6 Easy Ways To Improve the Customer Experience

19/04/2024

If you’ve ever been captivated by the triumphs of online businesses or the rapid ascent of a ‘TikTok Shop’ in recent times, you might have pondered the factors that propelled them to such heights. The reality is that their success is not a stroke of luck but a product of meticulous strategic planning and a dedicated focus on customer experience. This realisation should ignite your belief in the potential of your own e-commerce venture.

While these types of stores seem to dominate the news, the likelihood is that they didn’t achieve that level of success overnight, despite how it might seem. And for those who did, it was more likely a lucky break that catapulted them into the public gaze so fast.

If you’re running an e-commerce venture and you want to know how to make it to the top and boost your sales, then you need to focus on the customer experience. If you’re looking for longevity, not a flash-in-the-pan success that dissipates after a couple of weeks, pinpointing the perfect customer experience can help you give the results you need and genre success time and time again to keep those orders rolling in.

Improving the ecommerce customer experience may seem daunting at first, especially if you don’t have a physical store. But the truth is, it’s not as complicated as it seems. With the right strategies and these helpful tips, you can enhance your customers’ journey and boost your business. Remember, it’s about making small, manageable changes that can have a big impact.

Organisation is Key

There’s no way around the fact that you can have the best team and products for your customers, but if you are disorganised behind the scenes, then chances are this will show through in what you do. You need to be as organised as possible to help collate information and have what you need to hand in. This can be via using software to help you streamline data, or it can be using a shared inbox so everyone has access to the same information at all times, or even saved replies for constantly asked questions so the same information is being put out, keeping your message consistent. Whatever you need to be organised, put into practice and be on the ball.

Embrace “Me-commerce”

‘Me-commerce’ is about meeting customers on their terms and engaging with them in ways they prefer. With more avenues than ever to interact with and understand their customers, businesses must pay attention to these preferences and integrate them into their operations.

What you’re doing is allowing for a more enhanced and flexible way to contact and engage with you as a business. It is offering multi-channel contact points. You can use a chatbot for website, accept direct messages across your social media, have a live agent online to answer queries, or welcome email or phone contact. But you need to look at the ways people like it get in touch with companies; for example, a survey by Forrester found that 31% of customers reached out to a company via Twitter (now X), 33% via Facebook and 45% via live chat while Microsoft found that 66% of consumers used at least three methods of contact or reached out to a company.

However, if you’re offering multiple avenues of contact, you need to ensure a seamless experience regardless of how the customer wishes to get in touch. Set the same parameters for replies for each one and ensure the customer receives the same level of service regardless of how they choose to reach out.

Focus on Low Effort

The last thing customers want to do when they shop with you is jump through multiple hoops to make the sale. Taking a step back and looking at how you can make your website and shopping experience as low effort as possible will ensure that people aren’t cut off at the buying stage, and the ease of the transaction will encourage them to return time and time again.

If you’re not convinced about making things low effort, then look at these stats pertaining to self-service options for ecommerce customers (figures from CXMToday and Forrester)

81% of customers want more self-service options when shopping online
77% of customers have used a self-serve portal
53% of businesses believe their customers are satisfied with their self-service options
Only 15% of customers said they were actually satisfied with self-service options.
Customers overwhelmingly preferred a knowledge base for their queries, and incorporating this into a website can cut customer service queries by 20%

There are many benefits to increasing self-service options and making the customer experience as low-effort as possible for both customers and staff. You can save time and money as people are able to find queries more easily and have questions answered faster, reducing the need for them to contact a staff member. The easier it is to find what they need, the more likely they are to make a purchase, thus increasing the probability of them becoming loyal customers.

Be Clear

How clear is your website, and how easy is it to find the information people need? Following on from the above point about making your ecommerce outlet low effort, you need to be clear and concise with the information you put out. Forget about adding a load of waffles and jargon; you need to convey vital information as clearly as possible and how your layout and navigation system are primed for simplicity and ease of access.

This could be having links to important pages listed at the bottom of the page as well as the menu bar to help people find what they need, e.g. shipping information, delivery times, returns information, company channels, terms of service, privacy information and so on. This is what most people will need to know when they stop online, and providing this in an easy-to-find way and presenting the information clearly will go a long way to supporting your improved customer service.

Focus on Reviews

Reviews and feedback are vital for any business, but for e-commerce, they can be extremely powerful tools, and neglecting to collect or even request data can be a big red flag. A massive 77% of brands will engage if feedback is required, while 52% of consumers feel like brands need to do more with feedback and collect it for something other than to file away. Your customers’ feedback is not just a formality, it’s a valuable resource that can guide your business decisions and help you improve your customer experience.

Let’s take this example. You have store A and store B, both selling what appear to be the exact same products for similar price points, and they both have low-effort websites that are appealing. You have never shopped with either before, but store B has customer reviews and testimonials as well as links on social media where people leave reviews too. They have images of the customer and the products they receive, while store A doesn’t have anything at all from customers, and when you search for reviews, they are hard to come by or are underwhelming. Who are you buying from?

Suppose you want to make the customer experience better and entice customers. In that case, you need to be asking for and acting on the feedback you get to make what you do better and also to show off what others think of you by using this on your website, social media and marketing to boost what you do.

Measure, Improve and Repeat

There is nothing to say that once you feel you have perfected your customer experience, then this is it, and you cannot make changes. Customer needs and preferences change constantly, which means you need to be changing to meet these demands. Be continually reviewing what you do, the busiest times, trending topics and your performance to see what you can make improvements to; use this information to power change and drive better decisions. The more you know, the more you can do and using your data, and analytics will be instrumental in helping you ensure you are doing what needs to be done and aren’t letting standards drop.

An excellent example of this is identifying peak shopping times, as you can adjust staffing levels or implement longer live chat hours. For example, it can be offering next-day delivery on the days when people tend to shop more often or offering discounts or offers at the end of the month when more people get paid and are more likely to spend more, i.e. free shipping on orders over £50, etc. It can be making changes to your checkout process to facilitate an easier checkout and reduce abandoned carts, or it can be identifying trends in sales so you can ensure you have correct stock levels when required so people don’t experience long shipping delays or out-of-stock messages.

Improving the customer experience should be a top priority for any business owner. After all, the customer is king, and without them, you won’t be able to do what you do. By taking a step back and putting yourself in their shoes, you can implement these tips along with others to help you make tweaks in the right places that help the customer not turn them away and boost your sales for years to come.