15 seconds.
For various
reasons – poor navigation, confusing content, ineffective design, or lack of accessibility – consumers have no patience for
organizations that don’t take customer experience seriously.
By offering
an online experience customized to individual needs, preferences and abilities,
organizations can ensure they are reaching the broadest base of the population – including people with disabilities, aging consumers and multi-cultural communities – to optimize website usability, enhance interactions and improve sales
opportunities.
This is why IBM Tealeaf has integrated
accessibility functionality from IBM Research
into its latest release, IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience (cxOversat),
to improve interactions, increase loyalty and expand market reach.
Consider the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping extravaganzas. According to the recent IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, online
sales grew 12.6 percent compared to 2013. Specifically, on Cyber Monday, desktop
PCs accounted for 58.6 percent of all online traffic and 78 percent of all
online sales.
Given this growth and the continued reliance on
desktops to shop online, ensuring that a website is accessible for all
consumers can only maximize sales and increase user satisfaction. However, while retailers are continuing to personalize the shopping experience,
they still continue to miss out on meeting the needs of their diverse customer
segments.
Tealeaf give organizations insights and answers required to verify whether a
website is delivering a positive and pleasant experience for all visitors. By understanding customers’
online experiences and behaviors, organizations know immediately where a site
might have usability issues so they can optimize pages to deliver uninhibited access to information and timely offers.
IBM Tealeaf cxOversat has been enhanced with two accessibility overlays to help users improve the
usability of a website and support compliance with government regulations and industry
accessibility standards:
- Color Contrast: Creates greater website usability for people with vision
impairments by automatically flagging text with foreground and background color
contrast issues and recommends how to easily correct the color contrast ratio
violations in order to meet industry standards.
- Accessibility: Ensures websites include alternative text, proper tabbing and
keyboard navigation, and area text for screen readers to create the best online
experience for users with vision, auditory, physical or cognitive disabilities.
|
New accessibility overlay automatically identifies text with foreground
and background color contrast violations.
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For instance, 10,000 people will turn 65 every day
for the next 15 years, and people 60 and older will acquire at least two
disabilities. By seamlessly
incorporating accessibility, such as ensuring screen readers can easily
navigate a website, IBM makes it easier for customers with more significant
visual loss, language comprehension issues, or motor difficulties to learn
about new offers or services. Now, organizations can serve the largest audience
possible and open sustainable new revenue channels, especially for Baby Boomers
who have annual spending of more than $2 trillion.
With
rapid visibility into customer behavior, organizations gain better insights to
understand why certain customer segments might never click on areas of a
website, and more importantly, the answers to quickly resolve accessibility
issues that online customers encounter.
After all, first
impressions still matter, especially when a competitor's website is 15 seconds away.
Labels: accessibility, anlaytics, tealeaf, web design