A customer journey by definition is the experience a customer have while communicating and interacting with a business. The customer journey covers each and everything from the discovery phase to making a decision of purchase or conversion and even after-sale interaction as well.Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are actively seeking ways to enhance their digital experience and interactions. A website is not just an online brochure or a profile anymore, in fact it had become the online representation of the business and users expect it to serve needed information and provide useful features which can add value to their experience. Mostly businesses in Dubai and in other emirates of UAE thinks that a customer journey is just that we offer a product/service, try to make the purchase process easier and provide basic information about it, that is it. However, the customer journey is way too complex and important. According to several surveys and studies the customers put their experience equal to the quality of product or service. If the experience that they had with your business is not good, no matter how good the product or service is, the customers will eventually switch to your competitors.
The website is considered to be the backbone of your online and digital marketing strategy. Every advertisements or social media marketing activity a business does, eventually all the users are diverted back to the website. So the website is extremely important for online marketing and generating online sales and leads. Another important thing to understand is that the online user journey is totally different from in-store or offline user journey for other businesses. The same way the offline user journey is mapped and built, the online user journey should also be given the same importance. In fact in the today’s modern age of internet and digitalization, people tend to look up for businesses and seek information about the products/service they are planning to acquire before even visiting the business. For stores and retails, it is very common that people see an item in the store and then they look it up online. Which makes websites the most important part of the modern day sales and marketing landscape. The question arises how businesses can leverage the website to fuel their sales funnel whether online or offline? The simplest answer is to improve the user journey or customer journey of the website. In this blog we will discuss how a web design can impact the customer journey and how businesses can improve it.
Why the Web Design is So Important for the Businesses?
Before we jump into the topic, first let us understand why the web design is so important for the businesses? Whether it is a small business or a large enterprise, a retail or a service provider, these days everyone is investing in their websites and online activities. Here in UAE the internet penetration is 99%, which is staggering, the audience of any business in general tend to spend hours on the internet on daily bases. The rise of social media, mobile applications and the smartphone technology itself is opening up new horizons. We can buy anything from large industrial equipment to IT and even groceries from online, purchasing fresh tomatoes from online with same day or next day delivery was never seen before. But it is happening today. This is why the general market trend has shifted and is leaning more towards the online. Which makes the websites the most important asset for a business.
People often interchange the words website and the web design, however, in reality both are totally different things. A web design is an essential part of a website and a website have a lot more than just the web design. The web design is only the visual, graphics and esthetics of the website, the content, features, functionalities and a lot more is treated as totally different components of the website. However, rest why most of the time the web design gets more attention is because it is the web design which will help build the brands image in its customer’s minds. The website users don’t read the source code behind the web page, they don’t make lists of the useful functionalities you are offering, but the most impactful thing that a website visitors initially got influenced from is the web design. The web design builds the first impression, it determines how your audience perceive your business. The very first thing a website visitor noticed on a website is its web design, if it failed to attract them, they will not even going to read anything, and they will simply close the tab. That is why the web design is extremely important for a business.
How the Web Design Impacts Customer Journey?
These day’s businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are trying to offer exceptional user experience across all their channels. A website is one of the most important channel for any business it is where it can provide all the information about business and its products/services/solutions, and where it can communicates all USPs or unique selling points, and obviously the website is where a business can convert a prospect into a valid lead or online sale. That is why working on the website user journey could be extremely beneficial for a business. The customer journey is all about the experience a user have on your website. Hence it is extremely important that your website is capable of projecting a great brand image and it should be able to communicate the right message so the users convert into leads and sales. Here are some key points or areas where a web design can create a positive impact on your targeted audience by improving customer journey:
Web Design Builds the First Impression
For customer the first impression of the image is very impactful. In online customer journey, most of the time if a user doesn’t get a good first impression they will immediately quit the web page and move on to another business. The web design is responsible for the overall look and feel of the website and the very first information you want to share with your customers. Whenever a user opens a website, the very first section of the website they view is called the hero area, there is a header section on top of the web design which contains logo, contact information, social links of the business profiles and pages and then the main navigation or main menu. After that the rest of the area covering the full screen is called as hero area, the image businesses use there is called hero image. That area would have the most impact on user’s minds. The look and feel, the colors, the patterns, even the blank or white spaces, and obviously the information you are sharing would pretty much build your first impression.
