It may seem counter-intuitive to spend money during a Recession. However a relatively small spend on improving the user experience on your website can yield huge savings / increase sales for your business. Sounds good but where are the hard facts to back up that claim, you ask.
Usability ROI
The latest research from Nielsen Norman Group (top US usability consultancy) shows that spending just 10% of your website development budget on usability will result in 83% increase in your business metrics, including your website conversions.
The Visitors x Conversions Formula
Let’s say 1000 visitors hit your website each day but only 10 of those visitors become customers then your conversion rate is 1%. The visitors to your website are typically drawn in through expensive paid programmes such as Google Adwords or other marketing initiatives. To double the number of visitors to your website means doubling your advertising budget! Not an attractive proposition during touch economic times.
But what if you could get 1000 visitors to your website and 20 of them proceeded to do business with you instead of just 10? Well you would instantly double your sales. Even small improvements to the usability and user experience of your website can achieve this for you.
Start with a Website Evaluation
Before you can improve the usability and overall user experience on your website you must first figure out the areas for improvement. You need to evaluate your website. This can be done very inexpensively – you can contact us for a quote for an expert evaluation. Resolving any major usability issues with your site helps retain customers as well as increase sales – customer retention is undoubtedly the best way to sustain your business through these tough times.
Make More Services Available Online
Another smart strategy is to use your website to reduce your administration costs and save you both time and money. Online banking is a great example of an online service that works well for the users and for the business. Users get the convenience of 24/7 secure banking while the banks get to reduce their staffing costs and make their services more efficient. It’s a win-win. Banks who do not provide this service are now at a major competitive disadvantage.
In your business area, look at the most time-consuming and manual interactions with your customers. Perhaps your company spends a lot of time answer phone calls about their products / services or managing the staff calendar and scheduling appointments. Perhaps you have to manually generate quotations for house alarm installations or check stock levels and reserve items in your shop for customers. These can all potentially be done online and often prove even more useful than the ‘human’ version e.g. the appointment system that texts/emails you a reminder of your dentist visit.
Word of warning – I can’t stress enough how important it is that you get user input on all new features you intend to add to your website. Figure out what the users want (user surveys) and when developing the features get user feedback (user testing). Otherwise, you may invest in website features that users don’t actually want or that don’t work so the users won’t use them and will resort to the old way of doing things. That would be a disaster but it is avoidable!
If you need more advice…
I hope this post has given you a few ideas on how to use your website more effectively during these times of Recession.
