Improve your conversion rate by securing UX buy-in

Part of the UX experience design process is understanding why customers decide to use a website or give it a miss. To succeed, it is important to improve your conversion rate by securing UX buy-in.

Well-known web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen said that on the Web, usability is a necessary condition of survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. Our aim is to think beyond basic functionality, usability, and convenience, and think about what kind of experience you want the user to have when using your product/website/application, but without forgetting the basics of usability.

Let’s recall some of the benefits of UX. They include: better conversion rates and cross sales; improved customer retention through better sense of trust; more return visits and more likely to recommend to other users; more effective marketing spend on customer acquisition; reduced cost of development and reduced support (customer service & training).

So what are some of the reasons conversion fails during an online shopping experience? There are many possibilities, but some of the main ones are: a slow page load, accessibility problems, poor look and feel, poor design, confusing jargon, unreadable content, can’t filter or sort results, poor detail or images, lack of trust, mandatory registration, shipping costs, and no clear call to action.

Obviously, to improve your conversion rate by securing the UX buy-in, you need to be persuasive. How does Sitback believe you ought to go about that? Some of the steps you need to take include: make the benefit immediately clear; provide clear instructions and examples; simplify and reduce steps where possible; dispel security & data protection fears; distinguish mandatory versus optional information; give easy access to help; offer alternative communication channels such as calling by phone and finally create urgency and include a strong call to action (CTA).

In our work we have found applying UX practices to the development process of an internal business intelligence reporting tool for a large bank resulted in a significant increase in user engagement. In another case, applying UX practices to the design of a pet insurance website resulted in a 56.21 per cent increase in conversion. So it’s clear that you can improve your conversion rate by securing UX buy-in.

Why are there situations where UX is overlooked? From our experience and feedback, we have learnt that common responses are: usability isn’t taken into enough consideration before the site is up; there was no usability budget; the focus was on the technology and the business; the assumption was that the web designers would take care of it all and so on.