We’re more than six months into a global pandemic that’s still rampant. Your prospects and customers are tired, lonely, and anxious. The good news: You’ve made it possible to hang on to distanced and digitally enabled versions of holiday cheer. Now’s the time to make sure your customers understand whether they’ve found the right product on your site or app, know when they’ll receive their item in time, and know how to easily return the item if it isn’t quite right.
By Andrew Hogan
You may have previously focused on designing to make things easier or generate delight among your customers. That’s still important, but now confidence is more important than it’s ever been before.
What’s at stake? If you don’t increase your customers’ confidence, you’ll face more phone calls and chats — as well as just lost prospects who’ve made their purchase somewhere else. Even worse, your brand will be thought of as unhelpful during an emotionally charged moment.
What are the top ways you can create more confidence for your customers today?
- Scour your site and product descriptions for confusing terms. Use call transcripts or other research methods to understand what your customers don’t know or understand. Add help text at minimum – or change the words altogether if possible.
- Elevate chat visibility and staff it appropriately. You may not be able to find all the uncertainty-creating issues, but you can ensure you’re answering quick questions fast.
- Improve imagery to ensure customers know what they’re getting. Many customers are buying much more than they ever have online and are guessing at what they’ll actually get. Can you add size comparisons to common objects? Clarify colors? Even make product images available through augmented reality?
- Elevate reviews that help explain. If you can’t change imagery this late in the game, can you make reviews more visible? Often, hearing from other customers will increase confidence in the item on the product detail page.
- Review how you communicate delivery timing. Customers may be buying things they would have purchased in store and gotten immediately, but now are buying digitally. They’ll want to know when their order will show up (and ideally not a date range). And of course, there’s always pressure for gifts to arrive on time, so do regularly update your customer as the shipment progresses.
- Review your order status notifications for clarity and utility. Just sending status notifications will increase your customers’ confidence. Want to go one better? Communicate your return practices, return policies, and usage (e.g., assembly) tips. You can even put as much care into the return notifications as you do the order confirmations to really boost confidence in your company. Make sure also that the text is large, well spaced out, and clear.
These are just a few of the methods to increase your customers’ confidence. For more, see our report, “Design For Confidence” or reach out with questions by scheduling an inquiry.
This article originally appeared in GoForrester. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
