Whenever you offer an online service to your customers there is a range of issues to prepare for. This guide will give you a starting point for the crucial areas to prepare your website, app or another interactive system, for maximum customer satisfaction.
Cultural awareness and Diversity
Now you are working online you expose your brand to all the cultures and diversity of the UK and also the world. There are differences in values and needs between different cultures.
Cultural differences need to be taken into account when a business sets up a website or social media accounts whether or not they are intended for overseas markets.
Considering other people’s cultures and differences lets you offer your product to a larger audience, making you more money.
Some things may be illegal in other countries or may not be appropriate.
Consider language differences. An English word might be positive in the UK and negative in another country. You might write about 'rooting around' to find something in the UK or the US but in Australia and New Zealand this refers to sex. In the US pants mean trousers but here it means underwear, so don't misunderstand your American customers and business partners. See 8 English words you should never use abroad.
Adding different language options on your apps and websites will help expand the audience.
Research your target country's different
- ways of buying and doing business,
- time differences,
- religious rules,
- diminished diversity,
- fear of environmental effect
- political power of multinational companies
Some countries are more accepting of the LGBTQ community. An example of this could be the games developer and publisher Bethesda’s regional Twitter pages. In some countries, they have the pride flag on their logo, but not in countries where it might not be received kindly.
Cultural awareness and diversity in the UK
As you will know, for many years some communities were excluded from mainstream life in the UK. Increased cultural awareness not only supports more people from different backgrounds but also benefits businesses if handled sensitively.
Inclusivity
To be competitive, organisations need everyone who works for them to make their best contribution. Increasingly, employers recognise the importance of inclusion and diversity in recruiting and retaining the skills and talent they need.
Spending two weeks with my parents reminded me how important ethical marketing is.
— Amalia Fowler (she/her) (@AmaliaEFowler) January 1, 2022
Make it easy to unsubscribe. Make it clear you are an ad. Write instructions that are easy for all to understand.
Your brand may depend on it as your core group ages.
To summarise, you must make reasonable adjustments to include more people because:
- You'll gain extra customers.
- Your company reputation will increase for working with customers and other businesses.
- It's the law.
- It's the right thing to do ethically as well.
There are 9 protected characteristics that your business must not discriminate against by not being flexible with facilities or employment:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- marriage and civil partnership
A partnership is an organisation owned by two or more people... More - pregnancy and maternity
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
This video summarises what these mean in practice:
Click for transcript of this video
Find out more information about how this affects business:
- The Equality and Human Rights Commission: Protected characteristics
- UK Government: Equality Act 2010: how it might affect you
Accessibility
The impact of disability is radically changed on the Web because it removes barriers to communication and interaction that many people face in the physical world.
This gives you access to more customers but not if your website is badly designed!
Discover the effect of accessibility barriers and how they can be avoided in these stories of people with disabilities using websites: Stories of Web Users
All systems should have an interface that is easy for everybody to use. An accessible website can help people with disabilities engage more actively with your business. Here are a few examples of this:
- Use alt text for images on websites so they can be read by a blind person's screen reading software.
- The text colour should be in contrast to the background colour to make it easier to read. Avoid red and blue as well. Dark against light or vice versa is best. Better still, let them choose the colours.
- Some fonts are particularly hard to read for people with dyslexia. See Best Fonts for Dyslexia and Why They Work
- Videos should come with subtitles and audio should come with a transcript for those who are deaf or hearing impaired.
Win-Win! An accessible website is often one of the easiest ways to do business with many people with disabilities, for instance, people who cannot read print material, people who have difficulty going to a physical store, for mobility or mental health reasons.
Making your website usable by customers with mobility impairments
Some of your potential customers cannot use a mouse. They may rely on the keyboard to interact with your website. Users with mobility impairments can use the keyboard or on assistive technologies and strategies that depend on keyboard commands, such as voice input.
"Accessible websites enable people to access all content and functionality — links, forms, media controls, etc. — through a keyboard." Easy Checks – Interaction
Making your website and documents accessible to blind and partially sighted customers
Implementing functions such as text-to-speech, colour-blindness settings, and captions to support the needs of people with disabilities, make your websites and documents more accessible to a wider audience.
People who are blind rely on the keyboard or on assistive technologies and strategies that rely on keyboard commands.
Check out what happens when you ignore this when you put links on your website!
This is why headings are so important:
See BBC Academy - How to Design for Screen Readers
Accessibility Guides
Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility - covers image text alternatives ("alt text"), text, interaction and alternatives to audio and video. Includes other helpful tools.
Listen to this audio clip from BBC Digital Planet that explains accessible designplanning of new services, as well as changes and improvement... More really well:
Transcript BBC Digital Planet on Accessibility on the Web
See also:
- BBC: How to design for accessibility
- WACG Introduction to Web Accessibility
- RNIB Navigation and communication - A guide to the various apps and tools available to blind and partially sighted users when it comes to navigating around and communicating with the world.
Social Media Tailored for blind and partially sighted audiences
What social media do blind people use? Lots. A huge proportion has been using it for years.
