How to Make a Website Customer Friendly

How do online customers use the internet? It’s an easy question, however a question many small-business owners forget to address while working on their website.rnFar too often, web design firms get so focused on the latest tech innovations they lose sight of the basic and often simple needs and expectations of their potential customers.rnFrom ipads and smartphones to oversized video display units and laptops, how do you deliver your message to your customer online today? Is the site easy to understand and easy to navigate?rnIf you have a website, you must have some kind of metrics or analytic programs available to you. This is a easy way of tracking visitors on your website, as well as an additional feature offered by most applications to review browser information. This gives you reliable insight into what internet browsers and operating structures your clients use and what they see on the screen set on their monitors. These analytics can assist you in making a decision to upgrade your site to deliver content that displays properly regardless of the device being used to access your site.rnMobile FriendlyrnWhen your website is visited on a mobile web browser, how does it look? Does the information you want to deliver visible without having to move their screen? Here are a couple of things to bear in mind while thinking about the effectiveness of your website.rnThe first thing to remember is that photo-heavy websites take longer to down load on mobile phones. The second one is that flash animation can’t be properly displayed on all phones.rnHowever, you don’t have to sacrifice special features on your business website, but you may want to discuss with your website developer ways to create the responsive design version of the site for your mobile audience. With studies showing some 60% of internet searches now being done on a wide variety of mobile devices, proper display of the site to those visitors is crucial and simply can’t be ignored.rnPrint stylernMost websites built before about 2012 were designed with features meant to work well on a desktop or a laptop screen, including being able to print out relevant parts of the site. But with the huge growth of mobile internet, and the fact that mobile may involve a wide range of platforms, with updating the site many people in your target market may find no way to print your pages or articles. This is a simple fix but may be an expensive mistake if not addressed. You may want to provide this option if you have details on your site that clients would want to print. This is a feature important to many types of online businesses such as magazines, restaurants displaying menus, educational and informative site and often just basic information about you or your products and services.rnUser StylernYou may have intended to have website convey a certain look and feel, but consider this: how many different devices are visiting your website and not being able to experience that look and feel you intended when the site was first built? There could be a large portion of your target market not getting what you wanted them to have resulting in the loss of potential sales all due to a simple upgrade.rnEase of UsernA lot of online sales is about showing your clients that you understand them and are flexible to their needs. Begin that conversation by giving your audience a solid user experience by making you’re pages display properly. Font styles can be a great place to start. Provide users with a simple and obvious way to increase the size of your font to make reading content easier for them.rnUpgrading your site shouldn’t be expensive or a daunting prospect for you. No matter the cost of updating the site, NOT upgrading and failing to show what your customers expect to see is likely to cost far more in lost sales.rnContact us today at 214-432-1608.