The studies have revealed that it took almost 50 milliseconds to a human brain to perceive an image or character of the business in their sub-conscious mind while having the first look at the website. That is why the first impression is crucial for the customer journey and the businesses should be able to make it lasting. The human brain is much better with the colors, designs, geometry and patterns, and it responds to them really quickly, then comes the textual details. An eye-catchy tagline or UPS (unique selling point) could further arouse their interest. The hero image and sometime image slider is used to enlist the most important products and services of the business. These all things collectively built the first impression and can push users further through the customer journey.
Web Design Improves Navigational Structure
The first 6 to 8 seconds on a website are crucial and they can heavily influence user’s decision. That is a very short span of time and the businesses have to very vigilant and smart to utilize these 6 to 8 seconds to capture user’s attentions. These 6 to 8 seconds are very narrow to convey your brand message and value proposition. However, with the help of an intuitive user interface and appealing esthetics a businesses can not only conveniently convey their brand message but they can also expand this attention span and compel user to navigate through other information and content they are offering on their website. For that the navigational structure have to be very user-friendly and easy-to-understand. A good web design builds a great navigational structure and make it easy for any ordinary user to reach to the inner pages and content they are seeking or is needed to convince them to convert.
The website navigation is not only the main menu, in fact the modern web designs use various techniques to improve the navigation and user experience. For that smaller widgets or dedicated confined spaces can be used at the homepage, which are only talking about one subject in a simple and plain language, which can convey the value proposition effectively. These widgets are often used to link to the inner pages and other sections of the website and take users to the web pages or sections where they got better chances to convert a prospect into lead or and online conversion. In addition to that, sub-menus, drop-down menus, side-bars with links and attractive icons, and hyperlinks are used. These all are tool to link the content of the website and provide easy navigation through the entire website. This all is only achievable with a highly professional and business oriented web design. The navigational structure could be a game changer for the businesses and it can significantly boost their online leads and conversions.
Image Credits: blog.smile.io
Web Design Organizes the Content
A website customer journey is very different than the physical customer journey. People behave differently when they are surfing through the websites. People do not read a web page as they would read a regular document. In fact people tend to focus on the prominent text snippets, taglines, headings and highlighted/focused texts a lot. Usually most of the users start from the top to bottom and do a scan of the webpage by absorbing only highlighted and prominent content and then they decide whether they should read the entire story or not. That is why businesses need to provide exactly what the customers would be looking for. In all that the web design plays a crucial role. A good web design makes it much easier to absorb the important content by manipulating the design elements, colors, patterns, fonts, text size and various other techniques which help businesses to engage their customers and compel them to go further to read more about the business and the products or services they are interested in.
A web design let the website communicate with its users using various techniques and methods. For example, a website can be divided into various sections, where each section is related to a single subject or topic. In case of home page usually the best-selling products and most popular services are listed closer to the top side of the page, then comes the lesser popular products and services, later comes some trust markers which can help add value and credibility to the web page. Then businesses can add more interesting content such as blogs, news, PRs, case studies and even social media feeds. This means that the information and the content have a proper hierarchy, at any given point of time in the user journey the user keeps engaged and there is always something new that can get their attentions. This way the businesses can effectively communicate their brand message, their values, proof of quality and much more. All these information whether they are in textual or multi-media format can contribute to convincing the users and help businesses generate more online leads and conversions.
Web Design Improve Call to Action (CTA) CTR and Conversion
The call to action or CTA is considered to be the key component of the customer journey. Let us say your web design talked the right message, perceived a credible brand image and convinced the prospects to move to the next phase of the customer journey. The question arises how would you convert them and what you want them to do next. For different businesses the CTA is different and the conversion is different too. For e-Commerce the CTA would take the user to checkout or purchase process where they will input their payment and shipping details and make a purchase. For businesses who are offering online services it could be a request form to get the quote or to setup a meeting or a phone call and so on. The CTA is the button which will let businesses achieve their goals. Studies have shown that by simple tweaking the CTA businesses have witnessed huge increase in their online sales and conversions.
