5 Ways to Improve Your Website

For years many marketers thought traditional advertising was the right way to reach customers. Telling them how fantastic a product or service was and how they were the best ones to buy from.  Showing them this again and again, in magazines, flyers, commercials and on billboards.  The idea was that if they did that, they could

• Create a need they didn’t know they had
• Force them into remembering who they are because we flooded their space with advertising
• Convince them by repetition that this product was the best and there was no need to look further
• Make them curious enough that they would contact them to ask for pricing (since they up until that point hid it from them)

Customers could get the impression marketers were thinking:

• Customers don’t know what they need
• Customers have short memories
• Customers don’t care about what other customers think about a product or a service – all they need is a company’s word for it and their convincing
• Customers don’t care about pricing – so they don’t mind that it’s hidden from them

No wonder Mark Schaeffer talks about customer rebellions!

A lot has changed – but not everything

Years ago, long before TripAdvisor, our family arrived at a hotel in Spain after booking a 2 week stay at a «5 star» hotel, and to our surprise found a whole family of cock roaches that had booked the same room…and loved it here.  We finally got another room, after half of our vacation was ruined – and had no way of warning others not to book here and risk meeting the same cockroach family.

Today that scene has changed. Even though some companies feel tempted to hang on to “the way we have always done it,” our customers are now in charge and want to feel great about every single buying decision.  As organizations we have a unique possibility to add to this feeling by using technology to connect, help, build trust, long-lasting great relationships with our customers and amazing customer journeys.

With new technology the buying process has drastically changed, and we are investing in changing with it.  But is there anything that hasn’t changed? Yes!

Feelings!

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said in an interview that his “success lies in basing his company on what isn’t going to change in the next 10 years.  Because when you have something that you know is true over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

Our company culture should be based on what we know our customers will still want in 10-15 or even in 20 years.

• Low prices, quick delivery, excellent service and a vast variety to choose from (Jeff Bezos)
• Doing business with companies that have customer empathy, are transparent, helpful and trustworthy, have extensive knowledge and a smooth, useful customer journey.

These are criteria’s and feelings we can relate and respond to during the whole buying process – even during the first 70% when it’s usually just the customer and search engines.

Search engines don’t have feelings – but they can lead them to websites that do.

How websites can show feelings

Chat function: Shows we are available and easy to get a hold of – a feeling of “Welcome! We are here to help”

Published prices:  By publishing prices we show customers that we know and respect that they are looking for prices – We don’t hide anything because we want to gain their trust in us and give them the opportunity to compare our prices to others.

FAQs: Shows we know them well because they can easily find answers to most of their questions or worries and this gives them a feeling of being in control of their own customer journey.

References: Positive references or ratings from our other customers give them reassurance that our company is trustworthy – it always feels better to see someone else that bought and was happy with their decision!

Video: Shows them who we are and gives them a personal connection to us.  Seeing a person makes our company more human and personal and our customers get a stronger feeling about who we are.

We want to increase our customers emotional engagement and investment in our company. To achieve that, every kind of technical tool or social media we use to communicate with them, should be used in a way that will improve and strengthen our customer relationships. When they then get to the point where they contact us – they will already know who we are, how we can help them, what others think about us, what our prices are and have most of their questions already answered.

The more transparent we are and the more information we make easily available – the more trust we can build with customers that are unknown to us but that are taking a customer journey at our website.  Being transparent and useful is the move from Marketing to Marketfeeling.

 

Jay Baer, Marketing Keynote Speaker,  sums it up beautifully:

“Instead of being amazing – be useful!”

KOGGER has the knowledge, experience and workshops to help you structure and publish content and we want to help you to reach your customers hearts!

//KOGGER

#BTCT