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Is Your Website 'Friendly'?

Customers will hit the exit key if sites aren't easy to navigate. Most of us have been there: we know a commercial website has exactly what we want to buy, but it's just impossible to find amid a confusing mass of products. Or maybe we just want a contact number for customer service and it's absolutely nowhere to be found.

Its the sort of thing that makes online shoppers really fed up. Fed up enough to go somewhere else and maybe pay a bit more... but its worth it to be on a site thats easy to use.

Its something companies are slowly realising and the website user experience is becoming a key area of focus for online marketers in an increasingly competitive digital environment, according to research published in July.

A survey conducted by E-consultancy and behavioural research organisation Bunnyfoot found that 72 per cent of UK organisations are planning to increase their "usability" budget over the next 12 months – a greater percentage than for any other area of digital marketing.

That means they see it as a greater priority than search engine optimisation, paid searches, promotional emailings or online display advertising.

Bunnyfoots Usability and User Experience Report 2007 found that organisations, on average, are spending 13 per cent of their website design budgets on usability and 9 per cent on website maintenance.

More than 700 internet marketers took part in the research, rating Amazon, the BBC and Google as the best sites for user experience.

According to the report, the biggest benefits of investing in usability are improved perceptions of brand, increased conversion rates and greater customer loyalty and retention.

Jon Dodd, director and co-founder of Bunnyfoot, says: "Its great that usability is increasingly being recognised for the value it brings to organisations and that it is finally becoming an integrated part of the web development process."

His fellow director and co-founder Rob Stevens, says: "Usability has really moved on from the early days. We are now seeing a new wave of usability engineering which is delivering even more measurable value."

The research shows that companies are increasingly aware of the need to make sure they are offering the best possible user experience in an age where people can easily go elsewhere if necessary, according to Linus Gregoriadis, E-consultancys head of research.

It also found that time pressure to get things done was the biggest barrier in the way of providing the best possible user experience. Some 56 per cent of online marketers said this was one of the three biggest problems. The next biggest were lack of internal resources (45 per cent), lack of budget (37 per cent) and company culture or politics (35 per cent).

Significantly, only a quarter of company respondents say their organisations are "extremely committed" to providing the best possible online user experience. A further 56 per cent say they are "quite committed".

Where the buck stops, for this, varies. For just over a third of organisations, responsibility for the online user experience is within an in-house website team.
Another third of companies have an individual or team dedicated to the task, while a fifth deem it to be the responsibility of an in-house marketing department.

More than a fifth of companies (22 per cent) say that the online experience "isnt integrated at all" into the overall customer experience.

Those who have focused on the user-friendliness of their sites see marked benefits. Improved perceptions of brand was seen by 54 per cent, increased conversion rates by 53 per cent, greater customer loyalty and retention (46 per cent), increased customer advocacy (38 per cent), increased traffic (36%) and improved search rankings (33 per cent).

It would seem that the layout and features of a business website deserve the same attention to detail as any physical shop layout. Those that pick up on this message look set to grow their customer base; those that dont take the online customer experience seriously can click their sales goodbye.


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