- How accessible is social media if you have a visual impairment? (2019)
- Facebook - Facebook Accessibility for Users with Visual Impairments (From 2015)
- Instagram – Video: How blind people use Instagram
- Twitter - little-known twitter feature can help blind and visually impaired people use the site (2017)
- Reddit - Why Reddit has become a favorite [sic] social media platform for many blind and visually impaired people (2020)
Make it better:
RNIB Making your social media accessible
More on Accessible Social Media
Here's a 30 minute tutorial on making your social media accessible by social media adviser Alexa Heinrich. Find her quick tips on Twitter @HashtagHeyAlexa and get more advice from her website Alexa Heinrich: Accessibility on Social Media
Adhering to Guidelines, Policies and Regulatory Requirements
No matter the industry or company size, all businesses must adhere to certain laws and regulations as part of operationsTo make sure that IT services are delivered effectively and ... More. Regulatory complianceThe action or fact of following a standard or a policy. Comp... More, in fact, deals with a set of guidelines that the law requires organizations to follow. Following these will keep you on the right side of the law and will make the business and company look good.
Guidelines, policies and regulatory requirements are made by governments, councils and watchdogs to make sure that companies do things properly.
Level of Technical Knowledge and Skills
Companies and organisations in general value the specialized technical knowledge of their staff as one of their fundamental assets. However, they need to make sure when talking and explaining something not to overdo the technical terms as they may be speaking to someone who does not have the same technical knowledge as them.
So, they need to speak in such a way where you can use the technical terms without making the other person feel smaller than you or feel stupid. If someone is providing you with a digital service tell them what you are used to and ask them to adjust to your level of knowledge.
Usability
Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience.
More scientifically, we can assess this in terms of usability. According to usability guru, Jakob Nielsen there are 5 quality components:
- Learnability: How easy is it to learn how to use? Can users quickly work out how to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the interface?
- EfficiencyThe ability to accomplish something with the least waste of ... More: How quickly can they find what they need and achieve what they want to use it for?
- Memorability: When they come back a month later, how quickly can they pick up how to use it again?
- Errors: How many mistakes do they make? Do they get lost easily? Can they get back to the start?
- Satisfaction: How enjoyable is it to use?
See more at Usability 101: Introduction to Usability by Jakob Nielsen
Functionality
This is how well the product is suited to the purpose of its job. It also includes how many useful features it has. A security system that does not check for malware would not be very useful.
An example of bad functionality would be if an online shopping website didn’t have a purchase button on an item, this would be going against the whole purpose of the website. Websites have been affected by the rise of the use of mobile phones and this has affected their functionality:
Responsive Design
Many users love web-based systems because they work on any device that is connected to the internet. According to Statista, "Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide."
In countries that are emerging digital markets, many skipped the desktop phase and went straight to using mobile phones to use the web, email and other online services.
Ask your designer to make sure your website or app loads a different designplanning of new services, as well as changes and improvement... More for different widths of screen. This website adapts the menus and width of the page when it's seen on a mobile phone, with no loss of information or image. The slider on the home page loads a different image on a mobile phone for one of the slides so that it does not make the text hard to read.
You get the full-width version on the desktop monitor or laptop. This gives you more white space and less scrolling but then you are working in a different mode. The headings let you navigate this text to jump to what you need to know quickly. They are on the right on a desktop and above the text in the mobile version. On a phone you are more likely to want to see a summary of this text and you have the option to skip to the bit you want.
Apps need to be coded to work on iPhones and Android mobiles and tablets. Android is a different operating systemThis is the base software through which all the other softwa... More to IOS which is used on apple products. The operating systemThis is the base software through which all the other softwa... More is what apps use to access the phone's resources. This means the apps must work differently on different platforms.
The beauty of websites is that the web was made platform-independent, meaning that every browser you use to look at a web page must obey the same rules for presenting it to you and letting you interact with it.
Training on New Systems
Whether you have changed the operating systemThis is the base software through which all the other softwa... More, installed new software or added a new piece of hardware, staff will be faced with a change and a new way of doing things. To minimise stress and increase the performance of staff using these tools, training is essential.
The business owner must ensure that their employees are fully able to use the new products to a certain degree, giving them the ability to use them well and improve productivity. Training videos and 1 to 1 training may be needed for some tech systems, many people are not as knowledgeable in computers so they may need assistance. If the users don’t know how to use the product there is no point in having it.
System or Service Response Time
This is how fast a computer or person is able to respond to a request or complaint given by a customer. Things such as how long it takes for a company to issue a refund for a product or how long it takes for a verification emaila verification email is an email that your system can send a... More to come through after a purchase, are all types of responses and how long these takes can affect the overall quality of using a website or service.
Your customers will compare your response time to other services they use. Equally, if your business is using a service you will need to ask how quickly they are likely to respond to you and how quickly they fix most problems.
Service Availability
Consider the hours of availability of the service. Review how often the service can be in use and how often it is out of communication. This includes both planned and unplanned stoppages when problems may occur. You can improve your customer service by being available to respond at the most common times they are using your service. If you are running a business that uses an IT service provider, find out what times you can contact them.
Service-level Agreement (SLA)
A service level agreement is a written agreement between someone providing a service and their customer. It states both the services required and the expected level of service.
Using an SLA will help with response time as with an agreement they can be available Monday to Friday 9-5. Any problems will be logged straight away and then a technical advisor will look at the problem and decide on how long it will take to fix the problem and then tell you that it will take this many days to fix the problem.
Case Study: Mechdyne Corporation
This company supported migrating 50,000 new end-users from Microsoft Office to the Google Workspace. They had to change their allocation of staff based on the different levels of support needed on the project, increasing and decreasing the amount in response to the changes. Regular meetings were held every day including weekends to ensure everything is in order and problems are corrected.
In this video, Hector of Mechdyne Corporation explains the details of how they ran project:
