How a smooth UX drives sales

By Kate Ashley-Norman, director, Vast PR.

With several teenagers in my house butting up against the age of 17, it was time to invest in a small car for them.

The following story highlights the power of the UX – user experience – in the decision to purchase. Having narrowed down our choice between two distinct car brands, our final decision was not financial, but emotive, after visiting the showrooms.

One brand couldn’t answer basic questions, made us feel uncomfortable and awkward, left us for long periods of time and made us feel as though we were an irritant.

The other brand was warm and welcoming, made us feel appreciated, answered every question competently, and the entire process was smooth from start to finish.

No prizes for guessing which brand we opted to buy, even though it was slightly more expensive.

Despite its original digital provenance – UX was a phrase coined by Apple in the 1990s to describe how users interact with digital interfaces.

Today the UX (or CX – customer experience) covers the full spectrum of customer interaction, both digital and physical. A good UX starts from the very first moment your potential customer comes across your product, right through to the weeks or more following purchase.

It’s a journey, and the better the journey – even with bumps and potholes along the way – the more successful the outcome.

Those seeking a solution to a problem will most likely turn to sources of information such as Google in their initial search. But don’t ignore what might feed that initial search in the first place – whether it is a recommendation from a neighbour, an advert on local radio, or curiosity about an installation spotted on the drive to the supermarket – whatever seed is sown, it is usually fed into a search engine. This is why good SEO (search engine optimisation) is so important.

This is the start of the UX. The next leg is to encourage that prospect to give you their name and contact details so that you can start to nurture their interest. How easily contactable are you? Do you have email and telephone numbers on your website (you’d be surprised how difficult these can be to find sometimes). How do you respond to enquiries? How often do you follow up?

Other pit stops on that journey include:

• Your showroom: Do you have one? Is it easily found? Is it warm and welcoming? Does it flow towards helping the potential customer make a decision? Can you park easily?
• Communications: Are all comms clear and on brand? Does each touchpoint ease the journey further on? Can you speak to a real person?
• Product demos: Are your sales teams punctual, professional, and representative of you as a company? Do they have the right range of product samples to help ease the sales process? Are they equipped with the right tools to help in the decision making?
• Installation: Is your fitting team clean and courteous? Is communication reliable and informative? Is your company represented well through branding on clothing, vans, and installation boards?
• After sales: Do you supply after sales support and documentation in a well branded, easy to use manner? Is the customer given a full product demo? Do you carry out follow up calls just to see how the customer is getting on? Are you creating opportunities to make further sales on other product ranges?

Every pit stop along the journey, every touchpoint, is an opportunity to eliminate objections and build that ‘know-like-trust’ element in the buying process. And as much as they help to break down objections, if there is an unease along the way they can also contribute towards building barriers to a sale.

At the centre of it all is your (potential) customer, and how they are feeling. And while there may be, as stated earlier, bumps and potholes along the way, your ability to deal with these bumps and potholes is more important than the fact that they exist. In fact, they could be an opportunity for you to demonstrate the care and attention you give to your customers.

Our experience in the two different car showrooms were part of a long UX journey which led us to those two particular car brands. The one that didn’t get our money was the one at which the UX didn’t match up to what we had experienced to date. When reviewing your marketing, understanding each pit stop along that journey will help you to identify where you may be going wrong, and where improvements can be made.