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To make itself harder to leave. One business in the programme was already number one in its sector nationally, had grown turnover from eight million to thirty million in five years and had tripled its profitability. It wanted an online customer experience modelled on Amazon: real-time order tracking, account areas with one-click reordering, and updates at every stage of an order. The audit researched the best e-commerce experiences in the world and how they could apply to a niche industrial product.
World-class customer experience online. Not every business in the programme was struggling. This one was number one nationally, turnover had grown from eight million to thirty million in five years and profitability had tripled. Its brief was neither "help us get found" nor "fix our website", but to understand what world-class online customer experience looks like and build it.
Because the company wanted buying to be so smooth that reordering was easier than going elsewhere. That meant real-time order tracking, customer account areas showing full order history, one-click reordering, account management without a phone call, and proactive messages at every stage from order confirmed to delivered. In a sector where most competitors had brochure websites, that was ambitious.
It started from the best rather than the basics. Instead of fixing meta descriptions, I was researching the best e-commerce experiences and mapping how their principles could apply to a niche industrial product. The questions changed: what does a customer need to see at 2am when checking whether an order will arrive on time, and how does the account dashboard work on a tablet in a warehouse? The recommendations covered integration between the website and internal systems, customer portals, automated notifications and online credit account management.
The question they ask. Across the 55 audits, the businesses at the bottom were asking whether digital mattered at all, and this one was already number one and asking how to be better. Any business can install an SEO plugin or set up Google Analytics. The difference is asking how digital can make the business harder to leave, rather than whether it is worth bothering with.
Related evidence: 55 digital audits. Here’s what I found.. Earlier in this journey: Two websites, one mission.
In this case: real-time order tracking, full order history, one-click reordering, account management without a phone call, online credit accounts and automatic updates from confirmation to delivery.
How it can make the business harder to leave. By the time a business is asking whether digital matters, its competitors have usually answered.
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