How Customer Friendly Is Your Website?   5/16/2005 - 646 views,

NEW YORK, May 16 /PRNewswire/ — It’s a classic mistake for website owners. They create a website that is focused on their product alone rather than on the needs of their customer.

Luckily, a popular new book by Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg makes it easy to solve this problem. The book, “Call To Action,” outlines four simple ideas that website owners can use to create a customer-friendly website. The goal is happier visitors — which ultimately translates into higher sales.

“You have lots of different people with lots of different needs,” explains Bryan Eisenberg. “The first step to a customer-friendly website is making sure that everyone can get in quickly … buy quickly … then get out again quickly.”

Adds Bryan, “It’s important that your buttons and links are easy to follow and that your web copy is crystal-clear because customers want things to be obvious for them.”

The second step is to answer any questions before they are asked. 80% of site visitors want to know the same things. It’s not very customer-friendly to make them dig. So instead of having a FAQ section, website owners should address all questions in their headers, subheads, copy and banner ads.

Testing is another major aspect of any customer-friendly website. The wonder of the web is that a website owner can change things on their site and measure the results instantly. Customers might prefer to click on a green button rather than a blue button, even if it’s outside of their awareness.

“Finally, there’s the best strategy of all for making your website customer-friendly,” explains Bryan Eisenberg. “Ask your customers exactly what they want. And keep on asking. Because once you think you know what they want, they change their minds. It can happen really quickly.”

Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg are co-founders of Future Now, Inc., a marketing boutique focused on helping clients convert their website’s traffic into leads, customers and sales by applying Persuasion Architecture, copywriting, usability and web analytics to design, redesign and optimize websites and other online marketing efforts. Future Now, Inc. ( http://www.futurenowinc.com/ ) has helped clients such as Dell, GE Volvo, Overstock & Disney.