As a business owner, you want to have an eCommerce store that people rave about. One that solves people’s needs and magnetizes them into becoming lifelong customers.
But creating an eCommerce store that builds connections and leaves a lasting impression is a challenge. In a sea of other online retailers, how can you be sure your store will stand out?
In other words, how can you captivate your audience better than the competition?
By focusing on delivering the best customer experience throughout the entire customer journey.
The key is to prioritize customer experience above all else.
Let’s look at some ways you can improve your eCommerce store for a better customer experience.
Be Extra Prepared for Major Holidays and Events
As an online retailer, consumers depend on your inventory during major holidays and events. From buying birthday gifts to supplying Santa’s toy bag, there’s a lot of pressure to perform.
Black Friday, one of the biggest online shopping events of the year, is a perfect example of what we mean. Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, Black Friday saw $9 billion in online sales in 2020.
Black Friday, especially, is a holiday that requires eCommerce stores to be at their best for customers — otherwise, businesses could risk losing millions in sales.
Using sales data from previous events you capitalized on can help you spot areas for improvement going forward. It’s also important to keep an eye on consumer buying habits and pain points so you can start planning how to fulfill your audience’s needs before the holidays start. For this purpose, you should consider setting up an online database so that you can access, manage and organize all the key data for future events.
Take Advantage of Content Marketing
Content marketing is a long-term game, but the payoff is worth it. When done well, content marketing has the power to boost your brand’s virality and value.
How? Building a content base helps position your brand as an expert and raises your authority score with Google. It also helps solve your customers most burning questions, like:
How do I use this product?
What is this product for?
I’m experiencing a problem with my product, what do I do?
Focusing on quality vs quantity when scaling content, building a knowledge base, and sharing tutorials and demos can help enhance the customer experience throughout the lifecycle. So you must have a good digital customer experience mapping and provide a better customer journey.
If your team has no experience with content marketing, consider hiring a content production agency for help.
Build Trust and Clarity with Social Proof
Trying to win over a stubborn lead? Looking to boost your customer retention rate?
Before making a purchase on any new online store, users often check the seller for scams and frauds. By integrating social proof into your marketing strategy, you can encourage newbies to give you a try — and convince your current customers to stick around, too.
People are persuaded by what others do. They see a group of people crowded in an area, and they want to join in. They see best-selling products going out of stock, and suddenly they’re eager to try them, too.
Social proof builds trust and gives consumers the clarity to make empowered purchasing decisions.
Here’s a quick sneak peek of social proof in action:
If you scroll down on the homepage from LitExtension, you’ll see that the brand added customer testimonials and reviews from other websites. That’s a simple yet effective form of well-placed social proof.
You can also embed customer testimonials:
- On landing pages
- On your website
- In email newsletters
- In social media posts or ad campaigns
Optimize Your Website, Store, and Landing Pages
There’s nothing customers hate more than fidgety landing pages and frozen shopping carts.
You could have the most beautiful website in the world, but if it’s not optimized, you’ll see higher bounce rates and fewer purchases.
To enhance the customer experience, we recommend optimizing every slice of real estate you have online.
Here are a few quick tips to help you get there:
- Optimize for mobile devices first
- Create an effortless mobile experience
- Implement a chatbot feature
- Include informative product descriptions and clear photos of all of your products
- Make sure all pages, tabs, and features load quickly and seamlessly
- Make sure your shopping carts and payment processing systems are easy to use and load quickly
- Optimize your titles and add SEO meta descriptions
Perfect the Shipping Process
Your online store’s shipping process can make or break the customer experience.
Why?
As soon as customers submit their orders, they begin counting down the days until they receive their purchase.
If any part of the shipping process causes delays or strikes a pain point during this time, it’s going to result in a poor customer experience. You also run the risk of having an irate customer on your hands, ready to tell everyone they meet about their shipping grievances.
In other words, as an eCommerce store, seamless shipping should be a top priority.
