As a small business owner, user experience (UX), might not be an element you think about too often, but that can be an expensive mistake. UX refers to the experiences a customer has when using your product or navigating your website to buy a product, and this is one area where many small businesses fall short.

 

Improving your UX can drive sales and contribute to your business’ success, encouraging buyers to come back and make repeat purchases. The prospect of making improvements may sound overwhelming, but there are many small changes you can make to instantly enhance your customers’ experience.

 

Website Navigation

For customers who learn about your business or make a purchase online, UX starts with your website. A site with a logical layout that is easy to navigate will provide a more positive experience than a site that has broken links, is structured in a disorganized way, or has text that’s difficult to read.

 

The appearance of your site can have a strong influence on a customer’s experience, and simple changes can improve the UX of your site:

 

• Establish your brand’s colors and then limit your site’s color palette to those colors for a cohesive feel
• If your site has intimidating blocks of text, it’s naturally difficult to read. Limiting the amount of content and breaking text up into small, easy-to-read paragraphs can help. Make sure that the text is large enough to be easily read and stick to a simple font, since scripts and other fancy fonts can be difficult to decipher.
• Adding a live chat function can also make for better customer experience. Chat bots instantly make your website feel more interactive, and if customers need help, they can get it right away without picking up the phone. You can also gather valuable customer information through these interactions.

 

Don’t forget about the importance of making your site mobile-friendly. With roughly four out of five Americans shopping online, and over half of Americans having made a purchase from a mobile device, a site that isn’t mobile-friendly can lose out on significant purchases. Your site needs to adapt to mobile users and have a shopping cart that requires customers to input minimal information.

 

Transparency With Customers

After investing the time and effort in enhancing your website’s UX, it’s important to think about how that site conveys your business’ transparency with customers. As you rework your website, you should also revisit your site’s privacy policy.

 

A privacy policy that is clearly written and easy to understand offers a number of benefits. It helps to protect your business legally when you collect any personal data from your customers. Privacy policies are also legally required if you process payment information from a third-party user or have any plug-ins that collect data for profit purposes. A good privacy policy also helps to build customer trust and makes it easy for your customers to see just what they’re agreeing to.

 

To create a policy that’s simple and easy for everyone to understand, start by drafting one yourself. Next, take that policy to a lawyer to make sure that it’s comprehensive and protects your business. Ask your lawyer to help modify your policy without using legal jargon, which can leave your audience feeling confused and alienated — a poor foundation for building trust as a brand.

 

Ease of Product Use

The ease with which a customer can use your product is also essential to your business’ overall UX. Incorporating user-centered design in your products ensures that once the customer gets the product in their hands, they’ll be pleased with its performance.

 

Designing products with UX in mind means that you’ll need to perform research and usability testing with each product. These elements will focus on aspects such as how people behave and the emotions they feel when using your product. You’ll also need to consider the environment in which customers will be using a product and how that environment might restrict the product’s usage. Examples include designing a fishing reel to withstand a harsh saltwater environment, or creating a steering wheel cover that remains cool when summer temperatures in a car climb well over 100 degrees.

 

WordPress is an excellent example of a case where improving customer ease of use could result in more purchases and customers for the company. The platform is frequently used by small businesses, but it’s not particularly easy to navigate. From choosing themes and plugins to troubleshooting formatting issues, creating and maintaining a WordPress site has a significant learning curve. Improving WordPress with more help guides and even a drag-and-drop site design could make it much more user-friendly.

 

You’ll also want to think about how easy it is for a customer to take advantage of your product. Today’s customers have come to expect convenience when it comes to factors like payments, and you can make a product more appealing by accepting some fast and simple payment methods. If your product is a subscription service, for instance, allowing customers to automatically pay with a PayPal account makes it easier for them to continue that subscription from month to month.

 

User experience doesn’t have to be a complicated topic, and even small changes like choosing a different font for your website or tweaking the design of a product can result in big business growth for your company. Focusing on UX can help you to drive sales you’re currently missing out on, making investing in UX a worthwhile venture.