TIPS FOR DELIVERING AN EXCEPTIONAL ecommerce EXPERIENCE

Transcription

1 TIPS FOR DELIVERING AN EXCEPTIONAL ecommerce EXPERIENCE

2 TABLE OF CONTENT INTRODUCTION FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 5 PAY ATTENTION TO ABANDONED CART RATES 8 MAKE PURCHASING SIMPLE AND EASY 12 OPTIMIZE FOR MOBILE 15 BE TRANSPARENT 18 CONCLUSION 21

3 INTRODUCTION Whether you have a new business idea or a 20-year-old company, the time is ripe to venture into the world of ecommerce. Trust us and seize the opportunity. Not in a year, not in a couple of months and not next week. The time to launch your ecommerce store is right now. Consider that Amazon, the largest ecommerce seller in the world, accounted for 25% of all retail growth in the United States in As incredible as that number seems, it ll only increase in the coming years. If you re in the business of selling products and services, an ecommerce shop should be part of your plans in Now that we ve convinced you to join the ecommerce fray - or even if you re just looking to improve an existing store - it s our responsibility to set you along the path to success. Given the explosion of ecommerce, there s no shortage of information on the subject. But when you re delving into something new, it s difficult to decide which resources to read first. 3

4 Stop the search: this guide is that resource. With ecommerce technology like Shopify, BigCommerce and Volusion, setting up an online store is easy. The difficult part is attracting customers, delivering a great experience and ultimately, converting visitors. In fact, because ecommerce technology is so advanced, businesses are now competing mainly on the strength of the experiences they provide their customers. The better the experience - from awareness all the way to post-conversion - the more success a business will have. For these reasons, instead of focusing this guide on launching your digital shop, we re going to give you the rundown on how to deliver an exceptional ecommerce customer experience. At the end of the day, satisfied customers keep your business running. Too many ecommerce shops launch and then assume the money will come rolling in. It doesn t and it won t. That s why you need these 5 Tips For Delivering An Exceptional ecommerce Experience. 4

5 FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 1It s in the title of this How-To Guide, so you re thinking, Come on, we already know we need to focus on the experience! The thing is, you can never worry too much about the customer experience you re delivering because it can always be improved.

6 In a recent survey conducted by an ecommerce solutions provider, 75% of respondents said they would be unlikely or highly unlikely to buy from a digital retailer after a poor customer experience. Considering that repeat customers are what keeps most companies running, few businesses can succeed without generating loyalty and advocacy amongst their audience. Case in point: it s six to seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one. POOR COSTUMER EXPERIENCE V V 75% WON T RETURN 6

7 Since you don t often receive complaints from your customers, your ecommerce experience may appear to be satisfying your digital audience - and that could be the reality. However, a typical business only hears from 4% of its dissatisfied customers. Let that sink in: statistically, if you have 100 unhappy customers, only four of them will tell you directly. And the other 96 dissatisfied customers? They ll tell their family, friends and anybody else who will listen not to do business with you. 7 The takeaway from these stats isn t just the notion of your customer experience being critical to ecommerce success, it s that you have to be proactive about identifying the experience you re delivering, and most importantly, understanding that it needs to be constantly iterated.

8 PAY ATTENTION TO ABANDONED CART RATES 2Dealing with the frustration of potential customers abandoning their carts when they re one step away from making a purchase is part of the ecommerce game. You put tireless effort into marketing your products or services, funnel traffic to your site, generate positive reviews, yet customers still abandon their carts. Abandoned carts are such a constant, they re enough to make you give up trying to figure out what s going on and accept them. But you must resist this urge.

9 As Harry Potter s professor Mad-Eye Moody would say, your abandoned cart rate is an area that requires CONSTANT VIGILANCE! Even though it s frustrating to put in hard work without seeing results, there are ways to reduce your abandoned cart rates, and the slightest improvements can have a big impact on your bottom line. Think about your abandoned cart rate like your conversion rate: even a percentage point of improvement in the number of visitors you convert to customers makes you more money, without adding more visitors or spending a cent on additional marketing. Reducing your abandonment rate achieves the same result. 9

10 Let s say your average sale is $25. A recent study found that the average online shopping cart rate of abandonment rate is 68%. For every 100 customers who put items into their cart, you re on the verge of making $ but 68% of these customers abandon their cart, so you only wind up making $ USERS Here s where persevering through frustration and paying close attention to your cart abandonment rates can pay dividends. The number we quoted above was the average abandonment rate of various studies, but some sources found cart rate abandonments as low as 62% in their independent studies. If you can reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate by 5% - which the stats suggest is possible - you stand to gain $125 (for every 100 customers) you previously assumed was lost. 68% 10

11 Abandoned carts are an inevitable part of ecommerce, but blindly accepting the rate at which your customers abandon their purchases is not. In the current, relatively early stages of ecommerce, striving to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate can net you a huge advantage over competitors who aren t quite as vigilant as you. 11

12 3MAKE PURCHASING SIMPLE AND EASY Speaking of abandoned carts, we ve all had that experience. You re scrolling through your Twitter or Pinterest feed and a product jumps off your screen, into your mind s eye, and right onto your coffee table (if it s a set of cheeky coasters, for example). You click on the glorious coasters and are directed to a decent-looking ecommerce site. You add the coasters to your cart, virtually e-skipping your way to a purchase.

