6 Commonly Overlooked Ways to Improve Your Online Customer Experience

Needless to say, ecommerce businesses are always on the lookout for new ways to attract their buyers’ attention and adopting innovative ways to make their shopping experience easier and more engaging.

Most brands are focusing on optimizing their site speeds for desktops and mobile devices, enhancing the process of navigation within the website. Yet there are other methods of improving the online customer that are often overlooked. Here are some you should consider:

1. Encourage customers to provide feedback

According to this analysis from HigherLogic, customer reviews are 12 times more impactful than any kind of advertisement. Hence, it’s pertinent that marketers be open to all types of feedback, including the negative ones.

These days companies are coming up with survey polls, feedback forms, and interactive quizzes to encourage customer reviews and testimonials. Notice how Apple goes about urging their buyers to leave a score:

The American coffeehouse chain Starbucks came up with the ‘My Starbucks Idea’ campaign in 2008. It received more than 70,000 responses from customers during the first year itself. The figure jumped to 190,000 over the following decade.

The lesson? Customers love to share their voices. They only need brands to ask them to contribute.

Making it easy for customers to review and rate your brand at every touchpoint will improve customer experience. Even Amazon constantly seeks feedback from its huge base of customers.

2. Check and update the availability of products

If you’re selling tangible products on your website, it’s an added benefit if your shoppers know early on about the delivery options to specific zip-codes or about its stock availability.

Here’s an example:

It’s frustrating for customers to narrow down on that fancy black dress only to find later that it’s ‘out of stock’ or ‘not deliverable’ to a specific location. Though ecommerce pros like Amazon and the Alibaba Group notify their customers beforehand, several online retailers miss out on this simple CX tactic.

It’s a good practice to mention the next-available date or a simple notification one when the product is available. This can help retain a potential buyer. Check out how Allbirds puts this tactic into practice.

3. Create insightful knowledge-base pages

Research suggests 73% of consumers wish to resolve queries related to products and services on their own. Interaction with human agents has gradually decreased over the years as millennials prefer to get their answers without any assistance from the customer support team. Instead, you’ll find them accessing informational guides, FAQ pages or text-based AI bots to learn about a product or service.

Having a knowledge base is one of the best ways to create a memorable online customer experience. Customers want quick and relevant answers to their queries. If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they instantly move to another brand. 78% of millennial customers have switched to another business after just one poor customer service experience. This is why it’s critical to offer customers excellent support and adequate product information through easy-to-follow user manuals and an exhaustive collection of FAQs.

Here’s how building a knowledge base can boost your CX:

• It creates an alignment within the team, empowering them to effectively engage customers
• It reduces the friction between the teams and streamlines business processes. This ultimately addresses the customer pain points and improves the problem-solving speed
• It helps you better understand customer behavior, allowing cyclical improvement of the processes

For instance, when customers access your knowledge base, you get to see which resources they rely on the most. Thus, you’re aware of the resources that need to be kept as updated and robust as possible.

Similarly, you get insights on the customers’ needs and expectations. Are they looking for deeper content? Do they find your content helpful or are you lacking in a certain area?

Such insights can be used to make the necessary improvements, thus boosting CX.

For all businesses, the level of customer experience hinges in their ability to address customer queries and concerns. It’s no wonder that an increasing number of companies are implementing knowledge base software within their management system. This helps them train their employees with a set of values and knowledge that they want to impart to their customers. It’s also paving the way for millennial customers to self-educate themselves about their brand philosophy and offerings.

4. Address the support gaps

Online shopping is all about exceptional experiences and cutting down the customer support gap. No one likes to land up in a store feeling ignored, nor do customers expect to be kept on hold for more than ten minutes to resolve a query.

This is why it’s critical to have a team available 24/7 to answer and resolve customer queries. This is the sure-shot way to convert random browsers into buyers. That’s where a Live Chat service can help.

Brands like Domino’s use bots that help customers without delay, thus leading to improved CX and conversions.

Implementing chatbots is yet another way to add to customer delight. They empower customers with all the necessary information and address their problems, thus encouraging them to make purchase decisions in your favor.

Notice how Casper’s insomobot-3000 is helping people find what they’re looking for.

Chatbots help retailers assist customers when their human team isn’t around. Plus, remember that more than half of the customers prefer chatbots over humans to save time.

5. Use color psychology

The color scheme of a website, especially depending on its theme can make or break its success-quotient. Studies show that factors like colors and design play a huge impact on the minds of a customer and influence their purchase decisions.

Using an appropriate color scheme in web design or opting for the right shades as per your brand persona and theme can improve your site’s CX and conversions.

Look at how Hearthsong, an online store for kids’ toys, has incorporated colors that reflect their brand personality.

On the other hand, MAC Cosmetics, the famous beauty brand, prefers adopting a black and white theme with a hint of red and pink to give a feminine touch.

6. Choose high-quality images

The role of high-quality photographs in website design cannot be understated. Buyers connect with visuals, as it helps them relate to the products or services that they’re paying for. People opt for experiences rather than products.

Visuals are crucial in impacting a shopper’s instincts. Look how theTileApp displays its products in real-life scenarios.

This is how SquareUp uses multiple angles to display its products.

Closing thoughts

The brands that are most successful today are the ones that strive to deliver exceptional and consistent CX across all channels. An increasing number of brands focusing on improving their communication and social media campaigns. Yet, when it comes to boosting online customer experience, most of them tend to miss out on a trick or two.