Want To Boost Revenue and Loyalty? Retailers Should Invest in Digital Accessibility

Digital accessibility refers to the practice of providing assistive technology to make the internet usable for people with disabilities, such as vision impairment, hearing impairment, or limited mobility. Some digital accessibility features, such as dark mode, pinch-to-zoom, and voice-to-text have become mainstream fixtures of the online experience. Other features that are critical for internet users with disabilities are seldom supported. 

In fact, retailers often fail to meet the accessibility needs of customers. In doing so, they miss out on converting an enormous group of consumers who face limited options for easy, satisfying online shopping experiences. 

Improving digital accessibility by making websites and apps easier for everyone to use has serious material benefits: Over half of retailers that provide digital accessibility features report an increase in customer loyalty as a result, and more than a third experience increased revenue.

Retail business leaders should make a genuine effort toward increasing the accessibility of their websites, apps, and online services, using best practices around implementation and performance tracking.

Improving digital accessibility offers material benefits and protection from risk

Our research shows that retailers’ top objectives when improving digital accessibility are improving the user experience, achieving regulatory compliance, and making a positive impact on society. 

That’s all well and good, but evidence suggests those factors have not been important enough for most companies to commit to improving digital accessibility: 96% of today’s most popular internet homepages contain errors that make them difficult to impossible to use if you have a disability. [1] 

In case doing the right thing isn’t reason enough for your company to allocate resources to improving digital accessibility, consider that it provides material benefit to businesses that have taken action. Here are some underrated, bottom-line reasons for increasing digital accessibility.

You’re ignoring a huge, loyal audience

There are over a billion people with disabilities worldwide, many of whom are more reliant on online shopping compared to other populations. Unfortunately, despite the fact that folks with disabilities constitute a huge demographic group that still wants and needs to buy stuff, a general lack of web accessibility means they face fewer options for browsing and purchasing. 

The upside for brands is that if you’re committed to improving digital accessibility, you have an immense opportunity to gain a competitive edge and convert millions of new customers. When customers know they can expect a positive and efficient experience when visiting your site, they’re more likely to come back. In fact, a majority (60%) of respondents whose companies have implemented digital accessibility features note a related increase in customer loyalty.

The path of least resistance is good for sales 

People who use accessibility features or accommodations can typically tell within seconds whether a website is going to be accessible to them, or if they shouldn’t even bother trying to use it. [2] If you want to win over this audience, getting started is as easy as simply not forcing people to bounce from your landing page immediately. This includes making accessibility features easy to access from the get-go. 

If users can tolerate being on your site, they’ll be more willing to browse your products, get to know your brand, and make satisfying purchases. Over a third (37%) of respondents whose companies offer accessibility features on their website said they experience increased revenue or conversions as a result.

A genuine effort to be inclusive protects your brand’s reputation 

Supporting purpose-driven brands is, nominally at least, a high priority for many consumers. This is especially true of younger generations, who increasingly expect brands to take an activist stance on social issues. [3]

Interestingly, evidence shows that a brand’s stance—or lack thereof—on social issues could affect their bottom line indirectly. While it may not affect consumer purchase decisions or loyalty as much as expected, the choice of whether and how to engage on social issues can dramatically impact the risk of eliciting public backlash. Specifically, brands perceived as motivated to activism purely by profit, risk mitigation, or image rehabilitation increase their risk of boycotts, employee action, and questions about price fairness. [4] 

Consumers have gotten fairly good at sniffing out performative activism, and won’t hesitate to publicly attack disingenuous marketing on social media. Brands themselves are aware that falling short of accessibility expectations is dangerous for their reputations—over half (56%) of retailers believe their company could lose customers if they do not improve digital accessibility within the next 12 months.

The takeaway is that while advertising your company’s efforts around digital accessibility is one way to demonstrate that you have your ethical priorities in order, you have to actually commit to being inclusive. Walk the talk by committing time, resources, and training to understanding what users need, and then build long-term solutions to meet those needs.

You’ll save money in the long run 

As the reach and enforcement of digital accessibility laws intensifies, neglecting to take on the issue of inaccessibility is delaying the inevitable. Investing in digital accessibility now prevents a multitude of costly headaches:

• You protect sprint schedules by preventing time-consuming, retroactive accessibility-related fixes to web pages or digital products. 

• You prevent the risk of eliciting a public backlash due to a performative stance on accessibility or a lack of accessibility. 

• You help build awareness of disability accommodations into your company culture, which may prevent future blind spots around product development, web design, marketing, hiring, and budgeting.

Start improving digital accessibility with products, services, and performance metrics

Getting started with improving digital accessibility involves four key considerations: 

1. Understanding the regulatory landscape around digital accessibility (i.e., which local or international laws or guidelines apply to your company). 

2. Choosing the right teams and leaders to plan and execute digital accessibility improvements. 

3. Identifying key areas of customer experience to implement changes.

4. Tracking the right metrics to understand return on investment.

For information on the first two steps, plus tips on how to work around the most frequent challenges leaders encounter when improving digital accessibility, see our related report on the state of accessibility among businesses today.

