What happens when every online presence a company has has a different design or digital experience? You get a fragmented customer experience. Also known as a fragmented customer journey.
For those of you who have already made the switch to the new version of Google Analytics (Google Analytics 4 or GA4), you’ve probably seen the phrase “disconnected experiences .” That’s because delivering a seamless, integrated customer experience is a growing concern for online businesses. So big that the new GA4 features are designed to include cross-platform data collection and comparison from web and mobile apps alike. Because businesses need to know how customer interactions and retention compare across channels.
Today, businesses and organizations can easily create luxembourg business email list websites, portals, mobile apps, and applications. Having multiple channels is easier than ever. However, keeping them aligned becomes more difficult the more you have, and 3 of the 12 reasons why projects fail can be attributed to UX failures, according to Dr. Susan Weinschenk . That’s why the new concern is around quality and alignment.
A woman frustrated by a disjointed digital experience
Here are some questions to help you assess the quality and alignment of your channels:
How consistent are your websites, portals and applications?
Do they use the same UI/UX patterns and components?
Are they aiming for the same goals?
When you make a change or add a new service, is it reflected across all channels?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is “No,” then those digital channels create a fragmented experience for your customers.
What is a Fragmented Customer Experience?
The Nielsen Norman Group sums up a fragmented or broken customer experience as what happens when the journey across channels is inconsistent or not seamless:
«Seamlessness is a quality of any cross-channel customer journey where transitions (or switches) from one channel to the next involve zero or minimal additional effort for users. Essentially, if you can pick up where you left off, the user experience will be seamless. But if users have to reset their contexts and/or redo work when switching to a new channel, then the experience will feel choppy.»
In short, a fragmented digital experience happens because there is no single software that encompasses the entire customer experience . Companies have ERPs, CRMs, and additional software with disparate pieces of information for our users. That’s why it’s crucial to have a design that creates integrated user journeys, which can’t be achieved without a clear understanding of the user’s needs and goals.
Golden Rules of Good CX
10 Golden Rules for Creating Good Digital Experiences
Looking to improve your Customer Experience? Discover effective strategies and start captivating them.
A Fragmented Customer Experience and Its Negative Impact
In 2016, a design study involving 408 different companies found that increased investment and focus on design resulted in…
Increased sales,
Increased customer retention and customer engagement, and
Faster product cycles.
As Joanna Ngai, UX designer at Microsoft, said:
«Design-driven businesses have outperformed the S&P by an impressive 228% over the past 10 years. In short, good design equals good business.»
«6 Key Reasons Why Fragmented Customer Experience Has Such a Strong Impact»
1. Losing user trust
It’s the same problem as a lack of brand consistency and experience across brick-and-mortar locations. Users feel betrayed when a company’s mobile app doesn’t work the same as its website. And vice versa.
A fragmented customer experience can make users feel like the company doesn't care about them. 48% of users surveyed by Google said that when companies have sites that don't work well on smartphones, they feel like the company doesn't care about their business.
