“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Peter Drucker

We don't have to look far to find information and support for what appears to be the truth in all business. Where we find the centric element of any business to be success, since virtually every business leader adopts this truth.

Unfortunately in practice, being in business tend to create issues and the business website is potentially a pivotal center around being customer-centric and as we have all had the experience of being a customer it can often be frustrating.

A company website has the power to fuel innovation and economic success and it starts with the website design and layout. we have to look at the structure of the site to think about how our site visitors are going to interact with it. Far too often my clients think they are designing a website for themselves and completely ignore the fact that we are building the site for their sites visitors.

This seems like it should be easy but more often than not I find that even my clients that get it are viewing their customers/clients as objects rather than people. This mentality is a sure fire way to see their website fail.

It is critical that we view the website as a vehicle to not only convey our products and services to our site visitors in an appealing way but that we see our websites as an excellent tool to enable us to not only showcase our products and services but as a way to connect with the customer, intimately and on a personal level.

When a website is under construction I often have to ask personal questions about the business that I am building the website for. This can cause tension because most all of my questions are based on the businesses customers/clients and if the company has no real world data on their customers other than the normal information such as who they are, where they live, what they've purchased, how long they've been a customer, etc... they tend to shut down. Forcing me to deliver a website that does not effectively cater to their visitors.

They often get defensive because they are not aware there is a rigorous framework where we need to personify customers in a way that builds emphatic understanding about them. Without this deep understanding about their customers/clients it makes it difficult to get to the root of how the website needs to be constructed in order to meet the needs of their visitors.

Emphatic Design leverages the above understanding so that we can design a website that influences behavior. The ultimate goal of a website is to be able to create a mode of interaction that customers don't even know they desire or, in some cases, solutions that customers have difficulty envisioning be it from a lack of familiarity or due to a locked in old mindset.

I build my clients websites with their customers in mind and I focus on delivering a well-designed website that focuses on customer service and I try and meet their baseline needs and expectations. Through analytics we can then watch the customer experience and follow up with a thoughtful and appropriate response that shows the visitors we really care and are on their side. It helps my clients to deliver a personal touch that they otherwise would have missed out on.