By
Shortly after I decided to run a half marathon, I headed to a local running store in search of new shoes.
I'm not a running shoe expert. I had no idea what brands or styles were right for me. All I knew was, "I'm a runner who's new to long distance races, and my first half marathon is in three months."
Fortunately, I didn't need to be an expert. I told the store associate my situation and he was able to recommend a couple of shoes for me. He totally took the guesswork out of my shopping experience, and for that I will definitely go back when I need new shoes again.
Brands should do the same online. Whether you're selling your products and services directly through an e-commerce website or capturing leads via a marketing site, it's imperative you remove the guesswork for your users.
Depending on the nature of your business and the profile of your users, one way to achieve this goal is to reorganize your products and services. Don't think of them as Widget A or Service B. Think about what problems they solve and who are the consumers that stand to benefit most from them.
Integrity frequently works with clients whose products or services aren't easily understandable to their users. As part of building a better online user experience, we think of all possible ways their customers try to find their products or services. Even if users have no idea which of your products or services they need, it's still possible to convert them by providing the right entry points.
Consider these examples:
FCS Financial offers loans, insurance and other tools to rural and agricultural customers. Unless you have a background in finance, you probably have no idea what type of loan or financial service you need. But you probably do know you need help growing your agricultural business, or that you're a young farmer who's just getting started.
We analyzed these use cases and created several entry points on the new FCS Financial homepage to make it easy for users to drill down to the right product. There are solution-centric callouts that drive customers to products designed to grow their business or finance their land. We also built a slideshow directly targeting the most common FCS customers: young farmer, hunting enthusiast, rural homeowner, etc. These slides link to landing pages that recommend products based on that user persona.
Web hosting is complicated, and no one understands this better than St. Louis-based Contegix, a leader in hosting solutions. When we set out to redesign the company's website, they made it clear their users don't always know what hosting product or service they need. One of Contegix's core values is letting clients focus on their business by alleviating the stress of hosting. Whatever new user experience we constructed had to align with that tenet.
We worked with the Contegix team to organize their products and services by solution and by persona. The result is a homepage that lets potential customers explore Contegix solutions by their role or what they're trying to achieve.
For instance, as a chief information officer, you may not know you need colocation, but clicking through to the CIO landing page will guide you to that solution. You may not have a clue how to consolidate your hosting, but if you click that solution link on the homepage, you'll be recommended a managed private cloud solution.
This year, we've had the pleasure of redesigning the online shopping experience for one of our longtime clients, Jiffy Steamer. Jiffy's the leader in finding new, innovative ways to make life easier with steam. There's clothing wrinkle removal, but did you know a steamer can also kill dust mites and bed bugs?
With dozens of steamer combinations and accessories, we knew we had to make it easy for customers to find the correct product. We decided to make landing pages for the most common use cases for steam, from cleaning hard surfaces to breaking in leather footwear, and feature product recommendations on each. We believe this will help customers find the product they need more quickly and, of course, with no guesswork. The new and improved Jiffy Steamer e-commerce website is launching soon!
You can't convert users if you don't know them. We're passionate user experience advocates who'll work closely with you to figure out what makes your customers tick. Contact us today.
