What is a friction point and how does it affect your business in Singapore?
The website design industry in Singapore has grown tremendously over the last couple of years.
We have seen more businesses invest in responsive websites that give customers easy access to their products, services, and even customer care team.
As a business owner in Singapore, there are many things that you can do to encourage website visitors to make a purchase.
However, if you are not careful, flaws on the website can push away potential customers.
The flaws are commonly referred to as friction points. In many cases, the website developers in Singapore and business owners do not realize that they exist until A/B tests and a comprehensive website audit are done.
Simply put, friction points are the main reasons why potential customers are reluctant to move through your sales funnel.
What is a Friction Point?
Understanding what a friction point is will help you to analyze your Singapore business website and make the necessary changes.
This is any variable, user behaviour trend, or variable that is holding your business back.
It curtails your Singapore business sales cycle.
Before we proceed to look at the various plausible friction points, it is important to note that friction can arise from the most subtle details on your Singapore website.
Here are some of the common friction points on websites in Singapore.
-
Length of Landing Page
The landing page is designed for a specific purpose such as to motivate the client to purchase a product, signup to your emailing list, or contact the support team.
The length of the landing page is one of the friction points on a majority of business websites in Singapore.
By length of the landing page, we mean the amount of information and content that you share with your website visitors. Friction occurs when you share too much or too little information.
As a Singapore business owner who is determined to grow your business online, you need to identify a happy medium to convey the intended message to the target customers effectively.
Most Singapore marketers tend to gravitate towards the opposite ends of the spectrum.
The secret to finding the right balance is by continuously carrying out A/B tests on your landing pages. In some instances, companies that sell complex products record a high conversion rate from longer landing pages.
However, a long landing page does not always yield positive results, as it can scare away potential customers by making your product or offer to look too complicated.
On the other hand, if the landing page is too short, a section of your customers might think that your Singapore business is potentially untrustworthy or unprofessional.
How do you identify the happy medium?
One of the guaranteed ways of identifying the happy medium is by carrying out qualitative research to know what the potential customers care about when deciding to do business with your brand.
Talk with customers, interview prospects, and run feedback surveys to understand your audience.
Ideally, the homepage and landing page should convey exactly what your target customers need to know about your Singapore business in the most distilled form possible.
Answer the questions about issues or topics that your customers care about and distil your answers into the most straightforward possible forms.
Clients who want in-depth details about the product will visit the FAQ page, case studies, knowledge centre and other sections of the website that offers additional information.
They cannot locate these sections of your website if the homepage, landing pages, and site navigation are not properly optimized.
-
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is one of the terminologies that you will come across as you continue to venture into website design and development in Singapore.
What is cognitive dissonance?
This is a scenario where the marketing messages, ads, and landing pages do not make sense.
Keep in mind that the heart of your Singapore online marketing campaign is how the moving parts come together to ensure that the set goals are achieved.
In a perfect world, everything in the campaign – themes, long-form content, images, product, and service descriptions would flow harmoniously.
However, it is challenging to connect and communicate with every audience.
There is always the possibility of a disconnect between the message you intended to pass and how the audience interprets it.
Copying what your competitors are doing is not advisable as there are subtle details about your Singapore brand that set it apart from other companies even though you might be offering the same product or service.
What you need to understand and keep in mind always when designing your website in Singapore or creating a marketing campaign is that your brand’s tone, style, and personality is different from other companies.
The values of your customer base are also different from your competitors.
The opposite of cognitive dissonance is cognitive fluency.
What is cognitive fluency?
Simply put, cognitive fluency is ensuring that your Singapore business website is easy to read and interpret.
One surest way of achieving this goal is by making sure the site is fully responsive.
Customers in the country and abroad should be able to access the website on multiple devices seamlessly.
-
The Subconscious
Online customers in Singapore are driven or motivated to do business with a brand by their instincts.
As much as we like to believe that our conscious thoughts motivate us to take a particular action, the truth is that our emotional brains have a major impact on our actions.
In most cases, logic is not enough to communicate with the target audience.
You have to create an emotional bond with potential customers by appealing to their senses, instincts, and intuition.
Delight is one of the important variables that you can count on to eliminate friction on your website.
Here are four simple steps that you can take to build delight for your Singapore business:
-
- Define your brand
- Idea storm/brainstorm
- Understand the pain points of your customers
- Keep track of everything
-
Customer Testimonials and Reviews
One of the downsides of doing business online is that customers are always sceptical about a brand and what it offers especially the first time they do business with it.
This friction point often discourages a significant number of potential customers from converting especially if the content on the website does not address their questions, needs, and expectations.
You can easily ease the target customers’ fears when they land on your website for the first time and pave a path with the footsteps of customers who have visited before and made a purchase.
That is, use customer testimonials and reviews to increase the credibility of your assertion that the product or service you are providing is legit.
Nowadays, Singapore customers are independent and self-directed.
