Your website design needs to be goal-oriented 

In other words, it needs to support your customer as they move through their customer journey towards their final objective. This is one of the key principles of website design here at Kicking Pixels. But, before you can effectively support this customer journey, you need to know what your customers’ objectives are. This means getting to know your customers. 

Start with Buyer Personas 

Each organisation has a number of customer types, each with different needs and expectations. You need to define what these customer types are. For example, one of your customer types might be a mother of young children living in a household with an above-average level of income. Another of your customer types might be a university student aged between 18 and 21 on a strict budget. Both of these customer types will have different aims and objectives when it comes to using your website. 

Understand the Key Access Points and Develop the Journey from There 

Refer to your web analytics. Perhaps the “mother of young children” customer type is the most responsive to your email marketing campaigns. If this is the case, you can enhance this further by crafting dedicated landing pages that are geared to the needs of this customer type, and then create an easy and intuitive route to the products or services this customer type needs. 

Conversely, you might find that the “student” customer type is more likely to access your site via social media, and you may begin to craft their customer journey accordingly. Remember that there will be lots of potential access points to your site, and you need to keep this in mind during the website design process. 

The best sites are not necessarily the most visually stunning. Instead, they are professional looking websites that are easy to navigate and intuitively designed with user experience (UX) in mind. 

What Are the Points of Friction for Your Customer on Their Journey? 

This is crucial. One of the key web design principles is to support a smooth and intuitive experience for the visitor. Statistics show that 89% of customers will go elsewhere to find what they need if they are frustrated by the design of a website. 

Consider the following:

  • How many site visitors are leaving without purchase?
  • How many site visitors are leaving the website after only one page?
  • How many site visitors are failing to purchase relevant add-ons after conversion?
  • How many site visitors are leaving bad feedback on social media and review sites due to your web design?

What Comes Next? 

Your customer journey does not stop when a purchase is made. Instead, you need to be able to offer support and guidance to the customer after they have converted. You also need to be able to offer any add-on purchases that the customer might want or benefit from, maximising your revenue while also making sure the customer has everything they need. 

Your web design is crucial here. By leveraging algorithms, you can make suggestions to your customer after purchase or at the checkout screen, perhaps offering delivery options. As for support, there are a myriad of ways your web design can provide this, but you need to make sure that your customer has access to this at every turn. 

Your customer journey is everything, and your website design must reflect this. With the right approach to custom web design, you will find your conversion rates increasing along with customer loyalty.