8 Tips To Provide Enhanced Customer Experience At An Ecommerce Website

Before we start today’s discussion, let’s perform a small exercise. Go to Google and type ‘black leather jacket for kids’. You will come across countless of results such as below.

simplify-ecommerce-experience

You open 6,7 links as per your liking, but obviously you don’t plan to buy a jacket from every store. Instead, you just require 1. Now, the question is from which store would you buy, especially if budget is not a concern. 9 times out of 10, people would prefer the store that offers a seamless shopping experience.

What do we mean by a seamless shopping experience? While it is difficult to sum it up in a single sentence or two, we can refer to it as something which compels the user to return for more. In other words, the user is quite satisfied with their experience. They found the relevant product quickly and the checkout process was effortless.

Unfortunately, not every store owner understands how to simply the eCommerce experience. But don’t worry since this is precisely what we plan to discuss today.

Simplify eCommerce Experience – Best Tips

1. Smooth Product Search

Suppose you sell mobile phone covers. Now, we all know that there are numerous smartphone brands. For argument’s sake, a user lands on your website, looking for a cover for their Samsung Galaxy A35. Unfortunately, you don’t have any category pages, meaning all products are listed under ‘mobile covers’. There are no subcategories or anything similar.

When they enter A35 in the search bar, it shows 0 results even though the item is in stock. Do you think this is an example of a positive user experience? Will the user continue to spend time and energy going through different pages to find the desired item? The answer is no. The user will simply close your website and move to another one. After all, they have so much choice.

Thus, it is imperative to offer shoppers a smooth product search feature. Online shoppers visiting an ecommerce store come under three categories:

Those who know what they want from your store: Such shoppers will go directly to the search bar and find the product they are looking for. Auto complete search option is good for such customers.
Those who are just browsing different segments of your store: Allow a personalized search experience to such shoppers like color, brand, size, and price.
Those looking for guidance to reach the desired products: They might have the product criterion in their mind, but need assistance. Including product features in the search options can help them a lot.

By catering to each different user, you can ensure a sizeable increase in website engagement and conversions.

2. Simple Checkout Process

Simplified checkout process helps improving the customer experience at your ecommerce store. How to do that? Here are given ways.

Make shopping cart easily accessible on every web page. Pop up window for shopping cart is a better option.
Include taxes and shipping cost in the shopping cart and tell the customers clearly.
Make the related/recommended products visible at the checkout page. It helps increasing the upsells.
Provide multiple payment options to facilitate customers.
Offer the customers to continue the checkout process as a guest or create an account. Do not force for signup.
Ask whether they want standard or speedy shipping. Tell them the estimated delivery time.

FME has numerous extensions to streamline the checkout experience. For example, our Magento 2 Custom Checkout Fields Extension allows store owners to customise the checkout process. They can add and/or remove fields as per requirements. Apart from this, the Magento 2 Buy Now Button Extension allows for one-click checkout.

3. Display Contact Information Clearly

Efficient customer service at pages like after the checkout stage matters a lot to improve their web experience. Display your contact information clearly on all pages so that customers could contact you in case of a problem or just to stay in touch. Avoid overloading the FAQ section of your ecommerce website because it may hinder the customers to move further. Solve any of the customers’ complaints or issues in a timely manner. A self-service support form is also a good approach to make customers happy.

4. Get Social

Engage with your customers at popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Announce promotions and stay in active communication with your customers. It will help winning over their loyalty and attracting new customers. Instead of ticket submission, social media channels are efficient to resolve customers’ issues or answer their queries. You can use our Magento 2 Social Feed Extension to display social media feed on the website.

5. Give Precise Product Information

Suppose you walk into a clothing store. You plan to buy a leather jacket for yourself. You browse through the numerous options, trying them on, feeling the fabric in your hand, and inspecting the jacket from every angle. Of course, this helps you make an informed decision. But this is not possible in online shopping.

Does it mean visitors won’t complete a purchase online? The answer is no. They do complete a purchase online by reading the product information and viewing the images. Therefore, as a store owner, you must ensure the product information is relevant, detailed, and up to date. Use high-quality images and videos.

6. Get Help From Customer Reviews

Know what customers say about different products or customer service. It will help you knowing what products perform best and where improvement is needed. At eCommerce websites, customers usually read reviews and then think about buying. They want to see real feedback from real customers. You should consider setting up a live feed of user generated content.

7. Tailor The Transaction Emails

Don’t underestimate the power of transaction emails. Such emails target the existing customers or those who have abandoned the carts, the follow up emails. Feedback emails are also important to build stronger relationships with the customers. The email tone should be friendly. Switch to the latest trends and use an upbeat tone. Address the customers or prospects, as they are your friends. Let them relate to your emails.

8. Use Quality Content

Use high quality content and include visuals for better appeal throughout the website. Content should be concise, informative, and fresh. Use professional writers and content creators for content creation. When uploading images, ensure they are in the WebP format, the modern image format for the web.

You can use our Magento 2 WebP Images Extension to auto convert existing and new images to WebP. For the unversed, WebP images are much smaller in size than JPEGs and PNGs. This ensures that webpages load faster and store owners can add more images without worrying about slow loading times.

Final Thoughts on eCommerce Experience Simplification

These 8 strategies are meant to improve the website experience of your customers. Keep on analysing your existing strategies and improve upon where needed. It will help you making your customers satisfied and increasing their loyalty. If you require help with improving any aspect of the customer journey, reach out to our support team. Our Magento experts will analyse your store and provide you with a detailed analysis report.

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