User experience (UX) is arguably the most important part of modern business. The average customer today has an unprecedented level of choice when it comes to virtually any purchasing decision.
If one brand provides a lackluster experience, it’s quick and easy to simply find another brand to provide the same type of product or service with a better experience. UX has a fixed place in marketing and content creation.
One of the most challenging aspects of UX design facing many businesses is determining what type of UX would best suit their target audiences, and data plays a crucial role in parsing out the best approach to UX.
Is Ontario in the pocket of an e-learning company? 🤔
They’re letting kids opt out, but they require parents to do it for them. In UX, this is called a dark pattern, used to prevent something.
… something an e-learning company would design. #onpoli https://t.co/oQ3wAWPTgT
— Stephen Punwasi 🏚️📉🐈☃️ (@StephenPunwasi) March 6, 2020
Leveraging data has been a crucial aspect of business life in the last few years – and that’s not going to change any time soon. While it’s important to take a look at your specific business data and customer behavior, some universal statistics can offer insight for improving user experience and expanding your reach.
If you’re trying to improve UX for your website, marketing, or brand as a whole, review the following UX suggestions to glean some useful insights and develop a more robust UX for your customers:
Customer Service Is a Major Factor in Purchasing Decisions
About 90% of purchasing decisions happen based off of customer service experiences. When customers have positive experiences when dealing with a brand’s representatives, the customers are more likely to complete purchases with that brand.
If you’re looking to improve UX for your brand holistically, ensuring positive customer service experiences is an absolute must.
It’s More Expensive to Secure New Customers than Retain Loyal Customers
There is a massive investment gap between the costs of securing new customers and retaining existing ones; as much as 25 times more in some cases. Poor UX will inevitably drive customers away, and its worth more to your long-term success to invest in retaining your loyal customers.
Outreach for new customers is important, but it should never spur you to neglect your existing base of loyal customers considering the massive gap in return on the investment.
Email Is Still the Main Channel for Customer Service
When a customer has an issue, the customer is likely to send an email about it rather than call a business directly. Email remains the most used digital channel for customer service issues, accounting for roughly 54% of all these interactions.
Be sure to have a robust emailing system that ensures rapid responses to customer emails. The sooner you get back to your customers’ issues, the sooner you can resolve them and generate better UX.
Friendly Customer Service Will Earn Brand Loyalty
Almost 75% of customers report that they have remained loyal to brands after interactions with friendly and helpful customer service representatives. Every customer-facing business needs to understand the importance of the customer service department when it comes to overall UX.
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When your customers encounter problems with your products or services, solving those problems quickly with friendly interaction is a great way to earn loyalty.
Positive UX Drives Customer Lifetime Value
Every business should assess customer lifetime value, or the total value a single customer will provide the company during his or her lifespan.
Only about 42% of companies measure customer lifetime value accurately and realize how important UX is to extending customer lifetime value.
Positive Customer Service Experiences Lead to Repeat Business
More than 93% of customers report that they do repeat business with brands after positive customer service interactions. Companies that offer stellar customer service are more likely to retain loyal customers, and those customers will also be more likely to recommend those companies to others.
Customers Don’t Have a Lot of Faith in Feedback Collection
Only about half of all customers believe that the feedback they submit to brands is eventually read by actual employees and then put into action. You can potentially beat the curve by not only collecting customer feedback but also acting upon their concerns, complaints, and suggestions in meaningful ways.
One of the easiest ways to frustrate potential customers is to bombard them with offers and content that aren’t relevant to their interests
Responding to individual customer feedback with detailed responses may be time-consuming, but it goes a long way toward establishing trust between your brand and your customers and enabling better UX.
Customers Appreciate Personalization
A major part of UX is creating personalized UX, providing content, deals, and interactions designed for individual customers. About 70% of customers report they prefer doing business with companies that personalize their messages and promotions.
This is easier than many brands realize, so start considering different ways to add more personal touches to the interactions you have with customers every day.
Provide Relevant Content
One of the easiest ways to frustrate potential customers is to bombard them with offers and content that aren’t relevant to their interests.
About 75% of American consumers report that irrelevant content and offers are major frustrations when dealing with brands. This is another aspect of UX that hinges on solid personalization strategies.
Good UX for Customers Makes Happier Employees
Investing in new tools to improve UX for your customers can have backend benefits, too. Companies that invest in better UX tend to increase employee engagement by as much as 20%.
Poor UX Drives Business to Your Competitors
When a customer has a problem, that customer is four times as likely to switch to a competitor if that problem revolves around customer service.
Too Many Companies Focus on Customer Acquisition Over Customer Retention
While it’s true that it costs much more to gain a new customer than retain a loyal one, many companies still focus too much on new customer acquisition. About 44% of companies report focusing primarily on acquisition over retention while only 18% report focusing on retention over acquisition.
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Only about 40% report devoting equal investment toward both. You can beat the curve by realigning your focus toward enhancing UX for your loyal customers, and this will, in turn, attract new business to your brand thanks to supporting from your happy, loyal customers.
Data Gathering Is Essential to Creating Better UX
You’re going to need to develop solid customer profiles, gather data for page views, bounce rate, latency, and various other metrics to make truly data-driven decisions.
Only about 55% of companies conduct UX testing, so this should indicate to your organization that investing in more robust data collection tools and channeling the gathered data trends effectively is essential to good UX.
Site Usability Has a Profound Impact on UX
Positive customer service is just one side of solid UX. Your website should also have the backend functionality to support positive experiences online, and that includes page load times.
About half of all mobile users will leave a webpage if it takes longer than three seconds to load. If your mobile site isn’t optimized for fast loading, you’re effectively diminishing UX and could be driving as many as half of all visitors to your mobile site away.
Call to Action Buttons Are Grossly Underused
A call to action button on your website directs users to take the next desired step with your brand, but more than 70% of small business websites do not use call to action buttons.
Part of good UX is providing a user with direction on what to do and where to go next during every interaction, subtly guiding them toward conversion. Don’t forget to include bold call to action buttons when you want customers to take the desired action.
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Understanding these statistics can help you make more informed decisions about your brand identity and help you craft better UX for your customers.
UX is essential for modern companies that want to not only attract new customers but also retain their loyal customers and gain the trust of their target markets.
Stephen Moyers is an American writer who has extensively written on topics ranging from social media, web design, mobile apps, digital marketing, entrepreneurship, startups and much more in the cutting edge digital world. He is associated with SPINX Digital, a Los Angeles web design company & digital marketing agency. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.