Listen to your customer
by fishingfordesign on october 1st, 2009

Thanks to the feedback that I receive from people who visit my website, I can continue to improve the shopping experience at Fishing For Design. I would be lying if I said that I love to receive negative feedback, but actually these emails help me to concentrate on those aspects of the website that need working on. This article is to illustrate how feedback from others can help you to improve your website.

The first email I received from a unhappy visitor was in the first month of trading. The visitor, let's call him Steve, was unhappy about my checkout process and claimed that I would lose many potential buyers if I wouldn't make any improvements. Steve explained that there were two things wrong with the checkout process. I needed to improve the way the shipping costs were displayed, and I should remove the time-consuming process of having to create an account before making a purchase.

1. Be up front about shipping costs

The first problem were the shipping costs. Because you had to create an account before you could let the system calculate the shipping costs, visitors would become impatient and leave my website. Steve explained that if the shipping costs would be displayed in the shopping basket already, people would be much happier to proceed to the checkout.

2. No need to create an account

Steve (and many others!) doesn't want to create an account before making a purchase. He wants to select a product, view the shipping costs and make the purchase. No need for filling in lengthy documents!

Listening to your customers and make improvements

I'm so happy that there are people like Steve out there who take time to send me genuine feedback and help me build a better online business. The first thing I did after reading Steve's email was contacting my website builders to address both problems. I was surprised to hear that they were not in favour of changing the login procedure, claiming that I needed account holders to collect valuable customer information. I suppose that for some businesses this account information is very valuable, but I'm more interested in making my checkout procedure as easy and quick as possible. So we agreed to take out this unnecessary step.

Secondly I asked myself what I would want when shopping for home accessories online. I decided that free shipping was probably the best option. By offering free shipping (to the UK customers) I can be 100% up front about the shipping charges. Still, if you're based outside the UK you will need to pay shipping charges, these will be based on the weight of the item and the location. You'll first have to enter your address details in the delivery form, so that the system can calculate the exact charges. Perhaps there is an easier and faster way to do this, if anybody has any suggestions please post a comment!

I emailed Steve to thank him for his feedback, and he was happy to hear that I took his advise seriously. Unfortunately he had already purchased the item at another website... Oh well, perhaps we'll see him back in the near future, I hope so!

Tags: feedback | free shipping | improve checkout procedure
by fishingfordesign
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