10 Things Your Customers Won’t Tell You About Your Website

There are numerous ways that you can gauge how successful your website is. You can see how many visitors you get over a given time period and how long each visitor stays on your site each time they visit. You can check your site’s speed and functionality. You can get relatives, friends, and peers to tell you how wonderful it is.

But you can’t really know everything that customers are saying about your site. So here are ten things that may be going through their minds.

1. “I love how pretty your site is…but I really care about the information you’re giving me.” Pretty colors and snazzy videos may impress web designers, but regular people are just looking for information. So make sure that your site’s fashion doesn’t overwhelm its function.
2. “If I can’t find what I want, then I’ll go somewhere else.” A recent survey found that three out of four people consider site navigation to be the most important aspect of a website. That means tabs, links, and buttons that are easy to see and choices that are clear and intuitive.
3. “I hate it when you continuously change your site design.” Repeat site visitors like consistency, not flashy upgrades or design modifications. If you have to alter your site design to improve it, fine – but change for change’s sake is a turnoff for users.
4. “Fancy language and graphics are nice – but they won’t help me if I don’t know what your company does.” You’d be surprised at how many neato-keen websites there are on the Web that don’t tell you what the host entity does! Is it a resource? An ecommerce site? A corporate page? Viewers need to know this with just a glance.
5. “I love it when you accept all different kinds of payment.” E-commerce sites don’t last long if they only take mail-in checks. Credit and debit card processing is essential, and you should strongly consider accepting PayPal and other similar payment services.
6. “Free shipping is a great perk!” If buyers are spending money at all on your site, you can probably afford to comp the shipping. It’s one of those little things that goes a long way with customers.
7. “Security and PCI compliance are important to me.” There are two types of people in this world: those that have been victimized by cyber criminals , and those that live in fear that they’re next. So it’s vital that your site is up to current PCI standards, and that you display the appropriate icons on every e-commerce screen of your site.
8. “It’s annoying if I’m unable to give you feedback or ask a question.” An FAQ page is not enough. Incorporate a feedback form or display an email address where you can be reached – and then respond to these inquiries in a timely manner.
9. “Displaying a physical address and working phone number helps me figure out that you’re legit.” Countless cyberscams involve fake “companies” who have websites but no actual address. Even if they’ll never need to come to your headquarters, customers feel better knowing that they can find you on a map or call a number to make sure it belongs to your company.
10. “If I’m getting error messages while I navigate your site, I’m gone.” Nobody knows what error messages mean. And they probably won’t waste time trying to get around them. So test your site constantly to make sure that never happens.

By Chris Martin
http://www.zippycart.com/