E-commerce is an excellent business to be in, but it’s also a crowded and competitive industry. With huge sites like Amazon attracting customers by offering steep discounts, numerous reviews and fast shipping, it can be hard for smaller businesses to compete. Fortunately, there are always steps you can take to improve the customer experience on your own website. Take a look at these five tips and see if you see something that could benefit you.
Build Something You Would Use
If you’re going to create a website that you want people to visit and use, it makes sense that it should be the kind of site that you’d use yourself. This should be one of the first “checks” you put into place when gauging your site. If the site belonged to someone else, would you buy anything from it? If the answer to that question is “no” then you may want to step back and think about the things that you’d want to see in a site like yours.
Suggest Related Items
Often, people don’t take the time to look through your entire inventory. Help them explore your products by offering some suggestions about other items related to their purchases. If you question whether or not this is a good idea, spend a few minutes on Amazon.
They have a plethora of variations on this idea, including a list of items related to your last viewed product, reminders of items in your wish lists, and even a general list based on your browsing history. This is an excellent way to boost sales and also to make sure the customer is better informed when they make purchases.
Don’t Force People To Join
Sometimes, the extra time or hassle that comes with creating an account can be a dealbreaker. When people click the “checkout” button and get redirected to an account creation page, the potential for them to abandon their cart and look elsewhere definitely increases.
To combat this problem, allow customers to check out as a guest if they want to, but offer them the chance to create an account after the checkout process. Once they’ve ordered something from you, they’re more invested in your company and more likely to say “yes” when asked to share their information with you.
When Customers Complain, Listen
One of the worst things you can do as an online business is to ignore customer feedback. If something on your site is broken, or if it could be modified to work better, you should take care of it as soon as possible. Even better, once you’ve solved a problem, let the people who complained about it know that you’ve taken care of their issue.
Another benefit of listening to the customer is that you’ll gain a better perspective on what your customers are expecting from your site. This will help you make additions and adjustments as you move forward.
Offer Incentives
At the end of the day, people are going to go where they feel appreciated, and nothing screams appreciation more loudly than incentive programs. Show your return customers you value them by offering a free product after X number of purchases. Incentivize new customers to sign up for your newsletter by offering a discount code when they sign up. The key is to reward your customers for their loyalty and entice them to continue doing business with you.
What methods do you use to get the most out of your ecommerce site? Share them with us below.
