Customer experience has become a driving force for many online shops. The biggest challenge with the rise of ecommerce is that customers no longer have to settle for an experience that is anything below satisfactory. Successful stores know that it is often experience that keeps customers coming back, rather than products and prices alone.
How do you ensure that you don’t lose out sales to your competitors? For starters, you can start taking a good, hard look at how your customers use your store. What is their journey, from the moment they arrive to the moment their order is shipped? Which areas can be improved? Knowing the answers to these questions holds the key to knowing whether your customer experience is more hit than miss.
Smart Ways to Improve Customer Experience
Simple but smart ways to provide a better customer experience to ecommerce customers include the following:
Better design
Navigation can be a make or break factor. Responsiveness is even more important. Your shop design should not only be about looking good, but also about making it as easy as possible for customers to use your website. Testing is key to know exactly which areas are frustrating, confusing or hard to use.
Streamlined checkout
It is also essential that your customers can easily proceed through checkout. A number of studies have indicated that a lengthy checkout kills conversion. Long checkouts can lead to abandoned carts. Make sure that customers can complete their purchase using only the most basic of required info.
Improved customer service
You could have the most incredible shop in the world, and it would still underwhelm customers if your service was sub-standard. Customer service can be improved with the help of Customer Relationship Management tools, chat boxes, help sections, reviews, useful guides and easily found contact information.
Personalised offers
If you are not using personalisation as part of your ecommerce marketing, you are missing out on the chance to nurture leads more effectively, increase sales, increase order size and value and promote loyalty. Use email marketing wisely to create unique offers that are personalised according to behaviour rather than demographics.
Value-driven content
Finally, your content marketing campaign should add genuine value. This can take the form of a carefully planned welcome series that educates and nurtures customers, a helpful blog providing how-to guides, tips and resources, mobile and video campaigns and website content that provides solutions to common problems.
Make sure that you keep customer experience top of mind, and you will soon start to see the results.