13 And then you see the dreaded pop-up; you know, the one that asks you to create an account before you make a purchase? After some audible grumbling, you tell yourself the brand is asking you to create an account with the best of intentions: they want you to have easy future access to more awesome products like the cheeky coasters you still really want. They re throwing up a barrier to purchase instead of making it simple and easy, but hey, the coasters are very cheeky. You begin to fill in the information to create your account. They ask for all the usual stuff, like name, address, phone number, address, company name, the number of employees in your company, your favorite color, mother s maiden name...wait, what? You don t want to give out some of this information, which is totally unnecessary for this brand to even ask for, so you try to submit it with the basics. No dice. 13

14 14 Now panic sets in. You want the coasters but you re annoyed with your overall experience, and your desire to stop dealing with things that frustrate you is becoming stronger than your fading urge to make a purchase. Finally, with one last glance at the little red sentence reading, Please fill out the required fields you click out of the ecommerce shop, leaving your cart totally abandoned. Before opting to include things like mandatory account creation, the number of fields on your forms, payment options or pop-up notifications, run through this quick checklist: ecommerce CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CHECKLIST Does this improve the shopping experience of my customer? Does this make buying my products or service easier? Is this absolutely necessary in order for a potential customer to make a purchase? Would I want to come across this if I were buying something from an ecommerce store? If you cannot check off all of these boxes, don t add the feature. Period. It doesn t matter what it is - if it makes the purchase process more difficult for your customer, it s doing more harm than good.

15 4OPTIMIZE FOR MOBILE Since it s 2016 and mobile device are a cultural norm, telling you to optimize your ecommerce experience for mobile might seem a little obvious. But within the realm of ecommerce, mobile commerce is still developing. In fact, 72% of 2015 ecommerce spending was conducted on a desktop, with just 15% on a smartphone and 13% on a tablet.

16 The most critical thing to learn from mobile playing second fiddle to the desktop in terms of ecommerce sales is that it s not likely to last. But in the meantime, there may be some customers who have multi-device purchase journeys, and those experiences are the real concern. Picture this: you re at work and eating lunch at your desk (again). You decide to check out Pinterest to give your brain a rest and there it is: the backyard patio table you ve been dreaming of! Hardly containing your excitement, you click through to the ecommerce site that offers the table and add it to your cart but alas, lunch is over and you need to get back to work. Later on that evening, you re watching TV and trying to unwind when, like a bolt of lightning cracking the base of a tree, you re hit with the image of that perfect patio table. Your laptop is all the way upstairs so you pull out your phone and navigate to the ecommerce site where you re surprised and disappointed to find a completely different experience than you had on your desktop - and not for the better. 16

17 This scenario leads to another shopping cart abandonment, and all because of a poor experience. There are other things to worry about when it comes to mobile commerce, like ensuring customers can checkout with PayPal, which studies show can increase mobile purchases by up to 34%. But starting with the simple goal of ensuring you deliver an excellent ecommerce customer experience across multiple devices lays the foundation for you to get a leg up on your competitors both now and in the future (when the sales scale inevitably tips toward mobile). 34% 17

18 5BE TRANSPARENT Although some ecommerce wares are digital, we often forget that a vast majority of ecommerce dollars are spent on tangible products and services. And these real-world products and services need to be packaged and delivered to their purchasers who, in some cases, are located across the world from sellers. The disconnect between ecommerce shops and the real-world is one that s admittedly been solved by many big ecommerce brands. Amazon likely makes shipping and receiving errors, but they also probably take care of these issues before anybody notices; that s how organized they have to be simply because of how big they are. In short, Amazon is transparent about how they conduct their business, which is a lesson many ecommerce retailers still need to learn.

19 In 2016, a brand s transparency is paramount to its success. Remember the stat about 75% of customers choosing not to give a brand repeat business after a bad experience? You better believe transparency plays a large role in defining a digital customer s experience. Pretend you re doing some shopping for the art fan in your life and you stumble across a cool retailer selling small framed prints perfect for hanging on walls. You easily find a dozen prints you like but decide to narrow the purchase down to four, with the intention of buying more prints as future gifts. After viewing your final total plus shipping fees, you complete the purchase and are excited about receiving your prints. 19 That is, you were excited, until you received your prints and had to pay an $87 fee to accept your package from the shipping company (duty charges, apparently). Blindsiding your customers with a charge that s 30% of their purchase total isn t a good way to deliver a satisfying experience, nor is it remotely transparent. The only thing this brand has accomplished is making sure you never buy from them again, even though you wanted to. And the worst part of the whole experience? You love the prints.

20 20 If the brand had just outlined how much duty would be charged upon delivery of the package, chances are you would have paid it. But there s a big difference between being asked to pay an amount you acknowledge than being totally surprised - and essentially pigeonholed - into paying an unforeseen charge. The mystery shipping charge is just one example. There are many ways a business can forgo transparency with its customers. To help you stay on track in being a transparent business, here s another quick list of things to ask yourself before deciding to keep information from your customers: BRAND TRANSPARENCY CHECKLIST If I were a customer, would I want to know this information? Could this information reasonably impact a customer s purchase decision? If a customer discovers this information after they make a purchase, will they be upset you withheld it? If you check any of these boxes, you must not remove the information in question as doing so would directly compromise your transparency to your customers. The less transparent you are, the fewer repeat sales you make, which spells trouble for your brand.

21 CONCLUSION There s a lot of noise out there when it comes to ecommerce; do this, fix that, use a certain platform or technology and the money will follow. It s actually much simpler than that: if you focus on delivering an exceptional ecommerce customer experience, you ll generate repeat business, create loyal brand advocates who make referrals, and then you ll see an increase in your bottom line. If you re ever feeling lost, put yourself in your customer s shoes and ask: would I want this? Does this make it easier for me to buy something? Is this transparent? We also encourage you to consult our handy little checklists as they ll help cast a light on the right direction. Finally, we hope you learn from our 5 Tips For Delivering An Exceptional ecommerce Experience Guide - good luck and happy e-selling! 21

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