Yes, shopping options have more than tripled in the last five years alone. As shoppers however, our attention spans have grown thin in almost the same ratio within the same period. This explains how urgent you need to look into your buyer experience if you’re running an online shop. If you want to grow user loyalty and boost the purchase process, digital marketing experts suggest the following:
Measure buyer experience
You can only improve what you already know is ailing. To improve your customer’s buying experience, start by measuring the overall customer experience. There are a number of metrics you’d like to look into, including customer satisfaction, resolution of customer issues, and product reach.
Make registration optional
Some of your visitors will only have time to complete a purchase, and pre-engaging them in side-activity delays purchases and some drop them altogether. One way of optimizing their time on the site is to make registration optional, not just simple.
Show up your shopping cart
To facilitate the purchasing process, you need to make your shopping cart visible to your visitors and easy to access. A potential buyer may not be ready to complete a purchase at the time of browsing through your offers, and giving them a chance to simply add their wishful items to the cart may translate into actual purchases when they visit again.
Speed up the check-out process
Online shoppers will come back to buy from your ecommerce site if their previous payment was straightforward, easy, and secure. If that’s not the case, prepare for high cart abandonment rates. To change the script, think of how you can make it easier to complete payments, while guaranteeing maximum security. Use this chance to inspire confidence among your shoppers.
Indicate delivery time and shipping cost
As a buyer completes the check-out process, be good enough to indicate the waiting time, expected delivery date, and the shipping charges where applicable. Online shoppers are more comfortable with online stores that provide alternative options when it comes to delivery time. This is where you try to meet the expectations of your customers by delivering purchased items in time.
Listen to buyer feedback and concerns
You need customer feedback to get insight into various performance indicators. Without communication from your customers, improving customer service becomes almost impossible. Think of establishing automated alerts to tap real customer feedback regarding your services.
Personalize your emails
What if you started off your emails with “Dear Bella”? Customers feel more appreciated if you can connect with them at personal level, and one way you can do that is issue out personalized emails. This is however only possible when you know your customer and only then can you deliver exceptional buyer experience. Getting personal should translate into more relevant offers for your customers, who eventually pay back with loyalty and of course, retention.
Offer self-service
If your ecommerce system doesn’t provide visitors with self-service tools, you’re definitely risking lost sales and customer attrition. With ecommerce self-service, your customers can enjoy round the clock visibility, user control, and real-time data on their pending orders, order status, and of course delivery time.
Offer options to your customers
When your customers are presented with a wide scale of choice, they feel more empowered as they make decisions based on what appeals to them. Your customers would like to make that choice, and when you deny them this opportunity, you throttle their buying experience.
Continually improve your offer
Like all other consumers, your customers love new products. To keep them coming for your product or service, you need to constantly add value to it so that its appeal is not lost. Find ways of improving your offer on a regular basis.
Train your sales team
Even with a self-service ecommerce site, you still need a well-trained sales team. When your team is adequately informed about your offers, customers learn more from them. Customers will always seek information prior to making any purchase, and if you can provide them with that information, you add value to the purchase process. To do this, you’ll need a team that’s well-trained and motivated. Be sure to offer incentives to your sales team.
Improve your technology
Technology sells, and being on top of things keeps your customers thrilled and willing to be associated with you. They’ll want to buy from you because you’re making that possible through new technology. This in a way helps improve your customer’s buying experience.
Use video to market your offers
Today, your customers will appreciate video content more than they would appreciate plain audio or print. Telling stories about your product through video adds greater authenticity to your word than the aforementioned formats.
Have a quality website
If you’re reaching out to new online customers, you might need a quality website to win the trust of your customers. You site should load quickly both on a PC and mobile device. It should also be easy to navigate and to perform some search. No one will spend an extra second on a site that loads at its own pace, and it’s even worse if users cannot connect their intent with proper content.
Get Social
Organize discussion forums and other topical give-and-takes on social media where customers can exchange ideas and share tips on what you are offering. When your customers learn from other customers, they tend to trust you more, which ultimately grows their overall experience.
Masroor is conversion optimization analyst at Invespcro.com, where he helps e-commerce websites in improving the overall conversion rate of their websites.