Once you’ve assembled your team and learned about the accessibility requirements you’re obligated to meet, it’s time to consider the areas of customer experience where digital accessibility will have the most impact. 

High-impact areas to start with digital accessibility improvements

To reap the benefits of improving digital accessibility, you’ll want to address any issues in a few crucial areas of the online customer experience. Namely, you’ll need to make it easy for customers with disabilities to browse your products, ask for and receive assistance in a timely manner, and pay for their order.

Product information

For the disabled community, one of the biggest barriers to shopping online is not being able to find the information needed to decide to buy a product. [6] Digital accessibility in retail can thus be thought of as both providing a means to browse products and services and providing the necessary information to make purchase decisions. For retailers, that starts with richer product descriptions. 

Here’s how to make product information more accessible:

• Provide detailed descriptions for every product, making sure they can be found using a screen reader or keyboard for navigation. This means going beyond the usual specs, such as dimensions, weight, or materials, to provide in-depth information about component sizes and weights, assembly requirements, and care requirements. It also involves making all product information unambiguous, such as providing meaningful names for product colors. 

• Give information on the accessibility features of each product—in other words, let users know about any special features that would make it easier for them to use. For example, let users know that an electronic product has a setting to make a sound when it’s running out of battery charge. 

• Make reviews easy to search and filter, so users can scan reviews for keywords and narrow results to reviews written by people like themselves. 

• Make instruction manuals more accessible by increasing the font size.

Site navigation

Another significant barrier is browsing retail websites with poor navigation or organization, making it difficult or time-consuming for customers to find what they need. [6] To remedy this, try the following:

• Provide a prominent site map or table of contents.

• Page titles, search filters, open text field labels, and URLs should be descriptive and unambiguous.

• Use descriptive headings to give helpful structure to written content.

• Provide more than one way to access pages. For instance, users should be able to access a product category page from the homepage menu or through a breadcrumb trail at the top of a product detail page. [7]

If you’re looking to add a breadcrumb trail or other intuitive navigation fixes to your website to increase functionality, website builder software can help. 

Customer service

Most customers do careful research before purchasing to prevent having to make returns. But for many of those with disabilities, this is especially important, as returns can be physically arduous—these customers may require more personalized assistance before purchasing. For that reason, you need to use customer service software that provides accessibility features. You should also offer multiple options for contacting customer support, as well as knowledgeable staff to answer accessibility-related questions. 

Customers should be given a few different options to communicate with customer service staff—for instance, using their voice or keyboard. Customer service staff should be trained on products’ accessibility features and be willing to put effort toward getting the answer on behalf of the customer when they don’t know themselves. Going the extra mile for a customer with a disability makes the difference between a satisfying purchase versus an arduous returns process and a damaged customer relationship.

Payment processing and customer accounts

Online forms are often a barrier to usability, because they involve clicking into multiple text fields or drop-downs to enter information. While forms are helpful for collecting payment information or storing customer details for loyalty accounts, you should offer alternative payment options. 

Here are some ways to make payments and account creation more accessible:

• Allow customers to pay with their digital wallet (e.g., PayPal, Apple Pay).

• If using online forms, label all fields descriptively and unambiguously. 

• Make customer/loyalty accounts more accessible by providing a “Remember me” field for automatic login, automatically loading loyalty/rewards points onto the checkout screen, or allowing customers to bypass account creation altogether.  

• Present terms and conditions, including returns policies, clearly and unambiguously, with the option to magnify text.

KPIs: Gather feedback and analyze site, support, and sales performance

Depending on the state of your website, improving digital accessibility can be resource-intensive, and your company’s leadership will want to know that your efforts are paying off. 

Retailers tend to use a variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) to demonstrate the effectiveness and ROI of their digital accessibility efforts. They include the following:

• 63% use customer feedback, such as surveys, website ratings, and reviews. The best sources for whether your website is truly accessible are manual tests and feedback from customers with disabilities. 

• 59% analyze website performance, including page views, unique visitors, and bounce rates. Separately, 84% of retailers test the accessibility of their website or app at least once per year. 

• 53% use customer support or help desk performance, including help desk ticket volume and response times. An increase in digital accessibility should in theory lead to fewer inquiries about accessing disability accommodations, as well as where to find information, how to find products, or issues with payment. A huge benefit of increasing accessibility is that many assistive technologies benefit able-bodied users, which could make a bigger dent in help desk outreach. A sharp rise in help desk inquiries after implementing accessibility improvements may indicate issues with the new features, and perhaps the need for further testing and adjustments.  

• 51% use sales or financial performance indicators, including revenue, customer reach, and loyalty.

A harder to measure, but still important, performance indicator is the way your website qualitatively improves the shopping experience for customers. It’s frustrating anytime a piece of technology doesn’t work. When this is a daily occurrence, it’s a quality of life issue. Providing customers with an easy and convenient means of accessing the products they need is one way your company can make life easier for an underserved community while supporting regulation to ensure equal rights.