This guest column was written by Michael Mathias. As CEO of digital agency Whereoware, Mathias leads Whereoware’s strategic vision and culture of innovation, end-to-end digital marketing, and flawless performance. Mathias has an impressive track record of accelerating business growth at all stages, with experience spanning marketing, software, professional services, big data, analytics, and technology.
When it comes to your showroom or retail store, would you close the doors to 25 percent of your customers?
Not at all. However, if your website is inaccessible (i.e. not user-friendly or intuitive for all users), you are excluding a large portion of your customers from successfully interacting with you online.
In fact, our partner Acquia surveyed users with self-reported disabilities and found that:
- 89 percent had encountered accessibility issues that made interactions difficult.
- 51 percent then looked for affordable alternatives (i.e. their competitors).
- Thirty-one percent said they shared their frustrating experience with family and friends.
Similar to designing more welcoming stores, building a more accessible and inclusive online business must be a corporate priority, or risk losing customer loyalty, losing revenue, and facing costly legal action.
In fact, 82 percent of the top 500 e-commerce companies have already been sued for poor accessibility. Fortunately, the same design principles that make your website more accessible are the same best practices for a more modern and attractive website.
Let’s look at three common misconceptions we need to dispel, because a more accessible website is a better website, period.
Mistake #1: “Accessibility doesn’t apply to my audience”
To put it with my trademark delicate tact: You are dead wrong. If website accessibility is an afterthought for your organization, you are actively excluding 25 percent of American adults living with some form of disability from using your site, and then some.
Added to that number are people who experience temporary limitations (such as a broken arm), technological issues (such as poor Wi-Fi) or environmental barriers (such as surfing on a sunny beach or watching a video on a noisy, crowded bus).
As a business, it is your responsibility to continually assess your website against accessibility standards to resolve issues and remove as many barriers as possible. Simply put, improved accessibility benefits all audiences.
Mistake #2: “Accessibility doesn’t affect our bottom line”
This one makes me laugh – or cry – depending on my tequila consumption.
Your customers’ digital experience is their experience as customers. When that experience isn’t right, your customers (and their wallets) go elsewhere. It doesn’t take major problems to sink customer loyalty: 76 percent of customers said they think it’s easier than ever to switch to a competitor.
In fact, consumer companies lose $6.9 billion a year due to inaccessible websites. This figure does not include revenue lost from legal notices and lawsuits: 2,281 web accessibility lawsuits were filed last year alone.
Investing in a more accessible and user-friendly website is an investment in customer loyalty and retention. It protects your business from costly lawsuits and protects your brand reputation; together, these revenue-boosting actions directly impact your bottom line.
Error #3: “We will make the website accessible later”
This mistake is a lot like building, painting, and moving into a house, then checking to see if the foundation is secure. If you find a bunch of cracks and leaks, you can call the moving company – you’ll be starting over.
Too often, accessibility is addressed as an afterthought or an initiative that must be addressed before release during quality assurance (QA) testing. At that point, it becomes much more difficult to optimize the website to address accessibility issues without making significant modifications.
This means that businesses inevitably look the other way or move on to “phase two” of major issues and updates, rather than resolving them and risk delaying their go-live date.
At Whereoware, we build digital experiences—websites, mobile apps, online portals, interactions with Salesforce, you name it—with accessibility in mind from the start.
By adhering to design, accessibility, and user experience (UX) best practices at every step of the process, we reduce rework and issues.
We analyze the steps along the customer journey (from arriving on the site to purchasing a product, subscribing to an email list, or using a sales/retail portal) to ensure it is easy and intuitive to navigate, interact, and convert for users of all abilities.
This isn’t a one-time activity. Your website is a living, breathing sales channel that needs constant optimization to best meet your customers’ needs and best practices in design, technology, and accessibility. There’s always room for improvement.
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