User Experience Drives Success – A BuyersGap Analysis

An online user’s experience will instantaneously make or break a sales funnel.  People inherently want things to be as easy and therefore small businesses must focus on improving the user experience.  Loquantur is a business communication systems company that has built a business around exceptional customer service in all aspects, but its online presence did not match this high level of assistance.  This summary of the BuyersGap analysis explains how improving the user experience drives success in the early stages of the sales funnel.

Background on Loquantur

Loquantur’s success has come from helping small businesses make improvements in managing their cloud-based phone systems.  They have grown by focusing on creating a great customer experience and in return, receiving referrals from their satisfied clients.  However, they recently decided to revamp their website and branding to draw in more opportunities.

John Farhat, Loquantur CEO, recently explained that user experience is the main focus of his business. “Many businesses struggle with their phone systems – voice quality and performance issues, technical issues that take too long to get resolved, ‘nickel and diming’ from the customers’ existing providers, and so on.” He understood the importance of good user experience from his side of the business but had not considered the value of it in his online presence.

Finding the Gaps

The point here is very simple.  Poor user experiences drive customers away from some companies while providing opportunities for those that can provide a better experience.To drive new customers, Loquantur decided to focus on one of the most important marketing tools a business can have; a user-friendly website. About halfway through the design, BuyersGap approached them to participate in a live beta test. Initially, the founders were not interested. The savviest decision-makers have heard this pitch before right? The “Free Analysis” is nothing more than a disguised sales pitch. However, when they learned about the unique technique that BuyersGap uses, their curiosity was piqued.

The BuyersGap’s approach is to educate clients about their deficiencies in current marketing strategies. They leverage focus groups to mimic a “real customer,” evaluating and documenting their overall user experience with a company’s online presence.

Being almost 75% complete with its website overhaul, John explains, “We had never seen anything like a BuyersGap Analysis before, and we had to test it. Of course, we want to know what our audience thought about the new design!”

In this scenario, the BuyersGap focus group consisted of small business owners (Loquantur’s target audience) to complete the surveys. The analysis began. 

The Problem

When you’re rebranding or overhauling a website, it can be easy to get caught up in the hype. It is exciting to get a new website. It’s a representation of you and all of the hard work you have put into your company. However, you must remember that the website and/or brand isn’t only for you. To be truly successful, it must be appealing to your audience. There IS such a thing as too many bells and whistles. Even something as simple as a color scheme can be off-putting to the general public. “We focus on analyzing the real experiences and identifying the gaps that cause people to move away from your company’s website and social media outlets,” explains BuyersGap Founder, Phillip Tuckwiller.
Here is an excerpt from Loquantur’s BuyersGap Analysis. This information was provided by a small business owner participating in the focus group, specifically referring to their website.

Way too busy. From the moment I went to the site, the pop-up window was asking me for my email, the text was spinning at the top, the text was sliding in from the side, pictures were popping out, there are things moving all over it, and it’s distracting! I would start reading and scroll down a little and then my attention was drawn to something else moving so I lost focus on what I was reading about.

The Outcome

BuyersGap also focuses on the overall experience, not just the aesthetics of the website/social media platforms. The final question in the BuyersGap survey asks, “Did your overall experience build enough trust to contact this company?” This one question alone provides a tremendous amount of valuable information to a business. If your audience does not trust your web presence, how can you get them to connect with you, call you, or become a lead?

Here is one response to this question regarding Loquantur’s overall online presence.

No. Although the testimonials seem to calm my fears of converting to a new phone system, I feel like the people at Loquantur are going to be high-pressure, and I don’t like that.

This is not at all true; Loquantur is more about customer service than they are sales. However, their website did not portray this to an average visitor, and the prospect had no desire to learn more. Perceptions and feelings that create distrust will immediately have a visitor looking for another company to meet their needs.

“User experience is extremely important to us. Finding out that our website represented high-pressure sales helped us refocus our efforts.” John says. “We also eliminated a lot of the action to allow our users to focus on the content.”

Moving Forward

If you trust that user experience drives success and would like to see what a BuyersGap Analysis can do for your business, click the link below.  What does a quick internet search of your business say?  Try a free BuyersGap Analysis today!