10 Effective Ways to Improve Customer Experience on Your E-Commerce Website

To make good sales on your e-commerce website, you must have in place effective ways to get visitors to the website. That is where customer experience becomes hugely important in the business. Aside getting visitors to your website, getting them to enjoy the shopping process and actually making a purchase is of paramount importance. That’s exactly where customer experience factors into the mix. If for instance your website loads slowly, confuses shoppers or lacks trust signals, not many shoppers are going to stick around such website long enough to make a buy decision. When shoppers bounce rate is high, you lose sales significantly. Here are tested and effective ways you can deploy to make customer journey smoother and shopping a sweet and memorable experience on your e-commerce website. 

1. Diligently Work on Your UX 

Technically, user experience UX is how people feel when they use your website. For a good user experience, you must endeavor to keep things clear, simple and easy to use on the site. Make important stuff prominent on the website. Such stuff as the search bar or filters for instance. In addition, you must ensure the checkout process is fast and not burdened with too many different steps. This way, the website can always enable users to easily locate what they want without too many hassles.

2. Optimize for Mobile Devices

Google reports now indicate that a vast majority of internet users now access the internet by way of mobile devices particularly mobile phones. What this means is that many more people now shop online via their mobile phones. So, even if your website works perfectly on desktops but is clunky on mobile phones, it means you’ll be losing out on a significant chunk of sales. You must therefore optimize your website for mobile devices and test it well to see how your online business appears on mobile devices. Make sure you are satisfied with how it looks on smaller screens. Make sure the buttons aren’t too tiny and the checkout process works fast and smoothly to enhance user experience.

3. Simplify Your Navigation 

To keep users on your website a bit longer, ensure its navigation is very simple. Complicated menus engender high user bounce rates. So, effective menus shouldn’t look like a map. Your website categories need to be very clear making sure not to hide your best sellers or new arrivals. It is smart marketing to always put important stuff upfront. Always bear in mind that if a customer is unable to locate a product within ten seconds duration, they’ll very likely leave your website. That increases bounce rates and loss of sales.
 
4. Carefully Use Real Product Images

Always make sure your stock photos not just look pretty, they must always show the real thing. It is helpful to use photos that show products in different angles. The sizes must be visible and comparable because shoppers always have more trust in what they can see. Better product pictures often mean better conversions and more sales.

5. Pay Attention to User-Interface, UI
 
On your business website, user interface is what everything on the website looks like. For effectiveness, the buttons must be visible and easy to click. Website aesthetics and colors need to feel okay on the eyes. Website fonts must be easily readable and not too tiny. Avoid weird website layouts making sure to keep the site clean, familiar and attractive.

6. Improve Your Website Speed

If your website takes more than 2-5 seconds to load, most users usually leave. That increases the bounce rate that can significantly affect your sales. You must therefore optimize your website to make it load faster. It helps to use smaller images. Carefully remove stuff you don’t need, and check how fast your site loads on mobile phones as well. This is because every second matters a lot for most people trying to shop online.

7. Use Only Helpful Plugins 

The only plugins best to use on your website are plugins that are really helpful not plugins that just sit there or slow stuff down. Use only plugins that let you send shoppers to a specific page after they log in. These are important pages like the dashboard, a deals page, or the location of whatever you’re keen on promoting. These plugins really work well when you have returning customers or members who need quick access. Helpful plugins usually make the whole login process feel more directed instead of just dropping them on the homepage to confuse customers.

8. Create Room for Customer Reviews

Customer reviews and feedback are hugely important in any e-commerce business. This is because most people never buy anything online without first checking reviews. If your store has no reviews, it makes most people think your business is new or worse still not legit. It helps therefore to add a plugin for reviews or you can directly ask previous buyers to leave a comment/feedback. If the reviews are more detailed and in-depth, they will be as helpful to your customers as well as your business.

9. Have Cart-Saving Options

Not every website visitor buys something right away. It helps sales if you can give shoppers an option to save their carts for later or wishlist it. That way, they can come back and finish their shopping when they’re ready. Reminder emails are very useful to help bring such shoppers back. You can even automate such emails if you so choose. 

10. Provide a Good FAQs Section

Technically, a good FAQ section usually saves you and your customers some considerable time. Many people always have questions about shipping, returns, warranties, and more. If they don’t find answers fast enough, they bounce. That means lost sales. It helps therefore to put the most common FAQs on the product page or near checkout to ease final doubts in the minds of shoppers.  

10 Reasons Customer Experience Comes Tops in E-commerce Business Strategy

Technically, opening an online store is to make sales and not just about displaying goods online for the fun of it. To make sales, you must attract customers to your store who are willing to make purchases. Your website must therefore be conducive for seamless transactions. If your website isn’t easy and conducive for customers to shop on, many may hit the site but simply wander off without buying anything. The user experience on your e-commerce website is largely responsible for what customers do on the site.

