Even if you think that you give excellent customer service and deal with complaints efficiently and effectively, it’s important to recognise that consumers don’t always see things the same way; surveys show that while certain companies will often assert that they deliver good customer service, only a minority of people will actually say that they do.
There is a huge choice of e-stores for every type of product or service, making it vital that you differentiate your site from the others. This can be achieved in part through providing a flawless customer experience, an increasingly important area to invest in as it’s become more important than price and product when a consumer is making a purchasing decision.
Here are three ways that you might be scaring potential customers away, and how to mitigate them:
1. Under-personalization
It’s possible that customers will be instantly turned off by content such as adverts and promotions that simply aren’t relevant to them. Using information measured in real-time, such as location or time, can help your e-store provide recommendations and offers that are appropriate to the individual customer.
Other ways to do this involve personalizing offers, such as for the birthday of a customer or offering recommendations based on the purchasing history of similar customer profiles. These can be fairly simple and straightforward but often go a long way in resonating with consumers.
2. Using The Wrong eCommerce Platform
There are ecommerce platforms that aren’t able to integrate with software which can be used to enhance the consumer experience, as well as to simplify the process of dealing with customer enquiries.
When looking for the best ecommerce platform it’s important to consider several factors, such as: performance on mobile, SEO capabilities, load time, cost, integration options, and security features.
It’s also useful to look at online reviews and have a look at each platform, to find the one that most suits your business needs.
3. Poor Website Functionality
Your e-store should be as diligently and well-organised as retail is in physical stores; customers need to be able to browse in an orderly and intuitive fashion through categories and sections that make sense to them. Also ensure that your site’s tags and filters are done properly and make sure that the product search feature works efficiently, otherwise users tend to get frustrated and will be less likely to make a purchase.
It’s also vital to make sure that your website loads quickly. Amazon found that they experience a 1% decrease in sales for every tenth of a second extra spending loading pages on their site, so making sure that your pages are loading for customers in less than three seconds is of the utmost importance. Also having a brand-associated image on every single web page that users will recognise is important, and it can be valuable to have a logo designer create you an emblem that will jump out at users and help to begin developing brand association whilst consumers use your e-store.
Working to improve the customer experience of an e-store is vital in the success of any ecommerce business, as it helps to drive sales and more importantly begins to form a brand relationship with consumers. These three tips can help dramatically in starting to build a base of loyal customers.