Here are some quick tips to help you perfect the shipping process:
- Pay special attention to last-mile delivery challenges
- Test out the process and find an efficient solution for every shipping issue that arises
- Use route tracking software or route planner app to spot optimal routes
- Make sure each shipped order comes with real-time tracking updates from start to finish
- Create a dedicated customer support team for all shipping inquiries and challenges
Guide Your Customers to Purchase
While some customers come to your store knowing what they want, others need more guidance to see them through the purchase.
By guiding your customers to purchase, you remove the legwork and stress from decision-making and simultaneously encourage leads to stick around longer.
Here are some ways to guide your customers to purchase.
#1. Create a quiz
Create a multiple choice quiz that customers can fill out to discover the right products for their needs, you can create using WP Quiz Plugin.
#2. Product recommendations based on user preferences
Have your system recommend products based on a customer’s previous shopping behavior and consumer preferences.
#3. Highlight best-selling products
Showcase your best-selling products on landing pages and on your home page.
#4. Highlight deals
Highlight special offers in your social media stories, email newsletters, and landing pages.
#5. Show your business’ human side
Use social media, your blog, or even your website.
Having an ‘About Us’ section on your website helps show off your business’ human side and can guide potential customers to purchase.
SchoolLockers.com does a great job of explaining its human side. When coupled with word of mouth, this helps them sell their products.
By sharing your company culture, values, and personality, you create a connection with the customer that goes beyond selling a product.
Make the Purchasing Process Seamless
From choosing between color palettes to submitting payment information, every purchasing process step should be pristine.
To optimize the purchasing process, refer to your audience personas and map out the steps each persona would take.
For instance, if one of your personas is a busy millennial entrepreneur, then their purchasing process might look like this:
- Visit the online store
- Head to the search bar
- Type in a product name or type
- Click on the correct product
- Click buy
- Check out
- Receive shipment tracking info
After mapping out the steps for each persona, put yourself in their shoes. Follow the process as if you were the one buying and look for errors.
Do any steps take longer to complete than others? Why? Are you running into any major snags along the way?
If you notice anything out of the ordinary, implement solutions to improve the purchasing process.
Adding compatibility with software like Kudos can also make your eCommerce more attractive to potential customers. Many shoppers prefer having one-click checkout nowadays and will be more likely to return to your store if they can benefit from credit card rewards.
Solve Customer Pain Points Better than Anyone Else
There are many reasons why customers stay loyal to specific brands. But if you get to the root of each, there’s likely a solved pain point in there.
Customers stay with brands that solve their pain points better than anyone else.
Let’s say, for example, you have two customers, Martha and Sara.
They both love your sea salt body scrub, but lately, Martha’s skin has become too delicate for it. Sara also loves the product, but it’s become too expensive for her after a recent job loss.
The first order of business is recognizing that both customers have significant pain points. Some customers will actually reach out and tell you their pain points.
But, unfortunately, most customers won’t. Most will start looking for a product that fulfills their needs.
That’s why it’s essential to be proactive about uncovering pain points and then doing everything you can to solve them better than your competition.
Martha and Sara might not reach out to tell you about the roadblocks they’re running into. But you can always reach out to them using polls, product surveys, personalized marketing, or asking them to join a focus group.
Wrap Up
There’s nothing better than having an eCommerce store that everyone loves.
But creating an eCommerce store that leaves a lasting impression isn’t easy. In a sea of competitors, how can your store stand out?
By focusing on delivering the best customer experience throughout the entire customer journey, you can captivate your audience better than the competition.
The key? Prioritizing customer experience above all else.
To improve your ecommerce store for a better customer experience, we recommend:
- Being extra prepared for major holidays and events
- Taking advantage of content marketing
- Building trust and clarity with social proof
- Optimizing your website, store, and landing pages
- Perfecting the shipping process
- Guiding your customers to purchase
- Making the purchasing process seamless
- Solving customer pain points better than anyone else
Author Bio
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Content Solutions, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.