The Customer Experience & eCommerce

When shopping online, it’s all too easy for the consumer to ditch the shopping cart and close their browser, never to buy anything from the site.

So why does this happen?

Often, it’s not because the price is too high or the product is of low quality, it’s because they’ve had a bad customer experience. In fact, A Walker study found that at the end of 2021, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Therefore, it’s so important to invest in your customer experience.

By making the consumer journey a priority, your company can build brand loyalty to not only keep the customer coming back, but also acquire new leads, generate sales, and have great conversion via word of mouth.

Conversely, a poor customer service experience can not only make you lose a sale, but can severely damage your company reputation. 1Financial Training services reports that 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back. Additionally, a dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. Around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people. – White House Office of Consumer Affairs.

So how do we achieve this ‘good customer experience’ when it comes to eCommerce?

One of the hardest things to do virtually is create a personalized experience for consumers, which is why it’s so important. Just putting names on emails is not enough. Content, ads, and product offers should be relevant to a user. Using info like product browsing history or location, give users offers or make recommendations based on purchases by similar customers.

Additionally, consistency is key. Delivering the same experience every time to the consumer is vital to earning their trust & loyalty. In their future of CX report, PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found that 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, while 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.

In order to be consistent with all customers, all employees must be on the same page about the CX; it has to be embedded in your company culture. Happy employees make for happy customers.

“Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything for better or worse.” – Simon Sinek, Author

Lastly, make sure your website is user-friendly and has a pleasant-looking user-interface. If it’s difficult to navigate through the site or the look and feel is archaic, it can severely damage your company’s credibility. Like mentioned before, it’s become all too easy to ditch the shopping cart and close the browser, never to return.