As an eSports player, you must have a strong online presence that enhances the customer journey. So whether you’re looking for sponsors or trying to encourage users to subscribe to your Patreon, buy merch, or become a member of your streams, you need to think of that entire customer journey and how you can improve it.
Since the customer experience is something that few eSports players have mastered, you can build a robust online presence and develop a website that speaks to your brand’s needs if you can pick up key tips. From making a customer journey map to review touchpoints to building personas that can help you identify user experience pain points, here’s what you need to know about your eSports website.
Always consider the customer journey.
The customer journey doesn’t end when someone views your page or checks out a video for any YouTuber, streamer, or Call of Duty pro. Nor does it end when your users become members or donate to your page. So whether you build Modern Warfare weapon tier list guides or offer competitive play tips and videos, you want to consider how to encourage that first customer experience and how that initial touchpoint can lead to ongoing relationships.
When designing a user journey, you need to consider every touchpoint, whether it’s a mobile app, a desktop page, or a social media channel. Your customer journey map can show you how these channels lead back to your website and help you develop brand messaging that tells customers what to do upon arrival. So whether you want someone to sign up for your Patreon to get top-level Modern Warfare videos or you’re looking to encourage merchandise purchases, you should look at your customer journey map and find any user experience gaps. Then, you can invest in software, attachments, accessories, and tools that enable you to refine each customer’s journey.
Make it easy to navigate.
Whether you post regular blogs about upcoming changes in the next Warzone season or you’re constantly tweaking your tier list, you want to make it easier for your users to find and interact with your content. To get some insight into how your site performs, it’s often helpful to develop user personas. These personas act as representations of your target audience members and key demographics. Then, with user data and site intel, you can estimate how these user personas will approach your site and test how that could impact performance.
For some eSports pros, it’s tempting to prioritize style over function. While you might think bells, whistles, and autoplaying videos are the best way to encourage conversions or show off your wares, they can impact page speeds, lower search engine rankings, and create holes in your experience map. Much like your customer journey map, you need to create a clear, concise sitemap. As a rule, site visitors should never be more than a couple of clicks away from conversion opportunities, video content, ongoing sales, or merchandise promotions.
Develop a clear perspective.
Your site should have a clear perspective that offers a quick peek at who you are as an eSports player. The design process is about user flow, customer service, and also your preferences. Whether you have a preferred genre or playstyle, your site should quickly inform new visitors what you’re all about. Focus on the important things that truly speak to who you are. Are you a master of close-range action gameplay? Do you excel with long-range weapons in Call of Duty? Or are you an immaculate Overwatch professional? Your homepage, the first place a new visitor might land, should answer some of these questions from the jump.
With these tips in mind, it’s much easier to develop stronger websites for eSports players, no matter the playstyle.