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Creating Leads with Customer-Centric Design

butterflyjustchaosNow that we’ve had an overview of what customer-centric design is, let’s discuss how it can be used to create leads.

Providing Valuable Information

Having a reason for customers to visit your site is the first step in creating leads. The most important aspect of customer-centric design is providing your customers with exactly what they are looking for.  Think about everything they might come to your website to look for and make sure the information is easy to find.  It should also be easy for customers to contact you with questions or concerns.

A Place to Connect

By providing a place for your customers to connect with each other and with you, you can help your customers get the information and support they need.  More importantly, you’ll be able to get information about who needs help and where they are in the buying process.

Enticement

Do your customers have a reason to give you their contact information?  Is there some useful information or service you can provide for free in exchange for contact information?  Enticement to create leads can be very effective for you and provide a useful service for your customers.  Remember to keep information gathering to a minimum. (name and email work best).

How do you use customer-centric design to create leads?

(photo by Just chaos @ Flickr CC)

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Customer-Centric Design – Your Customers Care, so Should You

customerralphbijkerWe’ve mentioned customer-centric design in several of our recent branding and customer service posts.  Using customer-centric design on your site is extremely important to your customers.  Why?  Because they only care about what is important to them – getting whatever information, services, or products they came to your site for.  If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll simply go elsewhere.

So what is customer-centric design anyway?

Customer-centric design is design centered around what the customer wants (as opposed to what the company wants).  To do this, you have to always keep in mind why the customer came to your site and make it as easy as possible for them to accomplish their goals.

Ok play nice with customers, but what about my goals?

Your goals are probably concerned with increasing sales and leads (if not, they really should be).  Here’s the best part.  Customer-centric design actually makes it easier to accomplish your goals.  Customers who can find what they’re looking for are much more likely to make a purchase or return later for more information and services.  Most importantly, they’re likely to recommend you to their friends and colleagues, which is one of the most powerful ways to increase sales.

I getcha, now what?

Take a look at your site from your customer’s point of view.  What are the most important functions (for them, not you)?  Are they easy to find from anywhere on the site?  When a customer is in the middle of a process (finding support information, making a purchase, etc.), are there places for improvement by making things more clear and removing unnecssary steps or clicks?  Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Solicit feedback

Sometimes only your customers really know what they want.  So ask them.  It’s an easy and cheap way to get good feedback and by listening to your customers, you can increase customer satisfaction and brand awareness.

How have you used customer-centric design to help your customers?

(photo by ralphbijker @ Flickr CC)

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Internet Strategy Forum Summit – The Building Blocks of Online Customer Engagement

Presented by Dan Stickel, CEO of WebTrends

Let’s take a look at Google’s innovation and how they do it.  They divide their efforts:

  • 70% on core products – search quality, crawl/indexing, AdWords, AdSense, Toolbar
  • 20% on emerging products – Blogger, Google Mini, Picasa, News, Pack
  • 10% on break-out strategies – Offline Ads, Code, WiFi, Talk

Google also has these key ingredients in everything they do:

  • Focus on users
  • Think big
  • Ignore Constraints
  • Break the mold
  • The right people
  • Small teams
  • Iteration & experiment
  • Bottoms-up ideas & projects

Google harnesses the innovation of the entire world through easy-to-use tools.

Use some of these same ideas to turn motivated visitors to your website into customers.  Listen and build a better experience.

Get a 360 degree view of visitors:

  • Listen – On your website, through onsite search, via surveys.
  • Learn – From offsite information and CRM.
  • Act – Email, Direct Mail, and use behavioral targeting.

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