You’ve just decided to buy a new car (yes, we know there’s a recession, but let’s pretend anyway). Think of all the steps you’ll follow before, during and after you’ve bought the car, and you’ll see your experiences have phases:
Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
You gather as much information across the different car brands as you can, until you decide on Car Brand X.
Okay, tell me more…
You start getting to know Car Brand X, probably taking different models for a test drive, until you know exactly what you want – down to the colour of the seats.
I’ll take it
The sale is made. You fill in forms, organise finance, and arrange for delivery.
Will they look after me?
Getting your car serviced will bring you in contact with Car Brand X again. Together with your day to day driving experience, these interactions will influence whether or not you buy another car from Brand X.
Psst…
Depending how step 4 goes, you’ll tell your friends, family and acquaintances about your experiences, and the cycle may start all over again.
These steps form part of a widely acknowledged customer life-cycle. You can read more about this here.
But cars aren’t our game – good online experiences are
Your online channel needs to be thought of in terms of these steps too.
They need to choose you
Are you making the most of your digital channel to be top of mind when potential customers are comparing products?
- Do you perform well in search engine results?
- Do you market your company and products equally effectively across email, social networking and paid online advertising models?
- Are these efforts well integrated into your website from inception through to completion of the sale?
- Are you driving offline marketing to your online channel?
Make the benefits clear
Your web channel has to give potential customers the right information, in a format they can understand.
- Does your website communicate well to people who don’t know about your industry and specifically your products?
- Do you present your products in a way that is transparent and allows for easy comparison to your competitors?
- Do you help people match their needs with your products?
Sign, seal and deliver
Ideally, you’ll want to close the sale online. But if that’s not the nature of your business, your web offering has to at least provide the means for them to get in contact with the right people for what they want to do.
- Are you tracking the online sales process and monitoring its effectiveness?
- Are you optimising this process when you see a step that is ineffective?
- Are you using all the tools that the online environment gives you to help close sales like online chat and integration into mobile technologies?
Consistently show them you care
Ensure your online channel brings all the benefits of web-based customer service to your business.
- Are you driving customers to your most cost-effective self service channel – the Internet?
- Can customers service themselves online, or are you still relying on email-based service request and fulfilment?
- Do you do regular customer testing on your self-service content and functionality to ensure that it delivers on customer needs?
Let them build your reputation
Help your customers tell their friends how great you are.
- Do you invite and participate in public communication with your customers through blogs and online forums?
- Are you making the most of social networking opportunities like Twitter and Facebook?
- Do you make use of referral campaigns and competitions?
When customers have a good online experience, everyone is smiling
A good (online) experience with your brand means everybody wins. Your customers will feel they’ve found a brand they can trust, and you will have their loyalty and a bigger customer base. Loyalty means an almost-captive audience when you launch a new product or service, which in turn means (you guessed it): more sales.
Make sure your online channel is all your customers want it to be
Umlungu can help you at each step of your customers’ lifecycle and make your online channel be all it can be. Talk to us to find out how.