5 Ways to Enhance Customer Experience in E-commerce

An eCommerce business needs a variety of products to succeed, and customers are more likely to be drawn to specific products within a particular category. If the customer journey has not been designed correctly, you may offer the best product in the world and still lose sales.

As a result of the emergence of e-commerce, small and mid sized businesses have been able to compete effectively with both large and established businesses. In today’s environment where direct-to-consumer businesses operate, technology and expertise can be applied to convert traffic, acquire and retain new customers, and provide an unparalleled online experience.

The brand must compete on more than just price and product in order to stand out from the crowd. Ecommerce sites are the virtual faces of your company, so you must not only provide an excellent online experience but extend that excellence across all touchpoints of your brand. Brand loyalty and lifetime value can be enhanced by ensuring positive user experiences. According to Forrester, companies that excel in customer experience grow at a much faster rate than their competitors.

The customer experience must be optimized at every level. Every time the customer interacts with the company, whether through the website, via email or text message, or through sales representatives or support staff, they expect to be delighted.

Online commerce is of critical importance in today’s economy.  It allows businesses to deliver a high level of customer service via their website. This article provides insight into various aspects of customer satisfaction, including the ways in which it can be improved so that your business is more effective.  

What Is The Customer Experience In E-commerce?

A customer experience can be defined as the way in which a brand manages to engage its customers across a variety of platforms.

Customer experience is the perception of how an organization interacts with its customers and vice versa. There is no question that this perception is the driving force that determines the behavior of customers whether they are shopping in-store, on mobile devices, or online. Such perceptions reinforce brand memories and induce brand loyalty.

Positive experiences lead to higher revenue, positive reviews, and lifetime customers. Negative experiences contribute to the reverse.

It is generally understood that if customers find it enjoyable to interact with you. They are more likely to recommend you to others. The loyalty of a customer can last a generation, or even through the life of the company.

What Makes a Shopping Customer Experience Important? 

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, loyal customers are vital for e-commerce businesses. Customers who experience satisfaction during their online shopping become advocates for your brand and will promote it to others as a result. Online shoppers have an array of options when it comes to selecting a product. 

Having an online store is a great way to build a brand, but if you do not offer the customers something more than just a product, you will lose a large part of the market, and you will have to pour additional resources into areas such as promotion, sales, special offers, marketing, all of which can be very costly for your business. Because of this, increasingly more businesses are investing their time and resources in the design of a customer experience map that will generate word-of-mouth advertising and marketing, increase revenue, and create satisfied customers.

Studies show that loyal clients increase revenue by over 400  percent over the course of three years. As opposed to dissatisfied customers, whose complaints can reduce your revenues by up to 14% within a calendar year. 

How Can You Improve The Customer Experience Of Your E-Commerce Website?

An eCommerce website is not enough to ensure a positive customer experience on your site. Below are some suggestions that may prove useful to you:

• Allow Guest Checkout

The checkout process on your ecommerce store should be as smooth as possible. When a customer is interrupted during checkout. He will most likely abandon the store. Forcing customers to create an account or login to be able to add products to cart or complete the checkout is a hindrance. It irritates customers and adversely affects their experience. Never force customers to login to complete their checkout or perform any other activities in your store. Allow guest checkout so that customers can shop without any impediment. You can always convert guests to customers once their checkout is complete.  

• Personalize where You Can 

Personalization would be one of the five top trends in the eCommerce business that we see today. Moreover, it does not only revolve around a newsletter that starts with a warm greeting and includes your name. But it is everywhere you look. Data from eCommerce sales is used to enhance customer experience, including location, shopping, and browsing history.

`Every aspect of your experience must be as personalized as possible. You will receive personalized offers and browsing recommendations. The online store presents you with a selection of products. We are very likely not to cancel the purchase. If the offer meets our expectations 100% and appears to be a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Many organizations spend a great deal of time analyzing personal information and preparing a personalized workflow step by step. 

