4 Ways To Help Your Customers Get Used To Your New Website

So your business is getting a new, updated website. Congratulations! A website overhaul is exciting, but if you are a well-established company with a lot of regular online visitors, any big changes could result in confusion once the ribbon has been cut and visitors come flooding in on an opening day.

Visiting a website once it’s had a facelift can be a disconcerting experience. It’s a bit like when you go to your regular supermarket to do your weekly shopping, only to find that everything has been moved around, and all of a sudden you're standing bewildered in the middle of an aisle wondering where on earth they've put the vinegar. (Why is vinegar always the hardest item to find?) And the staff can't help you much, because they're just as clueless as you are.

I know, because I used to work at a supermarket and it's not like they gave us a plan for the shop every time they changed it around. I, too, was the bewildered person standing in the middle of an aisle looking for the vinegar, while wondering why the powers-that-be had even felt the need to move everything around in the first place.

To stop this from happening with your website launch, there are a few things you can do in the run-up to help your existing customers get used to the new website more quickly.

Tell People What Is Going To Happen Before It Happens

You want your visitors to be prepared for the changes that are coming. This serves two purposes: to make sure people don’t feel confused and out of control when they visit the new site and to drum up some excitement for the big launch. It’s a great opportunity to shout about your website, either on social media, via email, or on your current website.

Tell your customers what’s going to happen and why – what are the benefits? Will the new website be faster, easier to use, and able to offer more products for online purchases? Get people on board and comfortable with the idea of change.

Keep Your Users Involved and Updated

Use social media and your email newsletters to keep people up to date on what’s happening. Ensure users know exactly when the new website is going to be launched. Perhaps you could put a countdown clock on your website.

As the new site is being developed, you could share screenshots showing what the new pages and features will look like, so people already have an idea of where to find everything, and are familiar with the website before it has even been launched.

Send Special Launch Invitations

When the website is just about to launch, you could send email invitations to your regular customers, inviting them to be the first people to have a look at your new and improved site. You could even ask them to fill out a short survey about their experience using the site, offering a small incentive for doing so, such as a 10% discount on their next purchase. Customers will feel special because you invited them to the site as VIPs, and in doing so you could get more visits and purchases, as well as invaluable feedback on your new site.

Offer Help and Support

For the first few weeks of the site being live, offer on-page help and support to assist people in getting around. This is a particularly good idea if you have a large website with lots of pages and sections.

You could do this in the form of small notes which tell users about each new feature and can be closed once the user has read them. Twitter and Facebook sometimes do this when there is a new feature on the website, or for members who have just signed up:

Perhaps this is because Facebook and Twitter users get a little agitated when things change unexpectedly.

Moving swiftly on from the ever-changing faces of social media, a “What's New” page could explain where to find your most visited pages or features. Here you could also provide an email address so people can contact you if they need any extra help.

The main takeaway for today is this: people don't like change.

If you are making big changes which will make the layout and structure of your website completely different, you may want to think about how you are going to help customers to continue feeling comfortable and confident with using your website.

Talk to them, update them, anticipate any pages or features you think people will be looking for, and help them re-learn where everything is. Make them feel like you have considered their usability needs and opinions, and not simply ploughed ahead with the website you wanted.

Good luck!