5 Tips to Improve eCommerce Customer Experience

Statista has predicted that out of 7.87 billion people in the world, there will be 2.14 billion buyers in eCommerce platforms in 2021. Thus, it’s never been so early to start your business online as whether eCommerce takes over the customer mindset is only a matter of time.

Whether you choose a hosted platform like Big Cartel and Shopify or opt for an open-source version like PrestaShop, creating a good eCommerce customer experience is crucially important. If you’re looking for the most updated and useful advice for your online shop, here provides you with 5 tips to improve eCommerce customer experience.

eCommerce customer experience – Everything you need to know

What is eCommerce customer experience?

The entire customer experience is marked by every touchpoint between the customer and the brand. 

Customer experience starts from the first time customers hearing the brand name, to the post-purchase period (when they complete the product buying and receiving after-sale care).

Why is eCommerce customer experience important?

Customer experience is of utmost importance because if there is customer dissatisfaction with any touchpoints, it could damage most of your effort in building a great product and buying experience. 

Furthermore, high eCommerce customer satisfaction could lead to saving budget and increasing revenue. It’s reported that it costs 6 to 7 times more to attract a new customer than to retain an old one.

Besides, a satisfied customer has a higher tendency to become a loyal customer. The more loyal customers are, the higher they pay in the entire customer lifecycle. Businesses with high eCommerce customer satisfaction face nearly no worries of competitors even with more discount programs and lower pricing.  

5 tips to improve eCommerce customer experience

Personalize your eCommerce customer experience

Each customer has their own personality, leading to different desires and needs. Businesses who provide customers with their customized experience would be appreciated as customers feel the recognition and exclusive catering from the company. 

The most common stage before designing a customized experience is researching the Customer Journey. By deeply understanding every intersection which customers have with the brand, the business could trace customers’ footprints and offer personalized assistance. This not only helps to improve customer experience but also provides businesses instant reflection in order to improve their products and service.

The shop owners should keep in mind a number of customers’ types before specifying their Customer Journey.  Each customer personality requires a different strategy to approach, so make sure to personalize your eCommerce customer experience based on their group.

Choose a user-friendly website template

The only way to keep customers stay longer on your website and make purchase decisions is to set up your website as user-friendly and engaging as possible. 

Most of the website builders like Wix or Shopify are super easy for you to get this done without too much effort. However, bear in mind that there are several criteria you should consider when choosing and designing a user-friendly eCommerce store.

• The provided template should contain a variety of structure and design elements, which fit a majority of your expected suitable website. 
• Demos are required, both before and after you finish the website design.
• Immerse customers in your brand’s vibe. Pay attention to font, color, and effects especially on your front page. You could learn from 10 WooCommerce Themes for self-creating your own. 
• Keep the brand’s vibe consistent throughout the customer experience on your eCommerce website.
• Remain responsive engagement with your customers. Add live chat and make sure your team could be available for support within 3 minutes.
• Other features related to the customer experience are fast loading speed and responsiveness in different devices. 

Implement upselling and cross-selling tactics

Upselling and cross-selling are two common selling tactics. These strategies not only improve eCommerce customer experience but also boost your average order value. 

Cross-selling is when customers have already made decisions to buy a product, the sellers suggest other products which are relevant and support the function of the primary products. 

To apply this cross-selling technique, you should start by adding the relevant products to the suggestion box of the primary products. Right after customers “add to cart” any product, the website would present the related ones. 

On another note, upselling is to make customers buy a more upgraded version of a product. If applied successfully, this tactic would make customers pay more for higher sales volumes, which increases customer lifetime value.

In order to encourage customers to purchase the higher version, you should make a comparison of two different versions. Besides, making the more upgraded one stand out their value and benefits is also a good practice.

Leverage your social media

Social Media is regarded as one of the most important sources attracting customers to your selling website. After doing customer research, the company would know the favorite social media channels of their target audience and prepare the implementation plan on those platforms. 

There are several social media tips and tricks which you should apply:

• Determine your goals. 
• Specify metrics (for example engagement and reach) you would use to evaluate the work efficiency. 
• Apply the SMART model for your goals.

• Tell your brand story, don’t just sell products. Try to form an emotional connection between customers and your brand. 
• Humanize your brand. Mascot is one of the most incredible brand elements as it not only helps customers imagine the brand as a friend but also poses the brand consistency in customers’ mindset. 

For example, Simon (mascot of LitExtension – #1 shopping cart migration expert) represents the brand’s friendliness and delicacy:

Pay attention to your posting frequency. Initially, your team may not meet a great number of social posts. Don’t worry because a regular posting calendar is more important.

Remember that social media marketing does not demand you to operate on all the social media platforms. For many brands, their first mistake was trying to conduct social media plans on mass platforms without a deep understanding of each one. This could result in a waste of time and efforts of your marketing team.

Additionally, which social media channels will be used tells many things, as each platform has its own operating system. For example, Instagram would be a nice platform if your business is strong at visual aspects and storytelling. 

On the other hand, there exist a number of risks that businesses have to encounter in social media channels. Thus, besides taking advantage of social media’s benefits, it is also crucial to be aware of possible negative impacts and prepare suitable strategies:

• A stable presence of social media should be retained in order to maximize its efficiency. 
• As audiences have total rights to interact with the brand on social media, it’s harder to control the negative feedback.
• Customer theft could happen. When customers appear and your team has not responded instantly, the competitors could reach out and close the deals with their products.

Ensure mobile-friendliness

Besides setting up the desktop interface, shop owners should not ignore mobile configuration due to the increasing number of multi-devices users.  

Generally, the user experience in both mobile and desktop plays a decisive role as if customers can not approach and interact with your shop online, there’s no way that they make purchase decisions.

Below are several notices for a friendly mobile interaction: 

• Pay attention to the navigation menu. Make sure that the home button is large enough on the mobile screen. 
• Keep a touchscreen in mind when designing, as in the mobile, users would “touch” instead of using a mouse. It means that the buttons need to be big enough for users to touch. 
• It is suggested that HTML5 is the language code that most supports mobile browsers. 

Key takeaways to improve eCommerce customer experience

In this article, we hope to provide you with the necessary knowledge of the importance of eCommerce customer experience. Moreover, we have given some advice to upgrade it for you to do better business. 

These 5 tips would help you to tailor your eCommerce experience in a user-friendly desktop and mobile interface and conduct reasonable selling tactics and social media plans. There are a number of notices and lessons for eCommerce developers, however, by handling those above tips and tricks, your eCommerce website will definitely bring to customers a satisfying experience. 

Good luck with your online business!