What is CX or customer experience, and why is it so important for ecommerce businesses? CX simply stands for how your customer experiences your brand. It includes all the touchpoints they have with it, from marketing to conversations various users have about your brand and products, their interactions with your customer service department, and delivery of your products to the design of your app or website. It’s not quite the same as your customer journey that maps the route customers take once they become aware of your brand. Customer journeys and experiences are intertwined. This blog by Woopra explains the difference in more detail.
Why is CX important?
It is tagged to be the battleground of the future for online retailers. It marks the difference between ‘sticky’ brands and those that fade into the past. It drives revenue and growth, creates memorable experiences, drives conversion rates and builds trust. In short, CX and customer loyalty set brands apart.
Product quality is no longer the only factor that drives sales. Customer experiences do. The less friction users perceive before, during, and after buying from you, the higher chances are they’ll do it again.
Let’s briefly look at ways you can improve your CX.
Personalisation
We’ve written numerous blogs talking about personalisation. From UI/UX to ecommerce and consumer trends to email marketing and paid strategies, everything circles back to personalisation. It’s about more than saying ‘Hello John’ in an email or using first-person instead of the third when you communicate. It’s about learning and understanding that everybody is different. No two consumers are the same. It’s about creating unique user experiences for each one of these customers. Suggest tailor-made products or playlists, provide alternative shipping and return options and make it easy for users to contact you. Upsell and cross-sell products to increase your conversion rates even more.
Search and navigation
High intent shoppers want to get in and out. Scrolling through reams of products is not their thing. They carry a higher conversion rate than shoppers who browse because they have a particular product in mind. Help them shop by creating an effective Ecommerce site search solution that immediately connects them to the product they want. Again, personalise their experience by addressing their preferences. CX is not a case of ‘one size fits all’. Think about navigation when you build your site. Fly-out menus, oddly placed navigation tabs, and long lists are more difficult to navigate, especially on mobile devices. It’s better to design your site without these obstacles, than for users to find alternative sites.
Collect and listen to customer feedback
You can send out hundreds of polls, pay for research and build feedback loops until you’re blue in the face. Unless you listen to what customers say, it’s pointless. If you put customers at the centre of your ecommerce business, you’ll take heed of what they say and build around their needs. There are various ways to collect this information. Smartlook helps you create heatmaps of your site or app, Survey Monkey and Typeform can run online surveys. Search online to find a solution that meets your specific needs. Collecting and analysing tickets generated by customer support is another source of valuable information.
Get out of the way
The reason anything exists on this planet is that it has a purpose. If it doesn’t, it must go. We’re talking about websites and products that don’t do what it says on the tin. Shopping sites that reinvent the wheel to make payments, ‘smart’ devices that can do everything other than what they were built for. Get rid of the fancy fluff and focus on the reason you exist in the first place. Then get out of the way and remove anything else that trips users up, or stops them from doing what they came there to do. That’s it.
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