3. Invest In Customer Relationships

Your eCommerce business is built upon your relationship with your customers. Maintaining a positive relationship with your customers can increase brand loyalty as well as retention.

Customer service is now more important than ever in ensuring a successful customer experience. A brand’s relationship with its customers has a significant impact on its bottom line. This is because it is estimated that it costs five times as much to attract new customers as to retain existing ones. You will save time and money while preserving the reputation of your brand if you are able to resolve a client’s issue while retaining their business in the future.

4. Keep Checkout Simple

  Checkout should be as efficient as possible in order to optimize conversions and minimize abandonment. Therefore, many online retailers use multistep checkout processes in order to focus on the most important aspects of each step of the process – namely, the billing, shipping, and order review – rather than trying to squeeze everything onto a single page. Some of the best practices include:

• Provide customers with the option to check out as a guest or to log in with their existing Google or social media accounts. This will simplify the registration process for new visitors.
• By using persistent cookies.  We can save your customer’s cart contents across multiple sessions, preventing the cart contents from being reset. Thus, conversion rates are improved when shoppers abandon checkout and come back at a later time.
• The key to establishing trust is for businesses to maintain their own SSL certificates. In order to keep customers on their own domains throughout the checkout process. Sending a customer to a third-party provider to complete the purchase is highly disruptive.
• You can also hire an SEO Company in India.

5. Mobile Strategies Should Satisfy Customers At All Points Of Contact

Retail is not dying in brick-and-mortar stores. It will only die if you do not implement a digital strategy for identity management that allows you to personalize the journey for your customers.

The company reports that digitally engaged customers spend twice as much as average checkout receipts. Dollar General has responded to this challenge with a convenient “Order online and pick up in-store” service that analysts believe will appeal to a younger demographic.

Essentially, consumers prefer a combination of digital and mobile shopping and in-person visits. It is therefore imperative that marketing strategies for retailers feature mobile-friendly touchpoints. 

Here are some strategies to enhance the customer experience both inside and outside of the store:

• Use mobile devices to initiate relevant chat, email, or SMS workflows.
• On your websites and apps, make sure to integrate on-the-spot buyer guides, fact sheets, and upselling suggestions.
• Develop marketing strategies based on aggregated e-commerce information from customer identities.
• Set up in-store kiosks to compare complementary products.
• By integrating customer identity and access management (CIAM) software with devices and physical locations, you can synchronize profile and purchasing information

By integrating digital and traditional touchpoints with CRM tools, you will ultimately be able to build lasting customer loyalty.

“Expect to see an increase in shoppers using mobile devices, particularly as brands establish ways to engage with shoppers through push notifications and SMS messages”

Data protection tips for e-commerce customers

• Ensure that you collect and store only the most important customer data.
• Avoid storing credit card information and customer names to facilitate the checkout process.
• Passwords must be strong, complex, and difficult to crack.
• Ensure that your organizational controls are effective to prevent insider attacks and leaks.
• Provide two-factor authentication on your website, as well as an SSL certificate.
• Inform your customers about suspicious behavior and encourage them to identify it.
• Provide DDoS protection in your web application firewall.
• Keep a backup solution in place to automatically back up files in the event of a breach.
• Ensure that your employees are trained in security awareness so that they are able to identify suspicious activity.
• Create a cybersecurity action plan that identifies what needs to be done after an attack has occurred.
• To prevent hackers from exploiting your information, keep your operating system up-to-date with security patches.
• Encrypt all passwords and sensitive information so they cannot be accessed.

Wrapping Up

A customer experience strategy for eCommerce is as crucial to the continued success of your business as a marketing strategy. Hopefully, this post has helped you understand the importance of improving the customer experience on eCommerce websites and given you some useful suggestions. You can find many more techniques to improve your customer service experience besides those listed above. It all depends on how you apply them in reality, to build a successful business.