UX ShowHow

5 secret assassins of online customer satisfaction & retention.

Step one is to identify the culprits…

Declining customer satisfaction & engagement eventually impacts retention.

And these are the kinds of things that keep online business owners and product managers up at night.

This is totally understandable.

If not diagnosed and ‘nipped in the bud’ early enough it can lead to the demise of online products & services, and sometimes even the business itself.

Aggressive moves by ambitious competitors rolling out killer new features or more appealing pricing options are common culprits.

But at least these are out in the open and so easier to identify and deal with.

Sometimes though, the issues are not so easy to identify.

Very often they are closer to home.

And as technology and design trends evolve at a rapid pace, what kept customers happy 6 months ago may not be good enough for them today.

Here are 5 things to keep eye on if you want to preserve online customer satisfaction:

1️⃣ Ease of use

How easy and straight forward is it for users of your online solution to get things done?

Are there pinch points that need to be straightened out?

2️⃣ Convenience of use

Is everything easy to find and does your product work in such a way that reduces user effort and eliminates unnecessary clicks/taps/steps?

3️⃣ Enjoyment of use

Do the various steps in user's journey flow gracefully and in a pleasing way?

4️⃣ Time to result

Can the user complete the task that they came to your product to achieve quickly & without unnecessary friction?

5️⃣ Quality of result

Is the user able to achieve the result that they need from your product to a high enough standard?

This one is usually the most important as it relates to the underlying value customers extract from your product.

But get all 5 right and unless your competition has recently launched something truly groundbreaking then customer satisfaction & retention should remain healthy.

However it’s important to stay close to your customers so that any hint of a decline is identified and dealt with quickly.

Here is how you do that:

1. Regular customer feedback sessions
2. Periodic deep dive interviews
3. Usability testing for higher impact changes
4. Constant review of analytics

These are all crucial activities in order to win in this increasingly competitive world.

My simple method for achieving product-market fit more quickly.

Time to banish the costly delays..

Delays in achieving product-market fit can have a range of painful implications.

Funding delays are a common one for start-ups.

But it's not just start-ups that can face challenges.

Finding product-market fit can also prove difficult when established organisations launch new products.

And it can also be a problem when current markets evolve causing customer requirements to change.

The reality is that online solutions struggle to gain traction (or even survive) if product-market fit is not achieved quickly enough.

However for me as a user-centered designer, I found this to be a puzzle.

Why?

Whilst achieving product-market fit requires several things to line up, it's generally accepted that the biggest stumbling block is that the product or service being offered is not resonating sufficiently with its intended customer base.

At the highest level there are two reasons for this:

1. The wrong thing has been created.

Or

2. The right thing has been created but in the wrong way.

Both are expensive problems.

So how do you avoid these common issues?

The answer is simple.

Implement a simple but effective user-centred design process.

Here's my simple path to Product-Market Fit:

1️⃣ Deep dive user/market research: unearth hidden needs & opportunities

2️⃣ User-centered design innovation: turn insights (identified in step 1) into intuitive, lovable solutions that match the intended audience's needs like never before.

3️⃣ Co-create & implement a solution alongside a selection of hand-picked customers/potential customers to ensure it will be launched/re-launched to a sea of grateful customers.

If you follow these steps in order then the most common (& costly) product-market fit issues will be avoided and your online product will have a very good chance of success.

A post I wrote that talks about the advantages of UX design leads that are strong in both research and design and the benefits they can bring to the online products and services that they look after:

Why UX practitioners that are strong in both UX research and UX design can be worth their weight in gold ux leadership Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco…

4 Keys to Transform a Struggling Online Subscription Product or Service into a Thriving, Innovative Market Leader (With Rising Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty & Revenue). Free masterclass where I share with you some of the most precious insights that I've learned over my 17 year career. Go to: https://uxshowhow.com/masterclass/