Many eCommerce platforms today are in a rut, not because of the lack of visitors but because people just aren’t buying. If this is currently happening to your site, then this article might help you unstuck yourself.
There are many factors why customers are turned away from purchasing in an online store. However, it boils down into one thing—your site doesn’t offer excellent customer experience to online buyers.
Your Ecommerce Store Must Offer Something of Value First
Whether you are a large brand or someone who just started selling on Shopify, you must offer your customers something of value before they gain your trust.
Generating massive traffic into your eCommerce website is not enough if you are not converting these visitors into loyal customers. Therefore, the real challenge for online stores is how to make customers trust you enough to purchase in your online store.
The answer is simple—focus on providing excellent customer experience by being there with them every step of the buying process.
Gone are the days when simple eCommerce ads are all it takes to get a customer. Online buyers usually undergo a series of steps before they decide to purchase a particular item from a specific online store.
For example, they usually make a list of the best options they have for a smartphone that fits their budget. Next, they will compare the listed items to one another and weigh in what best suits their preference.
After this, they will search for an online store that offers the best deals for the item they are eyeing to buy. Finally, depending on the customer experience they get from an online seller, they may proceed with the purchase or look somewhere else when they aren’t satisfied.
How Customer Experience Relates to the Bottom Line
According to Salesforce, 80 percent of customers think that the customer experience they had with a company is just as necessary as the products and services they offer. Meanwhile, 76 percent of the respondents say that they can always take their business elsewhere.
This report tells us two crucial things:
First, an online store must put its customer’s needs for it to succeed.
Second, online stores usually have one chance to impress their customers, or they will walk away towards your competitor.
Consequently, customer experience also affects two factors that affect the bottom line—brand reception and customer retention.
- Brand Reception
The Internet has enabled businesses to reach out to customers across the globe that they wouldn’t have access to if they remained a brick-and-mortar store. However, this has also made them easily susceptible to receiving criticisms on different review platforms.
Customers who have transacted with your online store can either encourage or discourage other online users from doing business with you. Almost 9 out of 10 people read online reviews of the item they want to buy before purchasing them.
- Customer Retention
In an online world struggling for new customers, very few online stores know how to retain their customers. Retaining customers is more practical as you only need to spend a fifth of what you spend on new customers for them to commit to purchasing an item.
When you have gained a repeat customer’s trust, they become more valuable because you won’t have to spend a lot of them. In hindsight, retaining a customer is healthier for the bottom line than acquiring a new customer.
Tips for Improving the Customer Experience in Your Ecommerce Platform
Ecommerce advertising is just the start of the customer journey, which requires a lot of follow up steps to provide excellent customer experience. If your store is set up in Shopify advertising, your items must go beyond the platform.
Below are a series of steps to ensure that your site visitors are getting the best customer experience that can convert them into loyal customers.
1. Know Your Customer
This might be a trivial matter, but knowing your customers and interacting with them on a personal level goes a long way. For example, in every email you send to them, you may want to address them on their first name. After all, who doesn’t want to hear or read their name?
It’s crucial for online stores nowadays to know their customer’s buying patterns and preferences if they want to thrive. Customer data abounds online, especially from their purchasing history, and it would be a waste not to use them to your advantage.
2. Address their Pain Points
Customers usually have a lot of worries or pain points that prevent them from purchasing from an online store. They may feel unsure about the security of your website, especially when they input their credit card details. Or it could be that it takes too many steps before they complete their order.
Whatever the pain points are, you need to identify and solve it immediately. The process usually requires you to take on the shoes of your customers and see how fast and efficient your system is when you shop in your store.
3. Be An Authoritative Figure
Customers usually trust websites or online stores that know their stuff. Who would want to buy basketball items from a shop that doesn’t seem to know about hoops? In short, you need to be invested in making yourself a voice in the community you are selling to.
For this reason, it’s essential to create blogs and other forms of content for you to show your customers you have the same interests and passions. Posting on social media about the latest news or trends in your industry or community can also help you reach out to them.
4. Offer Self Service Options
We live in a world where everything needs to be delivered fast. Customers, too, want to resolve their problems or issues regarding their purchase as fast as possible. Hence, instead of hiring more customer service personnel, it’s best if you can offer some form of self-service features.
Online customers are willing to do some of the work to get answers to their queries or resolve a minor issue if it saves them time. As such, installing chatbots into your social media and website is an excellent idea because it gives your customers to solve their issues. Furthermore, it also cuts down your cost as these programs are self-automating.
5. Develop a Way to Measure Customer Satisfaction
Feedback is the best indicator to know the things you are doing right and which areas in your business need improvement. Whether you are a first time Google ads eCommerce advertiser or someone who has been doing Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, you need to measure if you can satisfy your customer.
There are many methods you can employ to get these data. Customer reviews posted on your social media account, for example, is an excellent place to start. You may also look into your repeat customers’ data and see why they ordered at least a second time. If you can replicate what’s working for your existing customers to your potential clients, then success is just a few steps away.
Conclusion
Customer experience can make or break your eCommerce business because it directly affects your bottom line. Addressing your buyers’ issues and improving their experience in your online store will turn them into loyal customers in the long run.