How to Boost Customer Experience Management in Ecommerce For Improved Sales

There is no iota of doubt that owning an eCommerce business or managing day-to-day operations is more than an overwhelming task. And if you are the one who drives this out, you must be realizing how crucial it is to offer a solid, smooth customer experience to your audience.

About 53% of shoppers confessed that they have completely stopped purchasing from an online store due to a bad experience or because a competitor offered a better experience!

The problem comes down to one major thing — a lack of understanding about customer experience when it comes to eCommerce.

However, before you directly dive into tackling Customer Experience (CX), it is essential to first understand what it actually is and what wonders it can do for your ambitious business.

Understanding Customer Experience in eCommerce

In the context of online retail stores and eCommerce business development, customer experience signifies the way in which a brand engages its customers online. It basically describes the perception of a customer about how a company interacts with them and vice versa. Whether it’s via mobile, web or in-store, this perception is the key factor affecting the customer behavior. It creates brand memories and also motivates brand loyalty.

Customer Experience can be thought of as the “fingerprints” a brand leaves on the customers. Each and every step of the process is critical, be it the first impression to the final purchase. Thus, it is important for businesses to analyze every touchpoint of consumers shopping with them.

Good CX encourages positive reviews, better revenue, and lifelong customers. On the other hand, a bad CX results in the opposite.

If customers like having interaction with you, they will stay with you for longer and will also recommend you to others.

Customer Experience promotes brand loyalty and also builds brand vision.

Note that customer loyalty can even last for generations and also for the brand’s life itself.

Why Has Customer Experience Created Such a Buzz in eCommerce?

Have a look at some of these recent predictions and stats:

• 86% of consumers are ready to pay more price for an enhanced customer experience.
• 49% of shoppers confessed to having made impulse purchases after having personalized experiences.
• 40% of the data analytics projects related to the customer experience by 2020.

When it comes to offering an incredible customer experience, “product” and “people” happen to be the major factors. Undeniably, your visitors should also be impressed by the performance of your product. But, they also need to be delighted by your customer support staff, when they look out for their help.

Effective Ways to Enhance CX For Ecommerce

• Deliver Amazing Mobile Experiences

Providing a top-class mobile eCommerce purchasing experience can significantly profit retailers. Mobile eCommerce sales are predicted to be accountable for about 54% of the overall eCommerce revenue by 2021.

This is one of the many reasons why your online store should be available on mobile devices effortlessly and not just laptops and desktops.

Your mobile eCommerce site must be highly optimized. As per a report by Google, about 53% of the customers will instantly drop from your site in case it takes them more than 3 seconds to load. Moreover, after bouncing off from your site, in all possibilities, they will straight away land on your competitor’s website.

You need to develop a dedicated mobile app for your site visitors if there are over 30% of them who visit via their smartphones. As compared to responsive designs, mobile apps are much more productive and also provide a better customer experience.

After you have your app in place, you would require a digital transformation approach so as to update and improve technical capabilities and processes that meet the demand of your customers.

Making use of a digital identity platform is a solution to this. This is a good way to engage visitors during the holiday season and beyond while also making their digital experience rich.

• Improve Website Navigation (Product / Service Search) — User Experience Management

Online customers, in general, fall under three categories as per the expectation, requirements, and purposes of an individual. Below are the three categories:

* People who are already aware of what they are seeking

Visitors who clearly know what they want will go to the product search bar directly. Your customers can conveniently search what they are seeking when products are placed strategically. Including auto-complete also helps people who fail to remember the exact name of the product. This significantly enhances customer satisfaction on product discovery.

* People browsing your website

Visitors who scan your e-commerce site require a variety of sorting options like price, color, size, and brand. Personalizing the search experience is the best thing you can do for them.

* People requiring assistance with filtering products

There are customers who often don’t have an idea what they want but do have specific criteria for their product search. Including product features in the sorting options is a good idea so as to make the filtering of products much more convenient.

* Supply Chain Management

The past year has shown many things amongst which the impact of the eCommerce supply chain on the customer experience tops the list.

However, the pandemic isn’t the only thing that scares online retailers. The supply chain can get disrupted even during normal times. This can have a major negative impact on your CX in case you aren’t well-prepared.

• To avoid stockouts so as not to disappoint customers
• To deliver products well on time or even earlier, if possible
• To ensure the safety of product throughout the supply chain on its way to customer
• To centralize your inventory data which is becoming increasingly essential as you move ahead with omnichannel sales and operations. In case these channels are out of sync, then overselling your stock becomes easy which also results in customer disappointment.

* Personalization

One of the strongest factors which drives customer loyalty is to ‘Make it Personal’ which is critical for retailers to increase customer retention.

You must make use of data so as to understand your customers in a better way and treat them as an individual, thus making them feel valued.

Below are some tips for personalization that you can try:

• Offer personal discounts on services or products suitable for the customer
• Remember the history of the customer. Based on the items viewed by the customer recently, showcase a list of recommendations.
• Interact with the customers in their native language.
• Recognize the location of the customer to provide information on delivery to this region.
• Personalization of emails: This includes an invitation to an event or a birthday compliment.

* Leverage the Potential of Social Media Networks

In Spite of the target audience, the present generation depends on communications and promotions that are done on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Build and enhance strategies to engage your customers by taking advantage of free social media platforms.

The process can make a considerable impact when it comes to your business’s success and can prove to be a cost-effective solution to marketing. Furthermore, social media channels serve as quick networks for communication allowing you to deal with customer inquiries or issues faster than calling customer assistance or ticket submission. You can achieve an incredible eCommerce CX by implementing the above strategies correctly that will ultimately increase loyalty and revenue.

• Reduce Abandoned Carts

Can you believe the fact that in general, about 88% of the online shopping carts were abandoned worldwide across all industries?

You must understand the obstacles for people that stop them from purchasing from your store so as to increase eCommerce sales. Is your return policy not satisfactory enough? Does your checkout form cease to develop trust?

Make sure to provide your customers with multiple payment options. Let your customers decide when and how they wish to receive their packages? Over the past year, the popularity of contactless pickup and home delivery has increased.

Sometimes it happens that people forget about their shopping carts. You can send a link that directs the buyer back to the shopping cart. You can also add a discount code so as to make sure that the abandoned shopping carts do convert to sales.

Final Thoughts:

Hopefully, you must have acquired a better understanding of Customer Experience Management by now. Need more help to build an outstanding CX for an eCommerce website? Well, you can get in touch with OnGraph Technologies to make your eCommerce business successful and customer oriented. Keep Sailing…

Thanks!