Customer experience is arguably one of the most essential facets of any business. It influences your customers’ perceptions of your brand and determines whether or not they will shop with you again. Nearly 3/4 of consumers’ purchasing habits are driven by customer experience.
As growing market competition increases the challenge of customer acquisition, it is more vital than ever for you to hone the customer experience factor of your eCommerce business. Doing so will ultimately improve customer retention and loyalty and improve customers’ likelihood of recommending your business to family and friends.
Although there is no ‘one size fits all’ model for ensuring that your business always provides exceptional customer experience, there are several techniques that you can use to leave customers feeling satisfied after interacting with your store.
Here are our top tips for optimising the customer experience factor of your eCommerce business:
Make your website more user-friendly
Ensuring customers can easily navigate your website is integral to providing a great customer experience.
When browsing your website, customers should be able to find whatever they are looking for without difficulty. Your website must meet your customers’ needs; the search button should be easily locatable, and all products should be categorised and tagged in a thorough and intuitive way.
You should also prioritise site speed. A website that takes a long time to load will likely cause customer frustration.
Personalise your customers’ shopping experiences
Your customers should feel that their personal preferences have been catered to after shopping on your eCommerce website.
Personalised emails no longer suffice; the shopping experience must be tailored to each customer. Customers should relate to the content, recommended products, and advertisements shown to them, or you risk alienating your shoppers. Use variables such as shopping and browsing history, age, and location to determine personalisation.
Personalising your customers’ shopping experiences will increase satisfaction and loyalty, driving sales and decreasing returns.
Provide customer service that exceeds expectations
Customer delight, or exceeding your customers’ expectations, should be at the top of your agenda. Research shows that 72% of customers will tell six or more people about a positive shopping experience.
To provide fantastic customer service that surpasses customers’ expectations, try out these techniques:
- Follow up with a ‘thank you’ email after a purchase.
- Establish a referral program to benefit existing and future customers.
- Send out loyalty points and special discounts to show gratitude to your customers.
- Send free gifts and perks to your most loyal customers.
Improve your order delivery process
Your order delivery process should be perfected to ensure that your business provides a consistently excellent customer experience. Delivery should be speedy and straightforward, and customers should be kept in the loop regarding their order’s whereabouts.
Offer multiple delivery options, such as next-day delivery, home delivery, and pick-up. Consider offering recorded delivery so that customers can track the location of their orders.
Ensure that you use a shipping strategy that suits your business, and find a reliable shipping provider.
Measure customer experience
To improve the customer experience factor of your eCommerce business, you must measure it and use these insights to expose areas lacking.
There are several ways to measure customer experience- here are a few:
- Customer Effort Score
The Customer Effort Score indicates customers’ efforts to interact with your business. It should be easy for customers to interact and resolve issues with your eCommerce business.
You should use the Customer Effort Score to measure the effectiveness of your business’s customer support.
Make sure to ask customers for feedback on their experience, asking for help with something on your website.
- Customer Satisfaction Score
This is used as another customer experience metric that measures how pleased your customers are with your business.
You can survey your customers to give your business a Customer Satisfaction Score. Here is a guide for creating a survey that measures customer satisfaction.
If you would like advice on your customer experience, reach out to us via the button below and one of our gurus will pick it up with you.
