Don't make your customers life difficult

Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Hello, welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's Ed here, as usual, and today I'm going to be talking about the topic of not making things difficult for your customers. Now, this podcast is inspired by the fact.

Yesterday, at the time of recording, it was Father's Day in the UK and me and my daughters decided we'd go out for lunch you know we don't get to do it as often as we'd like to and we thought let's go out for lunch. And we thought where should we go? And I know they both like sushi. I really like sushi. I've not been for sushi for ages and I said, right, let's go to suit, let's go for sushi. And we chose a sushi restaurant that's about half an hour away from where we live and that is actually the closest sushi restaurant to where we live. Um, because we live in the middle of nowhere. And so we got us everything together. We went online, checked that the restaurant was open it's one we've been to before, we know it so we thought yeah, let's go there. We set off, drove for half an hour, parked the car up, walked down to the restaurant and sign on the door cash only. Now, this was a surprise, because when we've been before, it wasn't cash only, I'd paid with a card. And also it was an issue because I'd come out with just my phone for payment. I hadn't even brought my cash cards for going to the cash point to even be able to get some cash out while we were there. So I was literally there with my phone. I had no way of paying. It was like right, we just can't go there, we can't eat there. It wasn't an option to go home to get a card or get some cash, because that's like a half an hour drive home, another half an hour drive back. You know time was getting on already. You know they'd made our you know ability to be a customer there impossible. They'd put up barriers. Now they claimed on the sign that this was a temporary technical difficulty, but the sign was looked quite permanent, it was well printed, it was laminated and it had been well attached to the to the glass. You know this.

This was, I think, a decision they'd made to no longer take card payment, and I get there might be a rationale behind that. It might be that their fees are too high for the card machine. Um, you know that kind of thing. They might be thinking their fees are too high for the card machine. You know that kind of thing. They might be thinking we want cash because they can, you know, keep all of the income, but ultimately all they'd actually done was lose our sale. I mean, we would have spent probably £100. And you know so their decision not to take a card payment meant they'd lost £100. So they may be saving a little bit on fees, but how many sales are they actually losing? And this is something that you see happen again and again on websites.

People make choices on how they run their website, what options they give people, and they make it difficult for people to transact to find what they want. They don't think about the customer first and they make decisions that may sound good in their head or on paper, but ultimately are going to lead to fewer sales, and you just need to stop making decisions like that. So, for example, if you are an e-commerce site, just take as many different payment types as possible. Okay, paypal may charge a little bit more than going through Stripe, but some people won't buy off you if they can't use PayPal, so offer PayPal. If you can't make your business work within the margins that these companies are taking off you, then you shouldn't be in business. There. Always should be enough margin there to make it worthwhile having those sales.

Do things like giving people options on delivery partners. Don't just choose one delivery partner. Offer options if you can, because you'll find that some people just won't purchase off you if they can't choose those things. So, if you're a content website, make your content easy to find. Make your site easy to navigate. Don't make people's life difficult. Offer search functionality.

There's always things you can do to make your site more user-friendly. Always make it easy for people to contact you, for example. So on Keywords People Use, we offer live chat. We offer a contact form you can fill in and we offer direct email contact details and you can even write to us. We give you an address to write to us. The only thing we don't do is telephone. Maybe that's something we should be doing. It's more difficult, especially when you are starting up, to have constant phone contact, but maybe I should listen to my own advice and even add that that channel in as well. But always offer people options where you can.

Now an example of somewhere that did it well. As I said, we couldn't go to the um sushi place because we had no way of paying them, so we had to make a choice of somewhere else to go, and we went to Pizza Express. Now, if you've been to the UK or from the UK, you'll know Pizza Express. They're quite a big pizza restaurant chain and, yeah, they're probably one of the better ones in the UK of the chains, and you know we all love pizza. So let's go there instead. We knew that, a the food would be good and, b that we'd probably be able to get in. Because it's father's day, lots of places booked up um, and we went there. You know, great, go in, get served, all brilliant, and they have um an app. So when you're in the that restaurant you can download their app, which we've done before, and you know you can put your table number in. You've got a little thing that tells you what the number on your table, so you know what table you're at and when it comes to checking out and paying, you've got an option.

Now, one thing that frustrates me a lot in many restaurants is you know you've eaten your meal, you're ready to go, you're all done and you're waiting for the check. And you're trying to attract a waiter. You're trying to attract someone to come and give you the bill. You know in the first instance you've got to ask for the bill. Then they're going get the bill, bring it to you and then they'll leave you before they come back and take payment, and that whole process can just take ages and it can be really frustrating. What you can now do pizza express is is fantastic On the app, when you're done and ready to check out, you can just pay my bill.

And your bill comes up on the app and you can just pay with Apple Pay, or you can put in credit card details in the app if you want, but I just use Apple Pay. You can do your tip straight there on it all done, check yourself out and just go, and it saves yourself time. So it was convenient for me and you know it saves the staff time because I haven't got to be coming back to the board three times to sort the payment out. Um, and yeah, it was just convenient. Okay, it's not for everybody, they're not forcing people to check out like that but it's an option they've offered and you know, for me, the way I like to leave restaurants, it's great, it was perfect. So that's an option they've offered. And for me, the way I like to leave restaurants, it's great, it was perfect.

So that's an example of how it can be done differently. They haven't restricted options on how to do things and they've made it easy for me. And it's the kind of thing where, if I'm ever thinking of where I'm going to go again for a meal especially if I'm in a hurry and I want to be quick I know that I'm going to go again for a meal, especially if I'm in a hurry and I want to be quick. I know that I can go to Pizza Express and when I'm done and ready to go, I can just pay and go with. So that's an example of how you can do it right. So, from just one trip out for a meal, it's given me two things to talk about, of how not to do it and how to do it.

So, yeah, always think of your customers. Don think of your customers. Don't make their life difficult. Give them options. You can apply it to any business, any website. So just think about it. And if you find yourself considering not allowing people to do something because it makes your life difficult, think actually. Know what's better for the customer, because just think of all those sales that you could be losing by making people's life difficult. Anyway, until next time, see you later.

Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools at Keywords People Use that you can book a free, no obligation one-on-one video call with me where I show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeopleusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up. Once again, that's keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps.

Seo is Not that Hard is brought to you by keywords people usecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywords people usecom to get an instant hit of more seo tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick seo tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel5 on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.