Website – Customer Goals

When updating your website, your digital agency should be assisting you in determining your customer goals.

The most common areas that your customers are looking for online (customer goals) are Research, Service and how to Purchase.

• Research, generally, customers are looking for information about your products or service, or in-depth product information, or industry information, customer reviews, company information, or investor information. Remember, there are over 260 million users in North America, most of whom are searching for information.
• Service, when do customers need service? Anytime, for sales issues, returns, technical issues, software issues, website issues, payment issues and when they want to speak to a “live person”.
• Purchase, customers are either looking to buy, to return, find a store. Anything related to purchasing.

We recommend that once you have determined what your customer looks like (the Who), the next step is to ensure they have a good website experience. Testing is a very important component prior to making your website “live”.

A good website experience can only be achieved by ensuring you review your customer goals. It doesn’t have to be flashy, but your website has to be user friendly. A thorough analysis of the step by step clicks and navigation are required. Why are they here, and what are they looking for are the questions that need to be asked.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, July 2010