Improving the customer experience in your store: Online stores constantly strive to provide optimal service to their customers, and this includes taking care of customers and working to improve the customer experience in order to develop the performance delivered to them, as it is not limited to the quality of products or services as you see it. them, but also according to what customers are looking for. So how can you improve the customer experience in your online store?
What is customer experience improvement?
In order to understand what the term Customer Experience Improvement means, the fundamental question must be answered: What is CX? The term customer experience has emerged to refer to the perceptions and feelings of a customer as a result of their interaction with your brand, i.e. customer experience is how they perceive the interactions that occur with your company.
Through this, customer experience improvement can be defined as the endeavor of businesses to understand the needs of customers well and to ensure that their expectations are aligned with what they actually find when they interact with the project, specifically when it comes to e-commerce and the use of an online store to complete sales to customers.
The importance of improving customer experience
Of course, there are many benefits of improving the customer experience for e-store owners, because this gives the project the opportunity to better understand customers, and then improve performance. Among the most important advantages of improving the customer experience on your online store:
First, control marketing costs
Businesses spend a lot of money on attracting customers, so by improving the customer experience, they can increase their retention rate, and reduce the percentage of spending on marketing to convince customers to complete more purchases.
Second: increase sales
Improving customer experience is not only important for controlling spending, but also for focusing on customers and their experience, resulting in increased sales. The impact of customer experience on sales is a lot. When a customer gets a good experience, the likelihood of buying increases, the rate of return on investment improves, and vice versa.
Third: improve project performance
Excellent customer experience is a real competitive advantage, especially when it comes to improving the online shopping experience, as this includes improving the performance of products and services, as well as the version of the online store. This improvement depends on constantly following up on customer feedback and ensuring feedback is provided, which in sum helps in improving project performance.
Fourth: Increase customer loyalty
One of the benefits of improving the customer experience is that it relies on constantly communicating with them, in order to find out what works best for them and pay attention to their performance feedback through their ongoing evaluations. In addition to investing this in improving performance, customers feel satisfied as a result of taking care of them, which increases their loyalty and belonging to the project.
An example of the importance of improving customer experience
An example of customer experience and its benefit to businesses is what happened with Tommee Tippee, the mug company. When the company found a father asking them to produce a customized version of the drinking cup that could easily be used by his autistic son, the father created the hashtag #cupsforBen on Twitter.
The tweet spread quickly and garnered thousands of likes and retweets, which caught the company’s attention, and made it respond to the father’s request to decide to produce a set of cups specially prepared for the child to use easily. Thus, through this, the company was able to provide a better experience to its customer, which made it gain the support and admiration of the public as a result of its action.
What is the difference between customer experience and customer service?
The term customer experience is associated with one of the primary tasks of online store owners, which is customer service. The two intersect together in their primary focus on customer interaction, so what is the difference between customer experience and customer service?
Customer service focuses more on interacting with customers when there is a specific problem with the customer, or answering his inquiries before completing the purchase process, to clarify matters he does not understand. Of course, having this role is important as part of online stores, as a result of its contribution to dealing with dissatisfied customers, and supporting them.
Customer experience is a complete methodology for dealing with customers at all stages, not just when there is a specific problem or inquiry, but throughout all parts of the customer journey, to build long-term relationships with them, and improve performance based on their desires, even when there is no specific problem.
10 Reliable Ways to Improve Customer Experience
There are many ways to improve the customer experience for your online store. It requires understanding what works for you and then making sure to choose what you can rely on. If you are looking for the best performance in terms of customer experience improvement, you can hire a professional digital marketer from Fiverr, the largest freelance network to implement the right strategy for your store.
- Study the customer’s personality well
Improving the customer experience depends on the ability to understand them well, study all the details about them, and try to understand their vision and impressions of the project. Therefore, it is important to study the customer’s personality well, which you have already established in the previous stages of starting the online store.
