Online, as in life, timing is everything
We can get pretty caught up in how long it takes a page to load. And with good reason — fast page loads are important in keeping your customer's attention. But what about 1 minute later? 10 minutes later? A recent article by Jakob Neilsen suggests that website owners need to think beyond the speed of a page load.
At seconds and fractions of a second, time spent on a website task is primarily about the interaction between you and the computer. How does this menu work? Can I click that button? Why is nothing happening?! A good design/development team can help you sort out those details, and provide a look and feel that gets a immediate positive reaction.
Beyond a few seconds the game changes and becomes less about the customer's interaction with the machine that is your website, and more about their experience with your business.
1 day is the maximum turnaround for customer service requests, although you should send transactional email and confirmation messages within 1 minute to keep users from wondering whether their action — such as a purchase or address change — has been received correctly.
The difference here is that users assume that customer service requires human intervention, so they don't think the computer is broken if they don't hear back within 1 minute. Faster service is still appreciated, of course.
If you're getting started on a website project, don't forget factor in how you intend to support the actions you expect customers take on the site. If your customer purchases an item, what happens next? If they submit a request, who will respond? How soon? Without your expertise about your customer and their habits and expectations, your website really is just a dumb machine. Even if it is really speedy.
Phil Hertzler | 11.23.09 | 0 comment(s)
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