User experience is technically how customers feel when they use your e-commerce store. Right from when they land on your homepage to checking out the cart, every little detail adds up to make this experience. While customers are at it, if anything slows them down or confuses them even for a second, they may simply wander off. That simply means you may be losing sales. Exactly why fixing the experience matters more than most things in e-commerce business. How to fix it therefore remains a topline strategy in the business.

One other reason user experience is a top strategy is because it saves you money long term. Here’s how. Instead of spending extra on abandoned cart emails or support staff to help shoppers who may get lost, you can fix the problems even before they occur. If customer experience is good, it simply means fewer customer complaints, fewer drop-offs, and fewer returns. Trust building helps that process a great deal. A good UX helps build trust. When your website feels smooth to use and makes sense, customers never fail to remember it. The main reason they’ll keep coming back. They’ll not only be coming back, they’ll tell others too. That helps to attract more customers to the store at minimal efforts. It means you get more customers even without spending more on ads or promotions. This is because word spreads fast when a store feels good to use and more people want to go have a feel of it.

Aside selling good products, what really keeps people coming back and telling others about your store is how they felt using your website. That’s customer experience. It is why customer experience should always come tops in all your marketing strategy considerations. Following are 10 of the most important reasons why customer experience really matters more than what most e-commerce business owners think it to be.

1.  It Encourages Higher Customer Spending: Consumers usually spend more when and if they feel comfortable. This happens if your product pages are clear, prices are upfront, and the cart clearly shows them what they’re getting. That way, they can easily toss into the cart a few extra items without over considering it. That means more sales.

2. You Can Sell More Even without Promos: Many e-commerce stores usually move products with sales only. But, stores that are able to provide their customers with a convenient shopping experience get to sell more. Reason is, a good shopping experience helps to motivate customers to purchase some products even at full price. Once customers feel good on your website particularly about what they are getting and how they are getting it, they tend to shop more.

3. Helps Build Customer Trust in Your Store: Trust building with your customers requires that you provide them with a great website that has an organized and simple layout. The website must be easy to navigate through and user-friendly enough to allow trading even via mobile devices. Shoppers must be able to easily find what they are looking for on the site without wasting too much time. This way, there is usually a tendency for them to shop more on the site.

4. Helps Promote Your Store: A great customer experience motives people to talk about their experiences on your website. Most people like to talk about their treatment on a website and how they felt. No amount of ads beats words of mouth on that score. So, even if you spend good money on ads, it still cannot beat word of mouth. And, word of mouth is free and extremely powerful. If shoppers have a good experience on your website, they’ll probably tell relatives, colleagues and friends or even write a nice review about it. If however they had a bad experience, they’ll also talk about it and it’ll rob off negatively against your business.

5. Lowers Cart Abandonment: If the customer journey on your website is cumbersome, you tend to lose sales. This is because when the process is clunky or takes too long, people bounce and sales are lost. If for instance, the cart doesn’t update right or the checkout process takes too long, most shoppers simply leave. But, if you make things feel quick and easy, it helps to keeps shoppers on track to buy. That engenders lower cart abandonment and more sales.

6. Builds Customer Loyalty over Time: If a nice first visit is really good, most shoppers never fail to remember. If every time they come back, things still feel good as they expect, it builds loyalty. You can garner an army of regular shoppers if they remember how fast they found what they needed on your website and how smooth returns were. That’s how regular and repeat shoppers are made over time.

7. Professionalizes Your Store: In e-commerce business, even small stuff can really add up significantly over time. For instance, a working menu cart, a good search bar, and easy checkout can all go a long way to tell your customers how professional your store is. Getting things to work perfectly help to professionalize your website. It never fails to give out the impression to customers that someone’s running a real business out there on the site.

8. Meets Customer Expectations: Most online shoppers these days always have the advantage of having been to and seen many other websites. Most have past experiences they refer to. This is why they always expect fast, clear, and easy shopping on any website. If you don’t give it to them, they’ll quickly find someone else who will. That becomes a great loss to your business.

9. Distinguishes Your Store: A great customer experience can easily set your business apart from others. Out there on the internet, there may be hundreds of other stores selling same products you are. What can really set your business apart is how it feels to use it. A better experience is what makes people to pick your store instead of some other store selling the same products. That can make the real difference between good sales or poor sales.

10. Makes Customer Support Work Easier and more Effective: If you have systems in place that enable your customers to easily find answers or get help fast, your customers are burdened less. This can be great for your customer support team as well as your customers. Onsite tools to handle live chats, simple return pages, or clear FAQs usually do wonders and can be really great to help your e-commerce business make more sales.