By the time they land on your website, they already know what they want to buy and by the time they contact the sales representative or fill out the lead generation form, they are already ready to convert.
10 No-Fail Tips for Improving E-Commerce Shopping Experience
Eliminating friction points on your e-commerce website will impact your sales figures positively.
The above tips just scratch the surface of how to enhance the website. Here are 10 additional tips on how to improve the e-commerce shopping experience.
-
Make the Checkout Process Interactive
Making the checkout process interactive will position your e-commerce website for success.
The interactive aspect will make your website different from other similar service or product service providers.
The more interactive your website is, the more memorable it will be to your customers.
You don’t have to install fancy features, a simple improvement such as adding a feature that allows customers to virtually try the product will have a major impact on your business.
Ensure that such features are accessible and fully functional on not only desktop but also mobile devices to get the most results.
-
Install a Live Chat Feature
Nowadays, there are advanced chatbots that are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Installing them on your e-commerce website will foster communication and ensure customer queries are responded to promptly.
Note that keeping customers waiting for a response for more than one hour is a remedy for disaster.
Feed the chatbots with answers to frequently asked questions. The questions should only be relayed to the support team if the chatbots are unable to answer them comprehensively or the customers need additional information.
Set it to send prompt notifications to the support team in real-time to further improve the quality of customer service.
If the customers send queries outside the normal working hours, the support team should get an email of all unanswered queries immediately after they log in to the system the following day.
-
Leverage Social Media Platforms
Facebook and Instagram allow businesses to create custom shops that customers can visit to shop without living on the social media mobile application.
These shops are fully customisable and accessible on both desktop and mobile.
Get ahead of the curve by creating these shops and integrating them with your existing social media accounts.
Inform your followers that they can now buy the products directly from the shops to create a buzz and increase sales.
More importantly, use social media to not only market your e-commerce store but also to supercharge your brand awareness efforts. Use the platforms to connect with potential customers at a personal level.
Creating a human touch will show them that your brand is credible and there is a team of professionals on the other side of the pool working tirelessly to ensure their needs and expectations are met.
Go the extra mile to also share important information about your products and brand such as upcoming promotions and new products.
All these actions will work in tandem for the good of your e-commerce website.
-
Add User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content has an immense potential of convincing customers who are on the fence to convert.
The reason why most e-commerce websites record a high cart abandonment rate is that there isn’t enough information on the website to convince them to buy.
Understand that online customers trust reviews from real customers more than reviews written by the in-house marketing team. They consider them as personal recommendations.
Therefore, work on getting many positive reviews from customers to improve your credibility and reputation.
Use the reviews to enhance the shopping experience by displaying them at different stages of the check-out process.
The UGC doesn’t necessarily have to be text, it can be a short video of a satisfied customer using the product.
Since most people make purchases via smartphone, make sure that the content is optimised to be accessible on different devices.
-
Offer Cheap and Fast Shipping
If you have been actively involved in e-commerce, you know valuable efficient shipping is to online customers. They gravitate towards brands that offer fast and cheap shipping.
Understand that customers may be happy with the product, but if it takes days for you to deliver it, the whole shopping experience will be ruined.
Avoid such scenarios by making the necessary shipping plans to ensure that products are delivered to customers promptly.
For example, partner with local shipping agencies that are known to offer cheap and efficient shipping services.
You can also opt to offer free shipping to customers whose total order value exceeds a certain threshold. However, make sure that you don’t cut yourself too thin – the cost of shipping should be included in the quoted price of the product.
The bottom line is; that it’s impossible to offer a quality online shopping experience if the shipping process is in tatters.
Partnering with the best order fulfilment or shipping agency will ensure that you offer the best shipping to customers.
The agency will handle all the logistics thereby freeing up your schedule for other equally important chores.
-
Eliminate Friction Points in the Checkout Process
Earlier on, we described friction points as hindrances in the checkout process that discourages potential customers to complete purchases.
Do A/B tests and use website visitor recording software to monitor how customers interact with your e-commerce website.
Take note of the stages where most of the cart abandoners leave the site and improve them to get better results.
A smooth and easy checkout process will result in more sales as returning and new customers will be able to buy products quickly and without necessarily contacting the support team.
-
Offer Multiple Payment Methods
One of the main reasons why customers exit a page without buying is due to the lack of the preferred payment method or gateway.
Do extensive market research to know the best payment gateways and include them on your website.
Conduct surveys to know which payment methods your target customers prefer.
The gateways should run on encrypted servers that are tamper-proof and capable of processing transactions in real-time.
Also, the gateways should have an analytics page to help you monitor sales and get other insights into the performance of your e-commerce website.
Avoid payment methods that have a negative reputation to cushion your customers and business from security breaches.
Make your e-commerce futuristic by adding a cryptocurrency payment method to endear your brands to millions of people who prefer shopping using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
-
Upload High-Quality Product Images and Videos
Content is King when designing and optimising an online store.
