Customer experience is an important aspect of any type of business. As an entrepreneur, you need to strive to provide the best customer service possible in order to keep your buyers happy. So when customers come into your store, you open the door for them, give them a smile, provide them with the assistance they need, etc. You do all this so that they wouldn’t be any kind of inconvenience or hitch in their buying experience with your brand.
However, making your customers happy is not as easy when it comes to online and digital transactions. You don’t get to personally greet your website visitors and smile at them as they checkout. So, how do ecommerce businesses ensure that their customers are happy and satisfied with their service? With that, here are some helpful tips on how to keep customers happy in the ecommerce industry.
Make sure your website is easy to use and navigate
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Your website serves as your online store. This is where you put out your digital products to try and sell them. Therefore, a poorly designed website can easily turn people away from further browsing your site. So to keep your online customers happy, it is important to have a website that is easy to use and navigate. Taking this into consideration, it is the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) that are widely regarded as essential components of a good ecommerce website.
The user interface refers to the platform or method by which a person interacts with and communicates to a computer or digital device. Your website’s UI design dictates how a visitor would interact and navigate your online store. Some people think of user interfaces simply as the aesthetic of the website. From the themes, color palettes, and font choices. However, the UI design is also an important part of the product presentation and website interactivity. The primary goal of UI design is to create a website with a structure that is easy to look at, accessible, efficient, and responsive to the user’s needs.
Don’t forget about the user experience
Alongside the UI design, the user experience (UX) in online retail aims to optimize the way a customer’s browsing and shopping experience while on your website. The goal of UX designers is to create a user-friendly, efficient, and relevant process for potential customers and buyers.
UX designers put the customers first and think of how each aspect of the business plan affects and influences the users’ experience. This involves branding, marketing, and even customer service and support after purchase.
In ecommerce, website UX is typically concerned about browsing efficiency, the convenience of payment options, and the ease of checking out and completing a purchase. UX is often seen as a sympathetic website design approach as its primary goal and objective is to find solutions for possible end-user issues and problems.
Optimize your website for mobile use
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One of the critical mistakes that ecommerce stores make is focusing solely on their website’s display on computers and laptops. However, people forget that there is an even larger number of mobile users in the world. A 2021 statistics showed that the estimated number of unique mobile phone users is around 4.32 billion, which is roughly 90% of the world’s population.
Taking this into consideration, it is important to optimize your website for mobile phone users as well. Consider different screen sizes in your UI and make sure that the site navigation tools are easy to access even on a small touchscreen device. Your website should also look well and proper when accessed on a phone since there is a larger demographic that may access it using their mobile device.
Offer real-time customer support
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Providing quality customer service is another important factor that can help keep your customers happy. One of the benefits of electronic commerce and online business is that the digital world allows fast communication between the two parties. If a potential customer has an inquiry, they can easily shoot the online store a message or post a comment to know more about their products or services.
However, timing plays a huge role in customer satisfaction. While it’s possible to have a 24/7 line open for customer support, it is important to make sure that someone is there to provide the necessary customer service. To help deal, most ecommerce businesses hire virtual assistants as part of their marketing tactics. Having remote employees or independent contractors from different parts of the world and, thus, different time zones helps make sure that there is someone available to offer help to customers.
Create a self-serving website
While it’s good to provide platforms for customers to interact with or inquire about your business, some people may find it difficult to do this. If you’re dealing with someone with social anxiety, they may be completely turned off from your website because it requires them to interact with you in order to find the answers to their questions or queries. To deal with this, consider adding a self-service portal to your website.
Through this, website visitors are no longer required to directly message someone for customer support. Instead, they can browse your website’s self-service portal that features content such as frequently asked questions (FAQs), detailed product descriptions, business background and information, and the likes. This allows your customers to find answers to their questions quickly and without depending on another person’s reply. There would be no need for long conversations or explanations. Instead, the user can fix their issues on their own and on their own time and pacing.
Ensure their safety and privacy
One of the biggest risks on the internet has something to do with data privacy and security. Considering that most online stores include card payments, some people may be wary when it comes to declaring their personal information and card details online.
Taking this into account, one way to keep your customers happy and satisfied with your online store is to ensure they are well protected. There is a wide range of security programs and software available that you can use to heighten your website’s security. Invest in a trusted and reliable data privacy and security program to ensure that your business and your customers are protected from malicious attacks and hacks.
Want to know more about the ecommerce industry? Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.
