The greatest gift you can give to your competitors as an online business is a poor user experience. As we have been sharing for the past couple of weeks in articles like this and this, one of your greatest competitive advantages as an online business is an exceptional user experience. There are many reasons for that; one is the fact that the simpler and easier your product offering is, the more likely people are to both use your product, and recommend it to others to use. However, as much as a great UX has its advantages, a poor UX has immense disadvantages that can tell poorly on your business as a whole. In this piece, we’ll be sharing 5 things Bad UX can do to your online business.
5 Adverse effects of Bad UX on Your Business
There are a plethora of things bad UX can do to your online business as a whole, however, for the sake of brevity, we’ll be listing 5 major negative effects of bad UX on your business. These Include:
- LOWER CUSTOMER LIFE TIME VALUE
In the majority of cases, you’re usually not the only one who offers the product that seems to be key offering of your online business. In that case, a user could use your product or patronize your business, but after witnessing the bad UX inherent in your mobile app or website, decide against coming or revisiting your platform again, and would rather look for someone else offering the same kind of service you offer and patronize them. The end result of this is that although your investments in SEO and Display ads may have been successful at drafting in users, your poor and bad UX has been successfully able to redirect them to your competitors, therefore reducing your customer life time value.
2. POOR BRAND EQUITY
In this piece, the author claims that your brand isn’t your company logo. The author is right. Your brand as a business speaks more to the general perception users and people have of your product, solutions and your business. Your company logo is really just the face given to that perception. Every time users interact with your product, a subconscious representation of your brand image is created within them, and this brand image is what users will refer to when they talk about your business to other people or think of using a solution in the space you operate in. A horrible user experience will in all likelihood result in negative brand equity which in other words will create a bad and negative perception of your product and business in the sight of your users.
3. POOR SEO RANKING
Google reportedly announced in 2018 that slow page loading time will rank lower on its search engine results. Changes like these means that Google has no business showing its users websites with bad UX in its search results, and frankly speaking, neither should you. The summary of Google’s announcement is simple; the slower your website is, the least likely you are to have a favorable rating in Google’s search engine results. Google will probably keep you in page 3 or page 4, far away from where people can see you (people rarely ever go beyond page 2 on Google’s search result, heck most people don’t even go beyond page 1). The end result of this is that Google Search, the unofficial gateway to the internet that connects billions of people to the web and has more than 5 billion searches daily cannot organically help your business grow. That is definitely not a good position to find yourself in as an online business.
4. HIGH WEBSITE ABANDONMENT RATES
When people visit your site and can’t find what they’re looking for or have to endure huge and unnecessary wait and loading time, they’re more likely to abandon what they came to do on your site halfway and look for a competitor that offers what you offer to patronize. There are many reasons a visitor could abandon a site halfway; some may have come to compare prices between your product and another product, however, according to data around 15–30% of website abandonment is from bad UX, and if your solution is poorly designed, there is a high chance that your website abandonment statistic is above 50%, if not even 80%. The repercussions of these are massive; people visiting your site and not bothering to convert means the money you’re spending on advertising and pulling traffic to your product is obviously being wasted. High website abandonment rate in avertedly means that your customer acquisition costs are going through the roof and most of the effort invested into advertising and pulling traffic is going to waste because users are bouncing due to poor user experiences.
5. REDUCED REVENUE
One of the major end results of bad UX is that the lack of visitors eventually converting to become product users and opting to rather use a competitor will consequentially culminate into lesser revenue, and a weaker bottom line for the business. This could in the long run lead to a business becoming grossly unprofitable and eventually having to close down.
CONCLUSION
Bad UX is a mistake and error no business should make. It has the ability to both negate the marketing and advertising budget of a business, and ultimately lead to its shut down. Any business that wants to be successful must place an undue focus on giving its users a great user experience.
