Transforming the Digital Customer Experience

User Interface Design

There are many reasons why conversions are made or lost – and optimization cannot be made on mapping every move of every user. If drop rates are way up or way down, then the data is reviewed and changes made – but this could be too little too late.

With solid customer experience (CX) strategy in place, a business can retain more customers and make more meaningful connections. In fact, recent studies have shown that having an ongoing customer experience strategy in place has increased revenues and improved internal culture, helping to achieve a more sustainable growth pattern.

Though rewarding, a CX strategy must be crafted carefully to create the opportunity for synergies to occur between brand and customer, and a great deal must be accomplished behind the scenes. From client management to strategy and design teams – getting to the end result requires multiple talents, tasks, and layers to make it possible. The one constant that each stakeholder in the process of a developing site should be working around is customer experience.

A website can look great and function well technically – but it’s a customer experience strategy that can help to ensure longevity and a better ROI for the company and the site itself.

Though customer experience should be applied to all aspects of both design and development, there are a few specific areas that should be focused on to create the most seamless process and ultimate representation of a brand or company. Integration All touchpoints should provide integrated and consistent messaging to create a holistic system that extends trust to the user. A cohesive experience is now expected across all devices and contacts – from mobile, customer service, chat, email, sales, and fulfillment. This requires a fully collaborative and organized system to create a bridge from each department to the next.

Building the Structure

While it’s crucial to the user experience, it’s not all about the front-end, imagery and content. The structure behind the scenes working to support the experience with intelligent data and analytics is paramount to customer experience. Utilizing smart data from various analytic sources can provide critical insights such as mapping, feedback and cataloging that can deliver a more intuitive experience for the user and better engagement for the site.

Creating a User-Centered System

Using a website or app, especially on a daily basis has to be a personal experience. With the use of analytics, intelligent data and customer service, a company can now simulate an in-store or in-person experience by offering up engagement opportunities. It’s important for the user to know that the brand acknowledges their presence or visit the site by offering up familiar cues. There are countless opportunities for engaging with the user – most of which go unused. Many sites have no connection with the user other than the exchange of an email (if they even get to that point), and even then the majority of companies don’t even utilize that simple data. If a user visits a site – chances are they want to engage with a brand. Gathering feedback from them about their experience to make it better in the future lets them know a company is thinking about them and wants to interact with them. Many times, just the connection of the company reaching out is enough to make the user come back again.

Make no mistake, customer experience is a multi-layered pursuit that requires a great deal of organization and strategy. A company must have some sort of top-down system in place before working with a creative team to integrate this into their digital platform. For the team, critically listening to a client’s goals and current challenges will begin to catalyze a systemwide CX approach and ultimately deliver a delightful experience to the user.