Tips To Improve eCommerce Customer Experience
8 Min. Read
The expectation of a customer to be engaged with and provided with a satisfactory eCommerce customer experience is ever increasing. There is overwhelming evidence of this.
One Around 92% of consumers would abandon the purchase journey if they were provided with a poor ecommerce customer experience.
Therefore in today’s online world, providing an adequate eCommerce customer experience is not only a strategy to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction; it has become a necessity for eCommerce survival, one ingredient of a successful eCommerce store.
A satisfied and loyal customer base is the only parameter that can assure a successful business. It can increase sales of digital businesses and provide support against competitors. However, there are many other reasons for assisting the customer during the customer journey.
Why Does eCommerce Customer Experience Matter?
It is a simple philosophy; the greater the customer experience, the greater the customer satisfaction. This great satisfaction will support customers to buy more. More buying will transform them into loyal customers and brand advocates.
Their advocacy will increase word of mouth and ultimately increasing the sales and image of the brand.
See the following illustration, which reflects how this whole cycle will create and impact on business.
Tips to Improve Customer Experience
Customer experience is the core of any digital business; indeed, the whole business is based upon this. Weak customer experience undermines customer confidence and is the normal scenario. Their experience is underwhelming at best.
A truly, terrible experience can be catastrophic, especially if you are a market leader because it only takes two or three bad interactions for loyal customers to abandon a brand.
An example of this was when a lady had to ask Amazon, one of the leading e-commerce platforms for an apology. The lady was charged $7,500 as a delivery charge for a three-pack of toilet paper. The news went viral causing great damage.
See the following tips to save your business from such mistakes.
1. Provide Live Chat Feature
The increasing use of E-commerce platforms has left no option for business but to go that extra mile in supporting the customer throughout the eCommerce customer experience, how else to differentiate their offering from the competitors.
A customer can find a product just by typing requirements; get all the details from the product description and order expecting lightning-fast doorstep delivery. But what if they encounter some problem during this buying process?
Live chat is a vital feature in improving ecommerce customer experience. It is 100 times faster than any other communication medium.
Instant respond increases customer satisfaction. This also decreases the potential of cart abandonment and leaving the journey unfinished.
2. Focus on Employee Experience
It may seem unfit for this list of tips, especially if you have a small store with only a few employees, but it has an extensive connection with customer experience. The organizations providing better employee experience have 60% more engaged employees.
This additional engagement leads to higher productivity of the employee and increased customer satisfaction. See the following cycle of customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
It is obligatory to check on your employees. Do surveys within the organization or communicate with them regarding their issues. You can also use Google Forms for conducting digital surveys in the office.
3. Ask for Customer Feedback
Getting customer feedback is a greater source of eCommerce customer experience. Asking for feedback from customer increases their trust and builds a greater relationship with the brand. Along with this, it can lead to greater understanding of the customer leading to better decisions and assist with developing crucial business ideas.
63% of the businesses are using feedback as a main source of data. They are drafting new policies and bringing adequate changes based on feedback. The feedback form at the end of the purchase is considered the most relevant way.
You can also email customers for more personalized feedback.
“You can also use Google Forms for conducting digital surveys in the office, or a professional online survey maker.“
4. Audit the Web Regularly
The audit of the website is necessary after some time. No need to call experts and hire an IT specialist for auditing your website. You can do a basic one by yourself.
Take a visit to your website and consider the following aspects.
- The attractive features of the website.
- Convenience in finding a product.
- The time it took to load.
- The modification and visibility of a shopping cart.
5. Effort on KPIs
This task is more demanding as a business, but it is worth trying. eCommerce Customer service is a strong marketing tool. It can create either a significant negative or positive impact on the business. Therefore, an organization looking to improve its customer experience will only benefit and should focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to customer service using Chat or helpdesk reporting.
The selection of KPIs can vary greatly as per the requirement of the organization and the targeted audience. It is necessary to draft your own KPIs for adequate customer experience enhancement.
6. Assure the User-Friendly Features
The website’s user interface is the first thing that creates an impression on customers. Around 75% of customers create a perception regarding the brand after visiting the website.
