Tackling Rising Consumer Expectations
E-Commerce has come a long way in a short time, and customers are savvier than ever. They expect a seamless shopping, shipping, and service experience from every e-tailer they visit. They prize simplicity and convenience in a shopping experience that feels luxurious, personal, and engaging. It’s not a small request but if you want to success in the space, it’s a necessity.
At their heart, what do customers want?
To browse seamlessly, with all the info they need to make an informed purchase decision at their fingertips. From product description and specifications to price and shipping terms, everything should be easy to find and understand. And it needs to look nice – professional, seamless – we keep going back to that word for a reason – and both easy to navigate and trustworthy.
So what are some solutions you can implement now? There are a number that will depend on your business and good direct and indirect research is necessary on that front. (Think post-sale surveys, social media engagement, and consultation with your customer service team.)
Beyond that, here are a few places you can make immediate improvements to customer experience:
Streamline your product listings. This may involve an outside provider for SKU building services who can evaluate and recommend upgrades to your product pages. There are plenty out there and services can be pretty reasonable. Cennos, for instance, provides all types of SKU building services – from creating listings to writing copy to editing and creating all types of images.
Add a chatbot. Customers like to be able to get immediate answers and like to be able to do it themselves. A chatbot obviously can’t do everything your customer service team can, but they’re quick, easy, and available to your customers 24/7/365. Popular options to investigate include those from Drift, Intercom, and HubSpot. Check out this article from Forbes for more details.
Consider additional shipping options. If you’ve got brick and mortar locations, definitely offer pick-up – instant gratification really is a thing. If not, offer as many shipping options as are feasible – overnight or next-day, free, free at a certain threshold… Essentially, find a solution for every scenario so your customer isn’t left wanting.
Streamline your checkout process as much as possible. If you’re using a platform like Shopify, it’s fairly simple and straightforward to do this. If not, think about offering various payment options beyond using a personal credit card. PayPal, pay at pick-up, and various other payment options are fairly simple to implement and ensure you’re not losing a sale you’ve already made because of a lack of payment flexibility. The checkout process also frequently involved entering tedious information multiple times. Figure out with your webhost how to make that as easy and humanly possible – think beyond just checking a box that says billing info is the same as shipping info and decide how you can make this as simple and quick as possible for your customers. Trust us, they won’t forget and they’re more likely to shop with you again.
Our last suggestion today – go look at what your competitors are doing. No, you don’t have to copy everything, but “shop” their sites not for product, but for ideas about how you can improve your own. It’s not all about reinventing the wheel.