Online customer experience is more than just having a good website. Although the quality of your online home is important, it is only one ingredient in the recipe for a successful brand to keep your customers coming back time after time.
A customer’s online experience encompasses how they review your brand on third party websites and how potential customers determine your service or goods through these reviews. It also includes your social media presence; how often do you engage with your followers on Facebook for example? And when was the last time you updated your “About” section?
We would recommend our partners at Alyka if you are looking at improving your online brand perception. Their team of experts have determined three things to ensure your customers’ online experience is optimised.
Online review boards
As a matter of course, before people in engage with a brand, they tend to do their own online third party research.
Customer reviews from a trusted source provide people with an insight into your brand. It is an arena where people can publicly acknowledge good or bad customer service, review a product for its pros and cons, criticise a brand or broadcast their pleasant experiences.
Engaging on these platforms and responding to positive and negative feedback shows that your company is willing to take on board recommendations and is committed to on-going customer experience improvement.
As a business, you should give your customers the opportunity to leave a review. This transparency shows that your business is open to feedback, and could continue the communication with the customer.
Make sure you provide a link to your Google business page or product review site at the end of the customer’s transaction.
Website User Experience
Your website says a lot about you and the experience your customer has on your site is essential to its success.
Your business’ website should be updated regularly with punchy new content, have clear labelling, be easy to navigate, and have a strong call to action to encourage potential customers to get in touch.
Good information architecture is essential for a modern website and needs to be worked into each aspect of the project.
Information architecture can also help with the optimisation of content, ensuring online search algorithms from providers like Google can easily identify content..
Alyka’s recent website for The Road Safety Commission is a great example of complex information architecture used for a website which includes lots of information, yet is still easy to use.
The Road Safety Commission website needs to tackle the serious issue of road trauma, whilst at the same time educate on road safety and the traffic code. It also provides resources to a wide user base. The result? The website has been embraced by the organisation and by the users and is now a hub for all road safety information and education.
Social Media Presence
A lot of businesses have bold intentions when creating their social media business pages, however the management of these can quickly fall off the bottom of the priority list leaving them with neglected, out-of-date, and unengaging social profiles.
Your market lives online, with 26% of Australians using social media sites more than 5 times a day. Potential customers are searching for businesses on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, often in the first instance, and companies with out-of-date information and low response rates can leave a negative impression.
Corporate social media profiles should give an insight into your business and its offering, and your messaging should be tailored to the social media channel you are using. For example; your LinkedIn business page could include in-depth thought leadership articles and sharing of interesting industry-related content in a professional tone, whereas your Facebook page could give more of a casual behind-the-scenes glance into the business and its staff.
Companies that prioritise social media create relationships and engage with their customers to build loyalty, repeat business, and referral business.
Alyka can help with your social media marketing, by auditing your pages, determining your messaging by channel and creating flexible and comprehensive calendars that include best publishing times and content suggestions.
