Thanks and show of hands “who has a business that relies on a website or web application to drive revenues?”
Lot’s of things drive business but very few things will move the needle more than exceptional design.
Your sales and marketing messaging sets the expectation
Interacting with your website or app is the reality. Mismatching is costly because it reduces congruency, trust, patience.
Everything is designed and everything tells a little bit about your business and your trustworthiness
On the other end of the scale, design suggests your highest values and worthiness
Even the best intentioned design can be useless.
Useful design is driven by solving problems quickly. People have jobs to do. How are you helping them do their job?
For you it’s mildly embarrassing but to the audience it says you don’t care
You need to take this really seriously. Even after engaging them, over 80% of your efforts are pointless if you can’t keep them engaged or converting.
You can walk every person through the process. It’s an impossible task.
Designing a smooth and remarkable experience is well within your control and not nearly as hard as you think.
Designing a way to leave a positive impression. Think of your website like a retail store or theme park. What will the last memory and emotion be when they are done?
Emotions are powerful drivers of behaviors. Frustrating a user with poorly defined navigation translates into fear and ultimately anger towards your brand.
But what’s a brand. You can’t design a brand but you can design the experiences that creates the memories and emotions that lead up to brand.
Get used to this idea. Honest user feedback is inherently difficult to get.
2/3rds of our brain is dedicated to functions like facial recognition, community management, and story telling and remembering.
Users don’t care how many lines of code you wrote or what jQuery library you used. Your value is defined by how many user brains connect around your idea and brand to support your continued growth.
Your customers first and last experience is now in the hands of your designers. The touch points are now the website, web app, social media and customer service. These things are hardcoded into your web properties.
Love this picture. Stagecoaches?
Your marketing is also wasted. Not only are you not getting them to engage but you are going to loose them before they get what they came for.
Simple is not condescending. Lots of pictures and words don’t make you smarter. Simple means you respect customers time and attention. Wasting their time is insulting.
Best thing you can do right now to impact your bottom line is to get rid of half the things on your marketing website and half the features on your application.
Your customers first and last experience is now in the hands of your designers. The touch points are now the website, web app, social media and customer service. These things are hardcoded into your web properties.
Who is your audience, what solution do you offer them and why is it different?
You wouldn’t go to a friend for advice on accounting, legal work or medical advice – so why not engage with the experts