Why an Interactive Website is Essential to Growing Your Customer Base

Modern users are fickle people, and that is never more obvious than when they are wandering through business websites. If they have no reason to be there, or something impedes their time there, they’re not going to bother for too long.

Whether you’re offering a space to play online jackpots, disseminate news and information or run your own eCommerce shop, an interactive website is the best way to stand out amongst a sea of business websites. We’re breaking down the basics of building a business website and why interactive elements are essential.

Glitches cause sales issues

The first rule in creating your website is to make sure it is free of glitches. That might seem like old hat, but the point is often missed, resulting in a lack of sales.

If you have an online shop on your website and something is impeding the journey from product selection to checkout, your customer won’t get to the checkout, and you miss out on a sale.

Presentation is about more than looking “professional”

Don’t get us wrong, there is definitely an element of professionalism to keeping your website as up to date and impressive as possible. You want your users to be impressed, not to mention industry peers.

But there is a lot more to it than that. For one thing, users today have changed their habits over the past couple of years. Not only are they buying more on social media, but they are researching who they buy from. This is important because the first step in that journey is to look up your website. If your website looks empty, or like there hasn’t been much effort put into it, not only will they not trust you enough to buy quality goods from you, but they might think your website is just a front for a scam.

Without users being able to see the product for themselves, the best thing they have to fall back on is that the state of your website reflects the state of your products and services. If you care about that, then you’ll care about the rest.

There is also the fact that users are researching brands to see if their priorities align with their own. Users want to know that they’re not backing something they don’t agree with, and so brands are responding by showcasing what they stand for in their website.

This doesn’t have to be so controversial. You can stand up for cancer research, small businesses, eco-friendly services, cruelty free products, etc.

Convenience is the key to customer service

Look, this generation is made up of introverts. They don’t want to talk to you about as much as you don’t want to talk to them. Karens, phone phobias and a general awareness of the horrors of working in customer service has made us all very happy to take advantage of any “convenient” online feature you can offer.

Users are impatient and do just about every other menial task on their phones, so if you can offer the opportunity to do something on your phone via your website, give it. If you need an appointment in your line of work, be it hospitality, beauty services or therapy, offer a booking system. If you have an element of eCommerce, add an online store. If you’re in hospitality add a menu, if you have industry insight to share, add a blog, if you have an event coming up, sell tickets on your site. Anything that cuts out the middle-man between your visitors and a customer service team will save you time and money, and give them a little more patience.