All businesses are about one thing: identifying what your customers want and delivering it. It’s really that simple. A baker knows which types of bread to bake, the marketer knows which strategies are most successful and a comedian knows which jokes will have their audience crying with laughter.
So the question is do you know exactly what your customers are looking for? Moreover, if you don’t, how are you going to find out?
The User Experience
How your customers experience your business is so important. This is where you make your good impression and show them that you understand their needs and you’re able to deliver. User experience often refers to how people use your website but it extends much further and user research software can look at everything from the way your products work to how your systems perform.
The user experience should be considered from the second your customer becomes aware of your business. This means that your marketing campaign needs to speak to them, your website needs to be perfect and then every service and product from customer service to postage and packaging needs to be spot on.
So how do you know that your customers have a positive user experience?
User experience can be split into a few separate areas including aesthetic, intuitive design and consistency. Ultimately, though, user experience is measured with one question: did your customer do what you wanted them to do? If your customers arrive at your homepage and immediately click away, you have a problem. If your customer can’t get in touch with customer services and go online to complain in public forums, you have a big problem! If, however, your customers go through the conversion funnel you set up and converted happily, you know you have got your user experience right.
The best way to find out what your user experience is like is to go through the process yourself as an anonymous user and stress test each aspect. Go through the website, call your customer service department and see how your products travel through the postal system. This might all sound like madness if you are running a small business from home but truly, this is the best way to find holes in the system.
Asking the Big Questions
When you want to know what someone is thinking, the simplest way to find out is to ask! Asking your customer what they are looking for and how you could improve might sound like asking for trouble but the reality is that when customers care about your business, they will take the time to help you improve.
The trick is to work out the right questions so that you gain useful responses rather than vague inclinations. For example, you could ask people whether they would recommend your business to a friend but a better question would be to how many friends they have already recommended you. Similarly, asking which page on your website could be better rather than a vague question about improvements will help you to focus your energy. When you ask the right questions, you’ll start getting the answers you need.
Asking your customers for feedback is the best way to find out whether your business is giving them what they are looking for and how it could be improved. When your customers are on side and you can show that you are listening, they will be more than happy to help you shape your business to their desires. Many large companies regularly send surveys to their customers to find out more about their business. Unlike those companies, your small business will have the ability to respond quickly and adjust to your customers’ needs.
Pushing Boundaries
Your customers are getting a near-perfect user experience and you are listening to their feedback but is there something more you could be doing?
Yes.
Customers are good at telling you what they think they want but they don’t often realize that you could provide solutions to other problems. By pushing the boundaries of your business, you can gently persuade your customers that you have solutions they didn’t even realize they needed until now.
How you push boundaries is up to you. For some businesses, taking their purpose back to fundamentals is a good way to go. Facebook is a good example of this as the social network is branching out into new ways to connect people and new technologies to fulfill that goal. Portal TV is yet another way Facebook is solving the same problem again but in a different way.
Another way to push boundaries is to find a way to revolutionize what you’re already doing. For example, you could work out a more efficient strategy or figure out a way to boost the quality of what you do without sacrificing in other areas. Challenging your business to do more and to do it better is an excellent way to begin to push your boundaries and see what you are capable of achieving.
Pushing boundaries is all about experimentation. This is an important part of any business growth and you should embrace each opportunity to experiment as much as you can. Nevertheless, beware. Any experimentation you do must have a clear goal or question to answer. Experimentation without gathering data or further information isn’t going to add value to your business so you must be clear about what you want to achieve.
Knowing whether you are delivering what your customers want is fundamental to your business success. It doesn’t matter whether you are running a small business from home or a multinational conglomerate; if you aren’t delivering, you’re not going to make a profit.
Hopefully, you will now feel more confident about figuring out whether you are succeeding and where and how you can improve your business to keep up with demand. Just remember that the easiest way to find out what your user experience is like is to go through the process yourself and the easiest way to find out what your customers want is to ask them. You can’t go far wrong starting from there.