Is it worthwhile to look at the www from the customer’s perspective – and how to do it?
The hard truth.
As brutal as it may sound – a customer is usually not interested in your company. The customer is primarily interested in themselves, their needs, and possibly how your company can help them meet those needs. Stories about “a good team”, “high quality” or “modern machinery” do not necessarily interest the customer in the first place.
Instead, it is important to address the customer from their perspective. Instead of writing “We design welding robots” write “We will speed up the welding of your structures”. This will make the customer feel that we understand their business, care about their benefits, and care about them first and not ourselves.
Important and more important.
The materials your products are made of, the technical parameters they meet, the ranges they work in may be important, but not during the customer’s first contact with your brand. It is much more important to convince them that what you offer actually meets their needs.
It’s important that the customer begins to connect your solutions with certain values (that they care about) and that you begin to move them emotionally. If we evoke a specific emotion in them, we increase the chance that they will continue their journey through the site and ultimately make contact or perform another action they care about.
Connecting your customer’s emotions to your brand is key to influencing their decisions. As humans, we are emotional beings. We are ready for a long polemic and we will persistently defend the statement that: customers make decisions emotionally, logic and reason are used to support them. If your website doesn’t move emotions and prompt action, it won’t be as effective as it could be.
Features and performance are important. However, which product do you choose when faced with two with similar features? Isn’t it the one whose supplier you “trust more” or “believe to be more durable”?
Representative appearance.
It will not be a novelty if we write that people buy with their eyes, and one picture is worth a thousand words. Appropriate graphic composition, arrangement of elements, leading the customer’s eyes through the structure of the page and skillfully holding his attention can perfectly increase the effectiveness of communication.
Often, however, we encounter a chaotic presentation of the elements of the value proposition on the page, just because, for example, we just had a 3D model of this machine, so we put it on the website. Particular sections of the website are placed in a random order, because “the graphic designer thought so”. This leads to communication chaos and, most importantly, does not guide the client through the layout of sections, pages and subpages in the most user-friendly way.
Engaging journey.
Already at the stage of the conception of the company’s values, it is worth thinking about and detailing how the user’s journey through our website will look like. It is important that this is a journey that takes into account the customer’s perspective, and not how we perceive the product or service from the perspective of our company.
It is common for company websites to talk about themselves in superlatives. Assuring about high quality, vast experience, qualified experts or cutting edge technologies. The question is whether the Queen of England has to repeat every now and then that she is high-born?
Our company values should ring out from the totality and consistency of our message. Above all, we should inspire trust. We will do this by adequately communicating the qualities that we are sure to have in the company, and not by artificially praising ourselves.
Our company values should ring out from the totality and consistency of our message. Above all, we should inspire trust. We will do this by adequately communicating the qualities that we are sure to have in the company, and not by artificially praising ourselves.
We are not very fond of people and companies who praise themselves and try hard to prove that they are the best in the world. Instead, we can appreciate subtly smuggled-in expertise, backed by external evidence of validity.
To sum up what’s important:
- First, ditch the “We” or “Our Company” narratives
- Second, start speaking from the customer’s perspective “Your company”, “Your problems”
- Third, communicate values rather than features, scopes or functionalities
- Fourth, make the customer feel certain emotions and start associating them with your brand
- Fifth, enchant the recipient with beautiful visuals that stimulate their imagination
- Sixth, lead the client through your website in a natural and logical way, so that he absorbs subsequent content in a light and pleasant way
Build an image in the eyes of your customers and do not say that you are an expert.
