There has been a growing shift towards online sales that has been accelerated massively by the events of 2020. Whether you run a business that is solely online, or you are just moving into this area, you need to be able to adapt to meet the growing and emerging trends. Otherwise, you may find yourself falling behind the crowd.
A big part of running an online shop is making sure that the overall customer experience is as good as it possibly can be. Bearing this point in mind, the following blog post is all about how to improve the online shopping experience for customers.
Ensure Your Website Loads Quickly on All Devices
Your first area of responsibility is to ensure that your website loads quickly, bearing in mind that people now use all sorts of different devices to get online. This means that it is not enough to simply focus on the laptop load speed as many people now do most of their web browsing using smartphones.
Remember, people are highly impatient these days and are not likely to wait around for a site to load. Plus, there is so much competition out there that people are likely to head to one of your competitors instead.
Improve Your Site Navigation
When people actually gain access to your website, they need to be able to find what they are looking for at the earliest possible opportunity. So, this means that you should ensure that the site navigation is clear and easy to use.
Make all your headings nice and clear and use calls to action to direct your customers where you want them to go. Also, it is worth investing in good site search technology so people can find their way around this way if they so choose.
Write Short and Snappy Content
Not only is the website content important for explaining what it is that you actually do, but it also helps to boost your visibility through search engine optimization. However, any content that you put on the key pages of your site should be short and to the point.
You can always add more in-depth posts to your blog page for the customers who want to delve a little deeper.
Use High-Quality Photos and Videos
Alongside the written content, you need to make your site as visually appealing as possible, and one such way of doing this is by using high-quality imagery. You can also get information across clearly and succinctly with some short videos.
However, you need to make sure that you strike the right balance as you don’t want the images and videos to slow down the load speed of the website. Otherwise, people may not stick around on your site for long enough to enjoy them!
Enhance Customer Service Options
Customer service has changed in a big way with the dawn of the Internet, and people expect to receive answers and support without delay. Therefore, one of the best ways that you can improve the online experience of your customers is by enhancing your options.
When you put in place a customer service strategy, it is also important that you measure your results, and you can do so with Aceyus. As well as offering the usual phone and email routes, more and more businesses are turning to live chat and social media as ways of providing quick and clear answers that customers are demanding.
Offer Email Signup
A great way of keeping customers up to date on all your latest news and encouraging brand loyalty is by getting them to signup up for your mailing list. You can add a little extra incentive like offering a discount for first-time subscribers.
While it is a good idea to highlight this as a method of contact, you don’t want pop-ups to ruin the browsing experience entirely, so don’t set them to appear repeatedly. What you are looking to do is to nudge your employees in the right direction rather than bombard them.
Provide Self-Service Answer Systems
If customers can find the answers that they are looking for without the need to get in contact with you, this helps you to save time on both fronts. So, it is worth creating a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page as a way of allowing customers to search their own queries and answer them directly.
The length of the page is going to depend very much on how complicated a website and a business you run.
Make Checking Out Straightforward
Obviously, you want customers to have a good time on your e-commerce website, but you also want them to buy things! One of the best ways of ensuring this is by creating a checkout system that is easy to use. While it is great to get customers to sign up, sometimes, they are going to want to check out as a guest, and you should allow this as a possibility.
Make it possible for customers to click away from the website and access their basket if this what they choose to do. You can offer them a bit of a nudge by sending a reminder email when stuff is in their basket.
Offer Fast Shipping Deals
The big online giants have been able to build their empires on allowing people to get their stuff very quickly, so you need to try to speed up the process wherever this is possible.
If you can, free shipping is always going to be an attractive option, but this ultimately depends on whether or not you are going to be able to viably offer this in a way that fits in with your profit margins.
Conclusion
Improving your customers’ online shopping system takes continual upkeep, but it is highly important in the modern world, especially as commerce has shifted towards the Internet in such a rapid way.
Ultimately, there are always going to be things that you can do better, so it is worth focusing on these in detail.
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