Customers desire for easy to navigate webpage that provides convenience in searching for a product. Your website must be organized and have clear categories as in a physical store.
The search button must be located at a visible position and have categories at the back end. The investment of $1 on the web interface will give you a return of $100; these tips are worth trying (follow the link).
See the following example of the best and worst user-friendly websites.
7. Include Customer Reviews
Customer reviews can do wonders for the business. Around 95% of the customers read the review before purchasing a product. These reviews will guide customers before making a purchase and navigate them to a better product.
Provide a review option for every product. Users will rate and write a review of the product. Display these as a parameter of the product’s popularity among the customer segment.
8. Personalize the Customer Journey
The definition of personalization has changed a lot in recent years. Now it is not only sending email and messages to the customer but rather the entire eCommerce customer experience. Today, personalization includes website content that changes, inline and dynamically according to the customers interests (Psychographic data). In addition, customer satisfaction requires more in terms of personalization. The website of a brand must depict a sense of personalization.
9. Decrease Response Time
In e-commerce, timing is everything. If you keep a potential customer waiting, you can miss the opportunity. The situation is more intense in the case of return.
When an already angry consumer communicates with the organization and has to wait, this can negatively impact future sales and reputation. Organizations can solve this problem by using digital chatbots.
These chatbots will provide significant support in providing a speedy response to customers.
10. The encirclement of Omni-channel Strategy
Any online customer segment is diverse. Customers can use different channels to contact the brand.
They can use; email, chat, virtual assistance or live chat; it is up to their convenience. What organizations are required to do is to maintain consistency. The response to the customers from different channels must be consistent.
It should reflect the uniform policy and working structure of the organization. The response time on every platform shall be in accordance with the benchmark provided.
See the following image for the benchmark respond timing of different channels.
11. Reflect Flexibility
The acquisition of a customer is difficult. But retaining them is a more complex task. Retaining a customer is necessary for a brand, as it can cost five times more than acquiring a customer.
Along with this, it also creates a significant impact on the brand image and reputation in the market.
Avoid taking hard lines while dealing with customers. We all have heard that ‘The boss is always right’ it is slightly changed as ‘the customer is always right’.
Despite customers sometimes harsh behavior and untrustworthy claims, the organization must use polite words and frequent respond to customers. Please provide a little flexibility to your customer representative staff to facilitate customers in any manner they require.
Write a Clear Return Policy
The return of products is a sad reality of online business. Almost every business has or will face the return of the products. Though the return sometimes can turn into difficult conversations, this problem arises because customers can not try the product before they purchase it.
A clear return policy can lead towards greater satisfaction.
This will customer support staff and customers alike in establishing trust and confidence in dealing with claims.
The return policy should be adequate, written precisely, and covers all aspects related to the shopping.
If you need a good example of a decent return policy, then take a look at the essay writers UK. They have one of the most effective and well-elaborated return policies.
Poorly written return policies can have a direct negative impact on the satisfaction level of customers, and you may lose clients.
Around 95% of people share bad experiences in their social circle. Imagine how many people will be offended and abandon your brand?
Will These be Effective Enough?
The rapid transformation from traditional to digital market had converted the digital market into a competitive platform. The increased competition has also created a significant influence on the expectation of consumers. The satisfaction benchmark of consumers has outgrown. This has created a hurdle for businesses to overcome, namely, – satisfying their consumers.
E-commerce consumers are affected many different aspects of business, ranging from; return policy to website interface. The customer experience is important because it creates an impact on the overall brand image and reputation.
Moreover, in the digital era, the spread of information is more convenient through social media. This convenience in spreading of information supports consumers in posting reviews regarding brand costing significantly to the organization.
We are optimistic that the tips that I have mentioned above will be efficient in increasing your customer’s experience.
Do apply it and tell me in the comments if you face any difficulty or have a suggestion for the improvement of these tips.
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Amanda Jerelyn
Amanda Jerelyn is currently working as a Content Executive at Crowd Writer and Dissertation Assistance, the organization famous for its essay help UK. She is a dedicated writer and expert marketer. Her dedication to writing is visible from her blogs.
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