Are you struggling to attract consumers to your eCommerce site? Or perhaps having trouble getting customers to return to your site? It’s normal for eCommerce sites to struggle at times as there are always a magnitude of competitors that consumers can choose from. In order to stand out amongst your competitors, it is necessary to offer the best experience possible to your website’s visitors. Start by understanding any problems that people have with your site, and use this information to better tailor your site to your core customer base. When it comes to eCommerce, there should be a large focus on ease of navigation, offering different buying platforms and offering incentives to position yourself as a competitive force in your industry.
Understand the Problem
The first step in improving your eCommerce customers’ online experience is understanding how you can improve. In order to do so, you have to do your research. The best way to understand how to further satisfy your customers is to directly ask them how you can improve. To do so, create a short survey that asks detailed, easy to understand questions about visitors’ experiences with your website. Ask questions that will allow you to take the answers and use them to your advantage. For example, ask respondents how easy they found it to navigate your site. If you find that a lot of respondents found it hard to use your site efficiently, use this knowledge to redesign your site and create better user interface. Also read any reviews of your business that may be posted online, and look for any criticisms that may have been made. It is also helpful to visit competitor sites in order to see what they might be doing better than you, in order to learn how to develop your website.
Optimizing User Experience
There is always a way that you can improve your website. The world of eCommerce is constantly changing and offering new opportunities and innovations for business owners to utilize. A key area to focus on as an eCommerce site owner is bettering the user experience that your customers have when visiting your store. Consider cleaning up your site’s homepage to look more organized. If the first page of your store is cluttered with products and information, visitors may be overwhelmed and leave your site to go to a competitor.
Man using computer and mobile payments online shopping and icon customer network connection on screen on city background, m-banking and omni channeAnother large focus of yours should be your mobile site. It is important to have a mobile version of your eCommerce store as the number of consumers making purchases through their mobile devices is increasing rapidly. In fact, Amazon reported that during their last holiday season, more almost 70% of customers made a purchase on a mobile device. Clearly it is very important to offer the option of mobile purchases as so many consumers are choosing this method as their go-to. If you do not have a mobile site, users will be brought to the desktop site on their mobile device which will be hard to navigate on the mobile platform which is not designed for desktop site navigation. Visitors will be much more likely to stay if they are presented with a sleek, easy to use mobile platform.
Adapting to Customer Needs
Use the aforementioned survey to also learn about what the majority of your eCommerce customers are looking for on your website. Whatever these products may be, make them easily accessible for visitors. Have them featured on your homepage in order to save your customers from having to search through your site to get to them. If a lot of people are visiting your site for a specific product, having it be one of the first things that they see upon entering your webstore will be very beneficial to both them and your business.
It is also very important to offer fast and efficient customer service. If there is a question, problem or concern that a customer has about your site or products, allow them to communicate with you at any time of day. To accomplish such a feat, install a chatbot on your site that can assist customers 24/7. Chatbots are programmed with a set of rules that create a response that is based on customer input. It is important to offer people interaction with business owners as well as human interaction is much more reliable and trusted among consumers. But, realistically, you will be unable to be available 24/7 to answer your customers’ inquiries on the spot. Therefore, chatbots will be very helpful to your eCommerce customers and business.
Incentives & Other Reasons to Return
In order to encourage more purchases from existing customers, offer product suggestions based on the products they have viewed or purchased in the past. These suggestions may introduce consumers to products that they did not see or that they overlooked upon searching your website. Product recommendation technology will be a great help in raising your sales as it can really encourage more purchases. Even if someone comes to your site with one thing in mind, they might leave after buying more than they expected.
Another way to keep your eCommerce customers interested in your site is by offering incentives and special deals. For example, you can send an email to an existing customer that says something along the lines of the following: “It was great doing business with you! As a thank you, here’s 20% off your next purchase on our site.” Attach a virtual coupon with redemption code and expiration date that the customer will be encouraged to use.
Looking Ahead
Once you have solved the issues that customers have with your site, made the user experience simpler, and offered reasons for people to return, you will surely see a surge in your site’s traffic. But remember, there is always something that you can improve or upgrade about your site to further satisfy your eCommerce customers. Always stay up to date on what your customers want from your business and, better yet, try to be one step ahead of them.