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The Secret to Successful User Journeys

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Creating an engaging, friction-free digital journey for every customer (and indeed, all your stakeholders) is more than a ‘nice-to-have’.

It’s at the heart of attracting and retaining customer loyalty, building your market share, nurturing a brand promise in your own digital community, creating advocacy and ambassadorship – and getting the best possible return on your digital investment.

In our previous article we started to explore the pillars you can put in place to create an exceptional digital experience – with a streamlined and intuitive user journey at the very core of this. We discovered that in a world of ever-greater choice (and distraction), the onus is on organisations to make customer interaction as easy and engaging as possible – whether the user is looking to make a purchase, access some information or simply complete a task online.

It’s crucial, therefore, to invest in optimising these journeys for maximum accessibility, engagement and satisfaction – the three broad measures that ultimately deliver you a larger and more loyal customer base ….

“Optimise user journeys for maximum accessibility, engagement and satisfaction”           

A common issue we see when organisations aren’t getting the results they expect is that user journeys haven’t been built around real-world needs, motivations, expectations and behaviours – instead, they’re based on assumptions made by the business or (worse), internal models that haven’t been externally validated.

This can result in everything from overlong paths to complete common goals and complex or unclear steps, all the way down to the language used across menus and other navigation elements – which may be full of industry jargon and not aligned with how customers think, talk or act.

User research activities play a vital role in overcoming these issues, by providing a picture of what your audience really looks like, what they want and need from your organisation, and how they prefer to go about getting this.

Of course, these days it’s not just a single channel you have to deal with – and customers will rarely take a linear route to achieve their goals. Users today can select from a wide range of tools to find the one that’s most appropriate for their particular situation, from sites and applications that can be accessed on a range of platforms and devices (and third-party social network services), to more traditional channels such as call centres and physical spaces.

“Understanding the full picture – through customer experience mapping – enables you to give customers the right information at the right time”

It’s important to get a view of the full picture, to make sure that the experience is consistent across channels and that data is shared effectively, so that customers are presented with the right information at the right time.

At Box UK we often conduct customer experience mapping to build this picture for our clients, presenting journeys in a highly visual way to identify clear actions and opportunities for improvement.

It’s also important to remember that optimising user journeys is not a ‘one and done’ activity – requirements and opportunities are evolving all the time, and as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, things can change at a moment’s notice.

By delving into your analytics – as well as gathering direct feedback from customers – you’ll be able to continuously improve your offering and build a deep understanding of what makes your audience tick, to guide your future decisions.

Our expert team of User Experience & Design (UX&D) consultants have extensive experience across a range of disciplines – working with client organisations in all sectors to make sure they’re delivering the best possible user journeys. If you’re interested in finding out more about how we can help you and your journey, contact us on +44 (0)29 2022 8822 or email [email protected].

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Established in 1998, Box UK’s track record of success spans hundreds of high-priority and mission-critical software projects, delivered over more than twenty years.

A focus on heavy-use, multi-user platforms has given us deep experience in creating scalable, resilient and high-transaction systems for clients across the globe.

With an enterprise pedigree and a passion for technology, Box UK offers an unrivalled depth and breadth of experience in the development of scalable and resilient software systems – managing these full-lifecycle projects right the way through from planning to post-launch platform management.

Working with local, national and international organisations across a broad range of industries, our team of developers, solution architects, UX consultants, system engineers and product owners has built up an impressive portfolio of successful and award-winning projects.

We also excel in rescuing legacy projects, developing proofs-of-concept, embedding cultural and behavioural change via the implementation of agile, and conducting strategic analysis of your existing technology (or marketplace) to enable future decision-making.

 

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