Improving a business’s user experience can be a tricky endeavor. While the right product or service can entice droves of people to purchase, one wrong move can turn both current and potential customers away from your business forever.
Below, 17 Forbes Business Council members offer common mistakes businesses make when attempting to improve on the customer experience and offer suggestions of what should be done instead to ensure end users are satisfied.
1. Focusing On Everything But Your Users
Businesses should take a customer-centric approach to improving the user experience. Engage with customers through surveys, feedback forms and other means of communication to gather insights into what customers want and need. By listening to customers and incorporating their feedback, businesses can create a user experience that meets the needs of their customers and keeps them coming back. – Iain Borner, The Data Privacy Group Ltd.
2. Failing To Engage With Reviews And Comments Online
A sure way to turn customers (and potential customers) away is to make them feel like they’re not being heard. Make it a point to engage and respond to all comments and reviews that are left on social media, posted on your website and sent through email or contact forms as soon as possible. Even when the comments are negative, never take offense or go on the offensive. Respond with empathy and humility—and do it quickly. – Joe Altieri, FlexScreen
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3. Overlooking The Value Of In-Person Interactions
For businesses that rely on a small number of large-ticket clients or contracts, a common mistake is to think of the user experience as something that doesn’t need priority in real life. Spending time in person with clients, listening to and workshopping their issues and demonstrating the proper use of products are all vital. Interaction and dedicated time are still the best user experience you can offer to a small, significant client pool. – Chris Gerlach, Synergy Life Science
4. Neglecting To Listen To Customers
The biggest mistake happens when your team doesn’t listen to your customers and thinks they know better. Listening to your customer is Business 101, and doing your best to understand their needs is essential to a long, lasting relationship. Figure out together how your products and services can solve their problems and give them real value. – Shay Amir, Spivi
5. Refusing To Implement User Feedback
User experience and feedback should be a major factor in driving you to regularly make small improvements to your company. Without implementing user feedback, the direction of your company shifts to become less impactful to your customers, which will then influence sales and become detrimental to your bottom line. Ask for feedback, adapt as needed and improve your product and user experience to grow. – Betsy Wild, We Craft Box
6. Failing To Provide Support And Clear Instructions
Businesses often fail to provide sufficient support and clear instructions, leading to confusion and frustration among users. They should prioritize website or application speed and performance and offer channels for customer support to help users overcome any issues they may encounter. This can enhance the overall user experience and lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. – Mark Snell, Polestar Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning
7. Overcommunicating
One common mistake businesses make when trying to enhance their user experience is overcommunicating. While it’s natural to assume that increased communication leads to higher engagement, my experience shows that excessive contact can actually drive prospects away. Instead, focus on providing relevant, timely information will ensure a more positive customer experience. – Tamas Ham-Szabo, SAAS First
8. Trying To Do Too Much
We are often tempted to create magical user experiences that look fantastic on paper, but when it comes to practically executing them, it puts too much strain on existing processes, on people and the available technology. Sometimes the most impactful user experience is just keeping it simple and removing as much friction as possible. – Jason Haddock, Sozo Labs
9. Blindly Accepting Stats Without Proper Research
Don’t blindly adopt customer experience suggestions generated by the big ecommerce platforms. For example, the fastest platforms may claim that site speed is a huge conversion factor, with most touting this stat: “For every one second delay, 11% walk away.” But that number is from a single study from over a decade ago. Always link your site changes to a revenue hypothesis, then A/B test them before adopting. – David Wagoner, P3 Media
10. Prioritizing Aesthetics Over Functionality
One common mistake businesses make when improving their user experience is prioritizing aesthetics over functionality. While a visually appealing design is important, it should not compromise usability. Instead, businesses should focus on creating an intuitive and efficient interface to ensure users can easily navigate and complete tasks, ultimately enhancing satisfaction and fostering customer loyalty. – Andrei Neacsu, HyperSense Software SRL
11. Making Decisions Based On Personal Preferences
Businesses often make the mistake of prioritizing their own desires over the needs and wants of their customers. To avoid this pitfall, businesses should prioritize their customers and make their satisfaction the top priority. This means conducting market research, collecting feedback from customers and regularly analyzing data to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviors. – Yasmin Walter, KMD Books
12. Losing The Personal Touch
When a business gets to a certain size and growth rate, one of the key concerns is scalability. Sometimes, in order to scale better, the business may start implementing processes that are more automated and affect the user experience in a negative way, losing that personal touch with the customers. As a leader, I would say never lose sight of that and always put yourself in the customers’ shoes. – Raquel Gomes, Stafi
13. Adding Unnecessary Features
With the best of intentions to improve their customer experience, companies often add new features to their offerings. At some point, user experience actually may deteriorate because what was “simple” for the designers is not for customers. Before introducing changes to the user experience, test drive it in real customer settings. Watching, listening and getting feedback will help you avoid this mistake. – Jerry Cahn, Age Brilliantly
14. Prioritizing Short-Term Gains
A common mistake businesses make is prioritizing short-term gains, like sales or promotions, without addressing long-term customer needs and satisfaction. Instead, businesses should focus on understanding their customers’ needs, streamlining processes and providing exceptional service to ensure a positive and seamless experience. This will lead to customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. – Vladislav Kraynov, MSOFT
15. Gathering Feedback Solely From Loud Customers
Don’t just listen to your squeakiest wheels. Improvements coming from small but noisy customers may not make any sense for large but quiet enterprise customers. Gather feedback from across your audiences, share your plan with them (customers love transparency with regard to the roadmap), then stay flexible as you move forward and continue to vet user experience needs. – Ty Allen, SocialClimb
16. Creating Solutions That Benefit Few
One common mistake is solving problems that only impact certain clients. For instance, if a client demands coverage 24/7 and others do not need this extra time, then serving the needs of this one high-maintenance client will come at the cost of regular clients. You’d be using limited resources by adding something most people won’t use, which will come at an opportunity cost of introducing a crucial feature. – Maurice Harary, The Bid Lab
17. Lacking Consistency
Don’t underestimate consistency in product offerings and brand identity. In the harmony of consistent standards lies the foundation of a robust brand, fostering stronger customer allegiance. Work towards a cohesive, memorable user experience by upholding stringent company standards and ensuring uniformity in branding, design and functionality across all customer interactions. – Ryan Godinho, Specialty Batch Coffee
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