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Do you understand why your customers buy from you?

Why is it important to understand your customers?

Understanding your customers is a crucial part of the website creation process. Ask yourself questions which help you to look at your customer's motivations and include references to these in your content. Customers buy from you for different reasons based on various motivations. Some buy because they think your price is the fairest, some because they find your services impeccable, and some because of your well-earned reputation in your industry.

By getting to know and really understanding your customers, you will be better placed to direct your time, energy and resources into creating compelling content which will result in the right customers for you.

Here is a checklist which should help you to look at your customer's motivations and to identify where there could be opportunities, (and where there may be potential problems), so that you can ask your web designer to update or even re-create your website to attract more interest.

1. It is important to ensure :

Imagine that you want to buy a product in the knowledge that there are a few sites which sell it. The first site you go to takes 30 seconds to load. The next site loads quickly but the product images take ages. You visit a third site and end up buying from there because time is tight and everything you needed to see loaded in just a matter of seconds.

2. That you have a clear call to action

Decide exactly what you want your viewers to do. Do you want them to click on one of the links in your sidebar? Do you want them to read about your product? Do you want them to visit your blog? Or do you want them to buy from you? A clear call to action which says to your viewer, “What you are looking for is here behind this button – click it!”

3. That your messages are not hidden

Place your content so that the high impact information can be seen within the first screen view (so potential customers see it as soon as the page loads), otherwise they may give up and move on.
Your call to action needs to be easy to find - it’s no good making viewers an offer if they have to scroll down to be able to see it.

4. That your website content is easy to understand

If you have a fantastic new product you are launching, are you explaining it in terms everyone will understand? As soon as a viewer sees information they don’t understand, the real danger is that they will go somewhere else.

5. That if you have a shopping basket, your checkout process is simple

If your customers love your product and want to buy it online, ask yourself what you have done to make it as easy for them as possible? Is it a simple process or do they have to meander through a maze of billing and shipping addresses, additional offers and products they don’t even want? Keep it simple!

If you want to make your website both appealing and clever, you need to give it the attention your business deserves, even if this means a total re-design to make sure you are not losing those valuable potential customers to a business which has understood its customers and has taken full advantage of their thought processes.

Don't give your customers the opportunity to feel confused!

Read more from OS Web Design:
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