Moving your business to the world of eCommerce is a hard challenge. Many business owners think that the most important option is to offer a high-quality product. To some degree this is absolute truth. The better your product, service is, the more high-quality reviews and sales you have. But on the other hand online business is becoming more and more competitive and it is crucial to survive in this vast ocean of eCommerce.

Moving a business onto an online retail is no easy task. You will face difficulties in improving your customer experience, in making your Shopify store even more visible and effective. It is a time-consuming, resource-intensive process with hundreds of approvals to make before you can enjoy its rewards. But when you do, those are worth it.

Let’s take a look at some of the tips and steps that will help your business gain best performance. And we will start with the definition of an eCommerce Customer Experience.

What Is an eCommerce Customer Experience?

When going to the favourite retail store the client is met by a helpful sales assistant who knows all preferences and wills. The customer may ask any questions and get the prompt and comprehensive answer. In the end he is ready to make a purchase and both the client, and the business gain their goals. Customer experience is the process of interaction between the customer and the retailer on each step of the purchasing process.

eCommerce customer experience consists of many different aspects, starting from the colours that are used on the website and moving on to the response speed of the support. Let’s start with the first impression that is crucial when deciding to visit an online store. It may be an advertisement, a friend’s impression after visiting an online store, the result of the search in google or just whatever that makes the client remember the brand. Next point is visiting the website and at this stage everything counts: design, graphics, page performance, diversity of the offered services. And in case the customer is satisfied with everything, he performs a purchase and the transaction is finished.

The market of online purchases is supposed to total $5.7 trillion in 2022. And this number is going to grow in the near future, which means that eCommerce is becoming more and more profitable. In 2023 eCommerce is planned to reach 20,8% out of the global market. These figures mean that now it is vital for a business to be online to survive.

9 Tips to Improve Customer Experience

Shopify is one of the most popular and progressive platforms for selling services and goods. As long as the amount of businesses selling online is constantly growing it becomes harder to steal the show.

Below are the tips that can help your business to improve customer experience in the Shopify store.

Check the Basics of Your eCommerce Store

Before you start implementing some new interactive technologies, such as VR, AR, 3D-modeling, media, make sure that the basic options of your website are implemented and work correctly. Check if the website offers all the necessary information about the product, if the contact data is accessible and easy to approach, if the online store is mobile-friendly (we will talk about this option later). All these points influence the customer experience, and the faster you fix and tune them all, the better it will be for your business.

Establish Personal Approach with the Customers

Personal approach in online purchase is important because all customers desire a unique experience when contacting the brand. Personalization greatly influences a B2C customer experience; it allows you to know better your users’ tastes and search for a perfect offer for them.

Start with collecting customer information from your website using questionnaires that ask what they want to receive (e.g., product reviews, recommendations) and how often they want to get them. But be careful with very frequent email messages, be useful, not spammy.

Add Different Payment Options

Another customer experience improval is the variety of payment methods. Be far-sighted and create a different payment system not to lose your customer. As far as the statistics say the client is more likely to cancel the purchase than to install a new method of payment.

Fortunately, Shopify has established a variety of payment methods that allow your clients to check out their shopping carts easily.

Build Your Brand Community

To make the relationships between the seller and the customers even stronger, many brands start to build communities. It could be a social media group or a live chatroom on the website, communities nurture brand awareness and loyalty. At the same time, such groups lower customer support expenditures.

It is a great space where customers can support each other, share their reviews and experience. It is something of a real conversation simulation, when you can ask someone in person whether he likes or dislikes the product.

Be Easily Accessible to the Customer

No matter if your client has already bought something in your online store, or is on the way to do it, or is just getting acquainted with the brand it is important to be near to answer any questions on any step of the process. Make sure that you:

• Give clear contact data

Double check if your customer can easily get in touch through the store’s email or phone number. If you are using a special contact form, make sure that it is clear and easy to go.

• Give distinct instructions

If the online support is not available, create clear points to follow in case of some issues. Test them before you make them live. It is also helpful to implement a q&a section that will possibly  answer your customer’s questions.

Enable Store Pickup & Delivery Options

This feature is going to improve your customer experience due to the variety of options offered. When your customer is ready to check out, there comes time to choose the pickup and delivery options. Luckily, Shopify local delivery app offers the customers up to three ways how they want their purchase to be delivered. It could be a local delivery, a store pickup or shipping. The customer gets access to the calendar where he can choose the preferable date and the way he takes his purchase. Also one can select both delivery and pickup options if needed.

Build a Mobile-Friendly Online Store

As discussed earlier the number of online purchases is constantly growing. People want to get prompt access to the stores, shop from home or from the street and more often they are doing it with their mobile phones. Thus it is hypercritical to have a mobile-friendly eCommerce website. If you possess a Shopify online store that is adopted for mobile, your business stays competitive and attractive for the customers.

Implement a Loyalty Program

Keeping your customers loyal to the brand turns out to be a great challenge. In this case an elaborate loyalty program will be of great help for your business. You can create a special loyalty point system that will give the customer an opportunity to exchange them on gifts or rewards. Or you can fix a discount depending on the amount of purchases that were made by the customer.

Create Video Content

88% of people, who make online purchases, have mentioned that they would like to see more video content from the brands they like. Which means that videos become more popular and in demand. Once the customers watch your video it is more likely that they visit your company’s website. As long as this kind of visual information is easy to access it becomes a must have for each eCommerce store. This format is perfect for people who have no time to read about your product.

Conclusion

eCommerce has grown rapidly during the past years and is not going to stop. In order to survive this rivalry it is needed to have a competitive advantage. These nine tips will help your business improve customer experience and leave your clients satisfied with the service