A customer's experience is one of the most significant factors that will determine the success or failure of the online portion of your business.
Even if your company has strong brand awareness and is offering good value to the consumer, a poor online experience is going to cause visitors to click away from your site in the blink of an eye. To keep visitors on your site all the way through the checkout, you need to know the factors that create a good online experience - and here they are...
How important is customer experience online?
You can't emphasize the importance of a good online customer experience for a website enough. In fact, it has been found to be even more important than the customer experience that is provided at a physical location.
With a physical location, consumers are more likely to accept that certain elements may be harder for the business owner to control. With an online store, on the other hand, consumers expect the business to have everything optimized. Unlike a physical location where driving to another store might be a hassle, another online shop is always just a few clicks away.
An online behavior survey has indicated that American businesses are losing close to a quarter of their online revenue as a direct result of poor customer experience, and when asked why so many consumers were leaving their site without converting, more than 80% of respondents said that they did not know.
Close to half of the companies surveyed cited a simple lack of budget and skilled personnel as the main reason for their inability to get a grip on these issues. So let's look at just what factors are most important to a good or bad customer experience.
Quick site loading time
When it comes to customer experience in the online marketplace, speed is one of the most important factors. Online shoppers want to achieve their goals quickly and if your site can't deliver speed, they will simply go somewhere else.
One study has shown that a ten-second load time will cause about half of the consumers to just give up on the site. Amazon has even reported numbers that suggest this is a battle that comes down to milliseconds. They have said that on average, they lose about 1% of all sales for every 100 milliseconds of delay.
Easy navigation
The ease with which a customer can navigate an online store is going to be one of the top factors in converting sales. If a customer has a hard time finding items or getting from point A to point B, then they are not going to make your site one of their preferred online shopping destinations.
From the numbers, this appears to be a significant problem for online retailers. A survey among companies that operate online has shown 57% have listed "bad site navigation/poor findability" as one of the most common problems they face, and 55% have listed this as the most serious problem that they need to address. (Galat, 2011).
Keep it simple
Simplicity is one of the keys to providing a good online experience. Most consumers do not want to go through a lengthy and complicated registration process in order to gain access to products and services.
When a person is trying to register for the site, that means that they are interested in buying, but if the process is too complicated, they might just give up and go somewhere else.
Live chat
Having a live chat feature on the site will improve the customer experience and increase the conversion rate by using the best NPS software. With a live chat, the consumer can stay on the website and have questions answered about the products they are interested in or different policies the site may have in real time.
If they have to go somewhere else or wait for an email reply, they might just choose to shop with another online retailer.
Easy checkout
Another place where a lot of online retailers fail is with the checkout process. The process of completing the transaction needs to be quick, simple, and easy to understand. If customers find the checkout process to be too difficult or time-consuming, then they might not complete the purchase.
This is a particularly big loss for a company because it is a sale that was essentially converted and the site lost it right when it mattered the most.
Self service options
With online shopping, customers expect the site to have resources that will aid them in solving their own problems. Having resources like help pages and a FAQ section can assist customers with some of the minor issues that they may have with the site.
Providing customers the ability to solve problems and learn about different processes with an onsite resource could be the difference between keeping a customer on the page and losing them to a competitor.
Out of stock notifications
Customers should know about availability early on in the shopping process. If you have a product that is out of stock, let them know on the product page or in the site's search listings.
If a customer searches out a product, goes through the trouble to get it ready in the shopping cart and then finds out it is unavailable at the very end of the process, they are not going to be pleased with their shopping experience.
Make it clear when items are out of stock, and you can even let customers know when it will be available again, or possibly offer preorder options for when it is back in. Implementing real-time customer notifications, such as alerts for restocked items or updates on order status, can significantly enhance the shopping experience by keeping customers informed and engaged throughout their purchasing journey.
Use visual content
Visual elements help to convert sales. Customers want to see pictures of the product in question, and they generally want to see more than one. Additionally, videos with product demonstrations can also be helpful.
The visual element helps to make the shopping process more real and it reassures the customer that the product is the one that they believe it to be.
To further make the point of the importance of visuals, more than 90% of consumers list visual elements as the most influential factor in the decision-making process.
Use social proof
When a consumer goes looking for a product, they want to know that others have been satisfied with the purchase. Having a section for reviews and ratings can make for better sales.
Studies have shown that consumers trust customer reviews more than the marketing material on the page, and further have shown upwards of 85% of consumers consider the reviews to be a valuable resource.
Gather customer feedback
Customer feedback can be one of the most important resources for improving a website. A website can use customer feedback tools that allow customers to provide feedback independently, such as online forms or suggestion boxes. Additionally, they can use survey software to actively engage the consumer and gather more in-depth insights.
By finding out more about how the customer feels about the experience provided, the website can uncover valuable insights to enhance overall operations and drive improvements in NPS revenue, aligning business growth with customer satisfaction.
Maintain consistency
An online retailer should try to maintain the highest level of consistency possible. If the consumer feels as though things change dramatically from one process to the next, it is going to make for an experience that is overly complicated.
Try to keep things consistent between the website and mobile versions, and try to employ integration through different pieces of software.
Social Media Integration
Social media stretches into almost every corner of the consumer's life, and that includes the way they interact with companies. More than 80% of Fortune 500 companies have Twitter and Facebook accounts and they use these as an important customer relations tool.
The goal is to have these social media accounts and to use them to the greatest effect. Surveys show that when consumers receive timely and helpful responses through social media, they are not only more likely to purchase with the brand, but they are also more likely to recommend the brand to friends and family members.
Personalization
Every customer is a unique individual and having the ability to personalize the experience for the consumer is going to increase profits.
Customers feel less satisfied by a website that offers irrelevant advertisements and recommendations that do not actually suit their shopping preferences. If a company can use what they know about the individual from their previous experiences, then they can provide a better digital customer experience that will result in more sales.
A website can use past customer interactions to customize the landing page to highlight products they are more likely to be interested in, and they can use this information to send custom emails that offer deals on products they are more likely to buy.
When content like emails and recommendations accurately reflect the interest of the consumer, they are more likely to pay attention to them.
The key to making a good online customer experience is a unified approach that centers on the consumer. There may be many different components that have to come together to enhance the customer experience such as speed, an easy checkout, personalized offers, and even support from an order taking call center, but they all need to work together seamlessly to create a great shopping experience. Doing so will be the key to your online success.
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Written by Jessica Walrack on Monday, April 18, 2016
Jessica Walrack is a professional freelance writer with a background in sales and marketing. After 7 years in the corporate world, she stepped into the online sphere and has now been freelancing for 4 years. She specializes in helping businesses to create a stellar online experience for their audience in order to build industry authority and increase profitability. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys traveling all over the world with her family.