However, the content doesn’t have to only be text-based. Science has proven that the human brain processes visuals faster and more efficiently than blocks of text.
Therefore, as you work on offering the best e-commerce shopping experience to your customers, consider adding high-quality photos and videos of your products.
Make the visuals as descriptive as possible to spark interest and encourage the customers to buy, do more research about them, or contact the support team for more information.
For example, instead of a length review explaining how a product works, you can record a high-definition video for that purpose.
Make sure that you discuss all the important details and offer hacks to help the customers get maximum benefits from it.
You could also request customers to send videos of themselves using the product. Use such content to spice up your landing pages.
You can also use user-generated videos for social media marketing.
Also, consider filming and posting tutorial videos to not only show potential customers how your product or service works but also to increase your reach. YouTube is the largest video-sharing platform today.
Post the tutorials there and on other platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.
In particular, Instagram allows businesses to record longer videos and post them as Reels and Stories. Include text overlays to grasp the users’ attention as well as links in the description to direct potential customers to the landing page where they can learn more about the product and buy.
-
Include a Search Feature
Customers are often in a rush to complete purchases.
They have already done their research and have decided to buy the product or subscribe to the service. What now remains is for you to make it easy for them to find the products or services and buy.
Make the process easy by including a search feature on the product catalogue page or homepage.
If possible the search bar should be static on the main navigation menu and strategically positioned. They shouldn’t have to contact the support team to find it.
-
Dot the Landing and Product Pages with CTA Buttons
How do you inform potential customers of the next step they should take after landing on your website?
Include CTA buttons.
These buttons should be optimised to direct the customers to the right landing page or the checkout page.
The secret to having high-performing CTA buttons lies in selecting the right colours.
Ideally, use colours that evoke positive emotions to encourage the web visitors to take the desired actions. The colour selected should also make the CTA button pop out from the website background and theme.
Red is best for creating a sense of urgency and eliciting excitement, blue evokes optimising, while green means go or eco-friendly. Check out this article we recently posted on how to use different colours on landing pages.
Before we proceed to the next e-commerce shopping experience hack, it’s important to point out that you should do A/B tests to know which colours work best with your CTA buttons.
Also, monitor the results you achieve when you place the buttons at different sections of the page.
This information will greatly help to craft high-performing landing pages and enhance the overall shopping experience.
-
Ensure The Website is 100% Mobile-Friendly
Most people prefer browsing sites and shopping online via smartphones and other mobile devices. Today, a whopping 79% of customers buy products and subscribe to services via a mobile device.
Therefore, you cannot afford to ignore the mobile traffic to your e-commerce website if you want to rival giant companies such as Amazon and eBay.
Google and other search engines rank mobile-friendly websites better than static websites.
A high ranking results in more organic traffic and consequently more sales.
Invest in an e-commerce website theme that is responsive and 100% mobile-friendly.
Confirm how the different pages and features are displayed on different devices before the website goes live to offer a quality shopping experience to this ever-increasing group of customers.
A/B testing will enable you to make informed decisions on which elements to improve or delete from the pages.
-
Create a Mobile App
Earlier on, we discussed how social media platforms allow brands to create custom shops that customers can buy products from as they scroll through their news feeds.
Go the extra mile to create a mobile application that they can download and install to not only learn more about your products but also buy.
That way, they will be able to securely buy products while on the go and without visiting the desktop version of your website.
Make sure that the mobile application is secure and devoid of ads from third parties to avoid ruining the shopping experience. Leverage mobile app marketing best practices to head the competition and accrue more sales.
We also recommend hiring an ethical hacker to test your mobile app for vulnerabilities that can be used by hackers to steal personal data.
Be sure to apply the recommendations made by the ethical hacker and continuously update the app to make it secure.
-
Proofread On-Site Content
Failing to proofread the content on your website will paint a negative image of your brand to potential customers.
Simple mistakes can ruin the experience by relaying the wrong information to the customers.
Avoid such issues by taking the time to carefully proofread the content before publishing.
Otherwise, if the content is full of typos and grammar errors, some of the customers may perceive your brand as unprofessional and head over to your competitors’ websites.
Use the above tips to improve your e-commerce shopping experience today.
Hire us, MediaOne Marketing, to optimise your e-commerce website and conduct digital marketing campaigns.
Our team has years of experience and will use all their expertise and resources to create a high-performing e-commerce website for your brand.
Call us today on +65 6789 9852 for more details. We look forward to hearing from you.
Final Thoughts
Friction points on Singapore websites stem from frustration and confusion.
In most cases, clients opt to close the tab and visit a competitor instead of spending more time to truly understand what a company offers.
If you are to succeed in eliminating friction points is by keep things simple.
Your website design and content should not overload your clients.
Let us help you identify the friction points in your website design and content marketing strategy today. Contact our team today for a free and no-obligation consultation session.