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Walking in a Customer’s Shoes

You might have purchased a good web analytics tool (like Omniture) or you are using one of the free ones (like Google Analytics). You might check the numbers regularly to see how the site is doing and how many visitors you're getting, where they're going on the site, and how many visitors become customers.

But all the effort you put in, and all the time and money you spend could change nothing for your company. Why? Because you're not getting true insight into your site just by analyzing numbers.

Avinash Kaushik is a web consultant who is an expert on doing business online. Below are some tips I found on his blog Occam's Razor.

Why web analytics numbers aren't enough:

You don't visit your site.

How frequently do you go to your website? Is the content being updated on a regular basis? Are there any typos in the content? Are photos looking outdated? Are you refreshing your services and/or products based on recent changes within the company?

You don't search for your company.

Have you googled your services or products to see what comes up in results? Do you know how your site ranks compared to others who offer the same products and services? Have you taken a look at the paid and organic results to find broken things?

You haven't signed up for your own email campaigns.

Do you read your email campaigns? Do you test them to see if they're going to the right landing pages? Do you like the design of the emails, the content, the general message? Do you check to see how frequently they are sent out to make sure customers aren't being deluged with email requests? Are email lists filtered so that the right emails go to the right customers?

You've never bought anything off your site.

Have you gone through the process of purchasing a product off your company's site? How many steps does it take to get the order completed? Are the steps easy to follow? Can you sign in and save your information so that you can come back to purchase again and not have to go through as many steps? Can you check on the status of your order? Are all the products you wanted to buy in stock? Did you find what you were looking for?

You've never returned something your purchased via your site.

Have you tried to return an item via your site after you purchased it? Is the customer service information easy to find? Does the site allow you to return the item with a full refund? Is there encouraging language on the site to ensure customers don't feel bad for returning the item?

You don't visit competitor sites.

Do your competitor sites have better ways of doing the same things your site tries to do? Are their sites more terrible than your site? Do those sites have advantages over your site?

You don't do an online usability study.

A small group study that looks at your site's usability could tell you how visitors walk through your site. Why they do what they do when they land there. At $20/person, why aren't you doing this kind of study on a regular basis?

At the Hype Lab we agree that just building a site and thinking that's enough is wrong. If you're going to bother to spend money to build a beautiful and useful site, and spend time (or have others spend time) filling it with content and adding all kinds of features, why would you sit back and let the analytics reports take over all the work of telling you whether what you're doing is working?

You can only prioritize, find fixes and opportunities if you immerse yourself in what you are supposed to analyze. Walk in the customer's shoes so you'll understand why your site doesn't work. Email or talk to customers who have placed orders. Answer tech questions for a day.

Remember, your goal is to make customers happy. Not just today but tomorrow too.

The Hype Lab | Boston Area Small Business Web Design

Walking in a Customer’s Shoes

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