eCommerce is a big business. In fact, by 2021, it is estimated that eCommerce sales are going to be worth a staggering $4.5 trillion.
Customer experience is one of the most important aspects of any business, but when it comes to eCommerce, it can make or break a brand. With so much competition out there from other eCommerce businesses, it’s in your best interest to deliver the best customer experience possible.
So, how do you ensure that your business can provide a great customer experience?
In this article, we’ll let you know how you can boost your eCommerce customer experience and as a result, improve your sales. Read on to find out how to improve customer experience in your business.
Make Your Website Easy to Use
If you’re looking to increase customer experience, you should start with the layout of your website.
Imagine your eCommerce site as a physical store. Think about how the shopfloor is laid out to help customers find products. List your items into groups and sort these product categories in a logical order.
As well as laying out your product categories clearly and simply, you should also include a search bar that is easy to spot.
Simplify Your Checkout Process
How often do you have an abandoned cart on your site? When it comes to customer experience, every aspect of the transaction needs to be as simple as possible. The easier the transaction is, the more likely a customer will be to buy from you.
In addition to simplifying the checkout process, make sure that you offer a range of payment options to make it easier for customers to buy from you.
Including credit and debit cards as well as services such as PayPal, will ensure customers don’t get to the checkout only to find that you don’t accept their preferred payment method.
Find Ways to Personalize the Customer Experience
Personalizing the customer experience should mean going further than adding a customer’s name to their emails. It means tailoring a unique shopping experience based on their tastes.
Pay attention to the pages that your customers are looking at and what they’ve previously bought and use this information to make recommendations for products on the home page, via email, and on social media advertising.
Improve Your Shipping
There are several things to do with shipping that can enhance the customer experience.
Firstly, look for couriers that are fast and reliable. Customers have high expectations of delivery speed, and this is largely driven by the likes of Amazon who offer same-day delivery.
Having the ability to track delivery is also an advantage. Look for a courier that has a proven track record of delivering excellent service. Their service reflects on the customer experience that you are creating.
Finally, look at the types of packaging you are using. Consideration should be given to the presentation and quality of the packaging.
Create Great Product Pages
Having a product page that provides customers with information and striking visuals, including a video that shows off the product, will ultimately help sell your products.
If you had a store, you’d use a mixture of merchandising and customer service to close the sale. On your eCommerce page, your product pages need to not only show the product in their best light, but they also need to act as a salesperson for your business.
Wherever possible, show the product’s features and benefits using photos or videos.
Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices
With more than half of all visitors to any site coming via a mobile device, you’ll want to make sure your site works well on mobile devices.
The last thing that you want is for customers to start to get interested in products that they’ve seen on your website, but are then unable to carry out the transaction because the site isn’t working properly on their device.
Having a great mobile site is essential these days. You may even want to go one better and create a great mobile app too. This will ensure you’re able to send push notifications for products that may interest your customers.
Use Chatbots
Having a chatbot on your site will mean that it’ll be able to deal with a wide range of straightforward customer queries quicker than your customer service team might be able to.
Very often, when a customer sends customer support a question on any eCommerce site, it can take hours or even days for the response.
A chatbot will be able to automatically answer many questions within seconds. For anything that it cannot answer, it’ll raise the issue with the customer support department.
Deliver the Best Customer Service
There are many technical aspects that can help you to deliver the best customer experience possible. However, there may be times when your customers will require human interaction from your customer support team.
Every day your company will no doubt get sent numerous different messages from customers with a variety of queries and problems.
While having chatbots can help you to catch many of these early on and reduce the customer’s waiting time, there will be queries and problems that you’ll need to address yourself.
Whatever a customer’s problem is, it can be overcome with excellent service. Even if you are unable to solve the problem, if you can come up with creative alternatives or deliver any information with genuine kindness, you’ll be able to turn a negative experience into a positive one.
The speed that you respond to queries and complaints is also important. Have a ticketing system and make sure that you work to stringent service targets so that customers are not left waiting.
Delivering a Great Customer Experience
Customer experience needs to be at the heart of everything that you do. Every decision you make in your eCommerce business will affect the customer journey in one way or another. Do everything you can to ensure any changes that you make are positive.
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