Enhancing the level of customer experience on the website has become one of the top priorities for store owners because it is something that acts as a differentiator in this competitive e-Commerce industry. Even little details can make a big difference in terms of how customers feel about products and the company.
Many of us have heard this before that it is important to provide a positive customer experience. But the question is; how do you do that? Winning loyal customers is no longer providing quality products to the customers. Today, customers are more educated and have many options. They are willing to pay more money for convenience and better experience.
Your customers are constantly interacting with you as a business via many channels like email, social media, in-store visits and customer service. So, the definition of an enhanced customer experience is making your customers happy over all these channels and providing exactly what they are looking for.
Make sure your customers can reach you easily
When you are dealing with products that are sold by many other competitors, it is your job as a store owner to provide quality content that will distinguish you from other sellers. The quality content will make it easier to attract online shoppers to your site. Another important thing is try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and see if your store site is easy to navigate. Is it easy to find information for products or services that you are offering to your customers? Just having an online store is not enough these days so make sure you are also on the entire social media sites so that customers can reach out to you via different channels.
Understand that online shopping is not a single step; it is a whole process that makes the buying experience
Try to see your online store from your customers eyes that how you would like to buy the products and what will it take to make you press the buy button. Buying experience is always enhanced when customers see more options, more recommendations, free shipping, an easy refund policy and familiar payment methods. All these things not only make your website more user-friendly but it creates a superior buying experience. Going above and beyond customer’s expectations is what makes you different from other sellers who are offering same products or services.
Another way to look at better customer experience is to provide your customers what they expect. For example, today majority of the online shoppers are shopping online on their mobile devices. With the increasing number of mobile devices, it has become very important to have a website with responsive design that works in a same matter across multiple platforms/devices.
So, think of an instance that if you as a customer do most of the shopping on your mobile device and come across a website which is not optimized for your mobile device. Are you going to buy anything from that store site where you have to keep scrolling and zooming in just to read information? You will probability go to some other site that offer you the feature of responsive site and make your job easier by place an order in a few steps. So, it is quite obvious that customer’s buying experience is enhanced automatically when they get what they are expecting from an online store (in this case a responsive site).
Here you are learn why a Responsive Design should be a priority for your business website: https://www.nopCommerce.com/blog/2-why-a-responsive-design-should-be-a-priority-for-your-business-website.aspx
Reward customers, create personal experience and after sales communication
In order to enhance the customer experience, you should always reward your returning customers with a personalized experience. Invest your time and money in the areas where your customers get an impression that you are paying attention to their purchases. When you pay attention to details for making online shopping experience better, it gives a feeling of recognition to your customers.
According to a survey by Info Tech Spotlight, returning customers expect VIP treatment from their favorite brands. In turn, retailers are looking for ways to enable the most efficient, interactive and inclusive solution to offer those services through inventory search and in-store promotions by deploying a truly integrated personal shopping experience, all while using Wi-Fi and iBeacon technology. Source: http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2015/01/20/8134652.htm
Once a customer places an order and the sales is complete, the after sales communication between online store and the customer can easily turn one time shopper into a returning customer. It is always a good idea to follow up with your customers, ask questions about their shopping experience to make sure if everything went smoothly or if they would like you to make any kind of improvements.
nopCommerce supports news, blog, forums, polls and product reviews and ratings which allows asking for feedback on products that gives customers a voice and lets others know what people think about your products. nopCommerce also supports review helpfulness feature (“Was this review helpful for you?”).
Author: Lavish Kumar