User Experience for Brick & Mortar

Have you seen this sign UX before? What does it mean for the online marketers and web developers? It is the gold standard of which the developers of the world live by. They take pride in understanding every metric that enhances your experience on a site or on the web in general. I could go into all the analytics that include click through rates, conversion rates, A/B testing, psychological factors like color, and user friendliness, but that's another article for another day. What this article will focus on, is the brick and mortar companies opportunity to take advantage of every customer contact possible(customer experience), just like developers do with their web development approach. Let's take a look at how you can improve your user or customer experience in general, for your brick and mortar establishment.

First, it starts with you, your staff, and the overall look and feel of your business. You can compare this to the first 10 seconds on a web page. Think of this as the interlude of a great movie and you are watching a trailer. We all have media coming at us at light speed, but we all take time to look at a great movie every now and again. My wife and I will look at the trailers all the time, and determine if we will watch the movie. More times than not, we decide if we are going to watch the movie based on the trailer, before we give the movie a chance to develop. This instinct is a natural approach for all humans, we decide in the first 10-15 seconds if a particular business is a place we can see ourselves shopping at, eating at, getting medical services at, or patronizing in general. Your ability to prepare your staff and yourself to the highest level of the patrons expectations is key to their initial customer/user experience. The secret to this, is not really a secret at all. It sums up the quality of leadership of the business. The level of approach on how they pay their staff, how they support their staff, and how they acknowledge their staff's effort with empathy, will determine the overall culture. You will notice the difference in the companies who do not do this well and those who do; think of Chik-Fil-A for example. Now that you know your first point of improving your customer experience starts with you your team and the overall look and feel of your business, you can begin to develop a strategy that improves your customer's experience. Check this article out on how to improve company culture in 2019. "Improve Company Culture"

Second, is understanding how customers feel when they patronize your brick and mortar establishment. How do you gauge this element of user/customer experience within the cycle of your customer's shopping journey? The first question is, how do you feel when you visit similar establishments. There is no black and white approach here, but there are techniques that are referenced in the above article; as it applies to your customer's journey. You have to be opened minded and perceptive to what it is your customers want to see and when they want to see it. Whether it is point of purchase marketing, in store feel good targeting, familiarity, comfort, or incentive based strategies, none of those give you an insight on how your customers feel shopping or patronizing at your establishment. Let's look at how developers build their strategy of UX. First, they use analytical and historically proven data that dictates what the user will expect when they visit a site. Developers take into consideration speed of upload, mobile responsiveness, ease of use, simple call to actions, and valuable content; just to name a few critical metrics. You can do this as well, why try to re-create the wheel if you don't have too.

Think of up load speed as how long it takes for you and your team to acknowledge the first customer that comes in the door or how well they can access your product without you if they wish, it just works(Amazon). What gets lost in our passive society is the fact that, people want to be noticed or not noticed depending on your product and business model, especially if they are thinking of spending their hard earned money at your place of business. Second, think of mobile responsiveness as current technology. Can your customers purchase your product online, or can they pre-purchase and pick up their orders without a lot of interaction with your team? Think of Starbucks or Amazon! Although, they may not want to talk to you or your team, when they do, it should be the best conversation possible(Culture) and customer service. Number two, is basically implementing the right technology that improves your patron's experience, but also having a balanced amount of human interaction that can enhance that experience overtime. The next part of the developers approach in this article; which is valuable content, comes down to branding. What is your brand position for your product. Is it for the more affluent, the middle, or the lower level shopper? What do people think of when they think of your brand? How do you know your brand position and enhance that position overtime?

Next, is ease of use or in your case, how well do you on board your customers or bring them up to speed when it comes to your specials or new product lines. Sometimes businesses forget how to acknowledge the difficulty of a special. For example, you have to download 3 things or go to an outdated website to get a coupon that has expired when they get to your physical business. All of these negative interactions can play a huge role in a customer returning or becoming a negative billboard for your company. The last item, is call to actions. How clear is your messaging when you do have something you want the customer to see and act on? If you go to a place of business and see a special, how rewarding is it, if the special gives you more than what you bargained for. You feel like you got a great deal. Every business does not run specials of course, but every business has some form of call to actions. If your call to actions do not line up with the continuation of the physical act, you will lose the customer, and future customers do to this gap in communication. Be clear on what you want your customer to do, and honor things you said you would.

Start thinking in terms of "how do I feel when I visit a place like I own", and you will start to understand what it is that make customers return and become life long customers. Another key is to have some form of qualitative research like surveys, that ask a few simple questions. This simple yet effective approach, gives you a measurable view of your customers perception of your business. Do not forget to give a gift of an incentive for the patron to complete the survey, otherwise it will go in the trash or they will not click the link. The survey also should not be more than 5 questions. Do you like filling out surveys that are longer? I didn't think so. The analytical behavior triggers may be tougher to execute, because you do not have the database web developers have to analyze all the digital data(Google Analytics), but you do have tools that can enhance your ability to gauge your customer's shopping journey that are mentioned in this article. You also may have a website that can benefit from using google analytics to drive customers to your physical location.

Lastly, decide who your target market is and determine how they interact with your business when they are not physically there. In today's marketing environment, your business will be discussed on over 20 different platforms each day. Your business reputation is key to getting more customers in the door. This aspect of customer/user experience is very important and has a direct correlation on how well brick and mortar companies can go over and beyond expectations or fail miserably at each point of interaction.

"In the U.S., more than 81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchase decisions. On top of that, nearly 50% of people who do local searches visit a store within one day." Source: www.fundera.com

One angry customer will tell 10 people, and those 10 people will discuss their negative interactions with your business on social media and to their friends. You want each customer to be a positive walking billboard for your company. Referrals from someone we trust are 4 times morel likely to be followed up on whether they are positive referrals or negative ones. The customer or client will act as your marketing team if their experience with your company is above average. This is what we call "word of mouth" and digital reputation transcendence. Your store has hours, but your store's reputation is 24/7- 365 days a year.