Online Shopping Experience – How to make it the most liveable?

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”

– Steve Jobs

Underestimating the value of a customer is a daily practice for failure start-ups and business minions. All the business unicorns across the globe would never do that and already know the worth of the customers. Knowing the virtue of the customer makes the business a brand and adds significant value to the brand name. 

Today’s business practice is totally different from that of the conventional i.e., selling things on brick and mortar stores with the physical contact of customers. This contemporary system of doing business has two facets. Either customers would love to buy from you every now and then or no user would even like to visit the online store. 

As the online shopping stores can not have a physical appearance, they can not be in personal touch with the customers. So the customers may have the feeling of not being connected with the store entity. That is the reason, it is important to keep customers engaging with the online store. 

Well, if you are expert at selling or doing business with your brick and mortar store for attracting the customers and winning their hearts, there are chances that you could excel in winning them again with your online store too. In this blog, we have attempted a list of things that need to be considered while dealing with online customers and how to not just improve customer experience but make it the best ever.

Here’s How You Can Glorify Online Customer Experience

Implementing before the Rivals do!

Here, implementing means knowing the customers desire. The more you get closer to the customers and their viewpoints, the more you are convenient at implementing the things before the competitors do. eCommerce stores often have challenges in identifying customer needs and representing them in an exact manner. Hiring an eCommerce expert can implement it by considering the below factors.

Online customers look for a number of things in an online store: 

• Design – An organized store would leave customers engaging 
• Product Specification – Product descriptions, product views 
• Simple transactions (One Page Checkout)
• Search Navigation
• Product Filtering

These listed factors are the least that an online customer would expect. The eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce Development Services can help in organizing the online store as the customer wants. The readymade templates of BigCommerce Development has wide doors to customization and are open to multiple payment gateways integration. These features of the BigCommerce platform sum the customers’ expectations up. 

Characteristics of an ideal merchant? Or What sort of eCommerce platform he should choose?

• eCommerce Platform – a platform that is open to customer-centric design, with the customization and product varieties wins the battle such as BigCommerce, Shopify, etc. Here hiring BigCommerce Developers should be done wisely. They should be smart enough to write clean code for the new design structure.

• Being Proactive – Being proactive to customers has always been demanding in the market. Whether it is a physical store or an online store, showcasing the demanding things by the customer and understanding their requirements earlier than them makes a glorifying customer experience.

• Notifications – Notifications play a vital role when it comes to deal with Online platforms. Be it a social media platform or an online store. Notifying the customers by using email template branding addon about their concerns such as invoices containing detailed information about product items, registration acknowledgment emails etc attempts to initiate in building customer rapport. It helps the store owners in making their customer experience more welcoming.

So these can be the precise things that a rising online store should do before their rivals implement the same. 

Be available even if it’s an Online Store 

Availability is the most important thing one can offer. Especially when you are approaching millions of customers online. This can be done using the multiple mediums of approach such as online live chat, offering an AI-supported Chatbot, customer representatives, Social media channels and more. 

According to Desk.com, there are 88% of customers not likely to purchase the product if their questions are unanswered and 77% of customers have already experienced live chat through which their attitude towards the online purchase altered positively. 

This is the reason why recognized eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce do recommend adding in such plugins or add-ons. 

Authentic Product Reviews & the Feel of Purchasing product

Whenever our colleague buys something or neighbor tries a different restaurant, we do exchange reviews/experience with them. Why? Because it is what we feel authentic. The same thing can be done by connecting your own customers with each other. And this can be implemented by taking customer feedback and allowing them to discuss the product features. This creates a positive aura about the company and builds trustworthiness for the product. 

It will also enhance the chances of making a quick purchase. The more a customer is sure about a product, the more promptly he would buy it right there. 

Likewise, the real feel of purchasing a product comes when a customer sees it side by side and visualize it more often. What online stores can do is give more visualization of the product such as a  360° view product view.

Product Filtering  & Loading Time 

Product filtering or site search is the most imperative parameter we can consider in eCommerce websites. Users might get confused with a lot of products out there and end up closing the tab. You might have experienced that a physical store that has unorganized items would not get more customer footfalls. Likewise, an online store seems organized if a customer can search whatever he wants to see or make a purchase. 

According to BigCommerce.com, “On-site search was found to be the preferred product finding strategy of the test subjects, as they perceived it to be faster than category navigation.”

Also, site speed is another basic thing that a customer would expect. No one would be willing to wait for more than a few seconds for the products they want to immediately see and purchase.

Here using the concept of Accelerated Mobile Pages would help for quick loading of the site. If you are looking for such advancement in your website’s loading speed, you can reach out here. 

According to Hostingtribunal, 79% of online consumers would rather choose to stay away for any sort of performance hindrance and 44% of purchasers would even spread bad mouth publicity about the store. 

Post-purchase interaction 

Think about a physical store you are visiting frequently and the rapport with the shopkeeper. It would be indeed great and friendly. The same rapport can be built up by being connected with online buyers and prospects. Just online stores need to be extra careful about customers’ choices and requirements. 

Sending in timely emails to the customers post-purchase make them connected with the store and keep their interest on for future purchases as well. 

Here sending in the emails regarding their previous purchase and prediction for the next purchase would work for the customers and surprise them as well. 

Wrapping it up, glorifying the customer experience means making eCommerce store completely feasible for the customers. To give the best customer experience, understanding and implementing the things as per target market matters 100%.