The web design not only make the CTA more visible but also more attractive. A good web design always use CTA in more than one places and provide more chances to convert your prospects. The placement of the CTA, how it looks, how distinguishable it is from the background and easy it is to found will determine if you would be able to get maximum prospects to the next phase of the customer journey or not. If the user is already convinced but they couldn’t find the CTA, or the CTA is not much visible, they will get confused, as they don’t know what the business wants them to do next. That is why a good CTA always have a message on it such as Request a Quote, Purchase, Checkout, Book an Appointment, Register, etc. A good web design improve the CTR (click through rate) of the CTA (call to action) button and generate more online leads and conversions. The lead form and the contact form can also be improved with the help of modern web design techniques which further help businesses in generating more online leads and conversions.
Web Design Improve Page Load Speed
Most of the time the web design experts and businesses are too much occupied with the design itself that they forget the most fundamental factor of a good customer journey. Just imagine you have searched in the Google to buy a runner shoes, and a convincing title and description caught your eye, you have clicked on the link and a boring loading bar or loading screen started loading your webpage, how long would you most likely to wait to get the page loaded completely? A couple of seconds at maximum, and that is how long most of the internet users wait for a web page to render before their eyes. A visually rich web design got bulky by adding too many design elements and interactive and appealing effects. However, a good web design must always maintain a suitable loading time. There are several modern design techniques that are used, such as using of SVG images, smart media scripts and source code, building the design on HTML5 and CSS3 and several others. Such web designs load super-quickly and doesn’t bother the users.
However, another most important factor which impact loading speed is the web hosting. The web hosting is the server that hosts all the files, texts, images, videos, source codes and documents whichever is available on the website. The web hosting servers are basically a very high-specs computer with specialized software which make it possible to access its storage and content from the internet network. A good web design uses latest programing techniques and platforms which increase the efficiency of the hosting as well and the web browser as well. But more importantly the web hosting must be of good quality. Usually business websites are not as that heavy, hence an adequate VPS (virtual private server) or VDS (virtual dedicated server) is quite enough to offer excellent page load speed. Now a day’s businesses are also using cloud platforms to host their website. But for small and medium size businesses a VPS or VDS is enough. If you are e-Commerce than dedicated hosting server should be the first choice to ensure good page load speed for the users.
Responsive Web Designs Enhance User Experience
In UAE alone the internet penetration is almost 99%, most of the population owns a smartphone, and among them for most the smartphone or tablet is their primary choice for internet surfing and social media or watching content on the internet. That is why a good web design always offer similar user experience and excellent customer journey.The smartphones and tablets are generating more than half of the internet traffic all around the world. That is why it is crucial for a business to offer an excellent customer experience for the people who are coming from mobile devices. Very recently statistical data have suggested that the mobile-first web designs are tend to perform well in the Google as well as among the customers. In fact Google users mobile-first or mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in the search rankings. The mobile-first web designs are built using a slightly untraditional web design technique in which the initial user experience is designed for small screens and then scaled up for the larger screens. This ensures the users on both desktop/laptop and smartphone or tablets will have almost identical customer journey and a great user experience.
Basically the responsive web design is equipped with such source codes or algorithms which can automatically detect the screen size and the platform from where the website is being accessed. Once the platform and the screen size is detected, these smart algorithms automatically render the web design and it’s all elements as per the screen size. These algorithms can also detect the web browser and even the operating system of the device. The Android, Apple iOS, Windows, Linux and MAC are the most popular platforms used all around the world. Each is built on a different technology hence respond differently to different source codes and programing instructions. A good web design consider all these variations and is equipped with relevant tools and source codes to ensure all of the users will have identical user experience and excellent customer journey without any dependency of a particular platform, device or screen size. That is why the responsive web design or mobile-friendly features are a must to have for a business website in 2022.
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Conclusion
The websites have become an essential and most crucial part of any business’s online and digital strategy. Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are investing huge amount of efforts, resources and budgets in their business websites and digital interaction. The online users who reached to a business website expect certain things, which has to be provided to keep they stay on your website. A good web design build a great first impression, keep your prospects engage and leverage various design techniques to help users reach out to the interested and important information. A good web design adds value to user experience and in return business gets more leads and online conversions. In this blog we have listed basic key factors that a web design can improve to improve the customer journey. An excellent customer journey is a key to business’s success as a good customer journey and satisfactory customer experience results in more leads and conversions and generate revenue for businesses.
RSI Concepts is a leading web design Dubai agency having a strong customer base in UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want to get a quote to revamp or build a new website please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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