff.

When you have a retail store that potential clients can visit, or a phone number that they can call up to learn about your service, you have a distinct advantage. The people you have hired for your retail location or the voices you have trained to answer your phone calls know what should be communicated to a customer. You can take it a step further if it is you who is the one doing the answering. You can dispel any rumors, you can aright any wrongs, you are the champion of your business, and can get the last word into your current or potential customers. However, when you have a website—there is that lingering doubt which inevitably creeps in.

• How is your site going to be received by the masses?
• How will people read your humor or innuendos online?
• Is your brand messaging effective with the way your website is designed?

These are all questions that any business owner with any sense at all is bound to ask themselves. The truth is that when you are on the phone with someone or standing before them, you then have the ability to change their perceptions. However, that option isn't always there when you have a website. People can visit your site at any time of the day or night; there are bound to be people out there who just don't like what you have, don't agree with what you have said, or don't take too kindly to something that you may have said all in good fun. 

So what is a business owner to do? Well for one thing you should not be thinking so much about the customers you were never going to please in the first place. There are always going to be some who just don't take to what it is you are selling or how you are selling it. Heck, there are people who don't like Lassie or Mr. Rogers! Not for any reason that they can articulate, just because!

Still you should be keen on the user experience, and you should make that a priority in your website development.

• Why are people visiting your site in the first place?
• What is their state of mind?
• Is this an "urgent" purchase that they are undertaking?
• Are they coming into your purchase with feelings of regret or fear?
• Or will your product or service be something that your customers will be able to use and enjoy for years to come?

Going into development with these things in mind can help you to decipher exactly what your customers might want, and have an understanding of how to approach user experience design. You also should be focused in on telling your brand's story and how or why you started this business in the first place. You must remember to tell the story to your future customers in a relatable way.

Another component of the users experience is making the customer feel welcome before they have even clicked on any of the pages they are seeking out. You know the feeling when you have clicked onto a website that looks suspicious and leaves you feeling as though you should get off the page. This is a feeling you do not want to invoke in your users.

You also should be thinking about having a clear path to the sale on your website. For the eager customers, there could be as many deviations and side stories as you can think to put in. This business is your business; you should be able to tell as long or as abbreviated a story as you would like. Presumably, the longer you have been in business, the more likely you are to have more fun stories to tell. Still for the busy consumer who just wants what they want and then they want to get onto whatever else it is they have to do, your website should have a clear path to attract the customer, convert the sale, close the deal, and get them on their way.

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