By studying the client’s personality and understanding their feelings, you will be able to understand their reactions, and shift from dealing with them with the reaction to making the action itself, and then providing them with a better experience. It is also important in studying the customer’s personality, to understand the customer’s journey with the purchase, what steps he takes, and what factors affect his decisions to buy, thus benefiting from this information to improve performance.
One of the things that help to understand the customer’s personality is to focus on listening to social media listening sites, to find out what customers say about your project on these sites, so you can collect these comments and rely on them to better understand customers.
- Conducting customer satisfaction surveys
The previous method focuses on studying the customer internally, based on your understanding of customers and the results of in-store sales reports. In this case, you need to communicate with the customers themselves, so that your decisions are not based on your assumptions, but rather on integration with input from the customers.
So, it is a good idea to do surveys that focus on trying to find out the extent of customer satisfaction with the project, through which you can find out how to measure the customer experience with your online store, and if there is any problem they face. By formulating the right survey questions, you will obtain information that can be used to improve the customer experience and make the required performance adjustments.
- Provide a personalized customer experience
The previous methods can be benefited from in two different ways, the first is to improve the performance of the online store as a whole, and the second is the possibility of developing the customer’s experience with the store, by trying to provide them with a personal experience, making them feel as if the customer experience is tailored to them and what they want.
This can be done by relying on timely communication with customers during the customer’s buying journey, ensuring that they are provided with the required support, and answering their inquiries. The customer experience can also be improved by making purchase proposals and offers to them, such as cross-selling and alternative selling offers, so that the customer feels the quality of the recommendations and the real interest in your store.
- Train the staff well
The work team is one of the main axes in improving the customer experience, as it depends on them in continuous communication with customers, whether to provide them with appropriate customer service or to cooperate with them and try to persuade them to complete their purchase decisions. Thus, depending on the performance of the work team, the customer will feel the quality of their experience, or on the contrary, he may lose confidence in the store.
Therefore, it is important to focus on training the work team well and developing the team’s
skills to deal with different situations while communicating with customers, as well as knowing how to provide a personal experience to customers, centered on the customer itself and not the products or services sold, so it is a reason to convince the customer to make a purchase decision.
- Focus on online store performance
This method is one of the most necessary ways to improve the customer experience, because there may be no way to know what happened with the customer while browsing the online store, and this customer cannot be persuaded to return again if his experience is not good with the used e-commerce site. Therefore, it is important to ensure the performance of the online store, and the presence of the appropriate platform to deal with customers.
This includes the speed of loading the site and making sure that the online store is suitable for use from the phone, as this leads to giving the customer the appropriate user experience for him. Whereas if these factors are not taken care of, the result will be that he will leave the site and never return to it again.
- Provide the same customer experience in your online store and on the ground
If you have an online store as well as a physical store, it is important to make sure that you provide the same experience to customers in both locations, the customer should not feel that there is a difference, as this may make them stop following through on their purchase decision.
For example, if you do not advertise a specific product on your online store, the customer decides to go to your store in real life, and discovers a difference in the product, this not only affects the stopping of the purchase but may give you a negative evaluation as a result. While the integration into the experience makes it easier for the customer to continue with the purchase.
- Focus on data collection to make decisions
Successful businesses are built on data, as it is the right and reliable way to make the right decisions. So, it is important to always pay attention to the data collection process, and make use of different customer experience tools and software to do so.
One of the most popular programs that help you collect data is the customer relationship management program. These programs enable you to access detailed data about customers, which can be relied upon to make decisions about project performance or develop marketing efforts in line with the results of data analysis, while being able to improve your understanding of customers, and thus the ability to improve customer experience.
- Paying attention to employee feedback
The role of evaluation is not limited to customers only, but also attention should be paid to evaluating the opinions of employees regarding the performance of the project, their observations on customers, inquiries, and things observed during communication with them. It can be done in the form of a survey or even a meeting for employees who work directly with clients.
Through this, you will be able to collect and record these observations, so that you can use them later in making improvement decisions, whether at the level of the products or services you provide, or even at the level of the online store itself, and the factors that employees deem important in improving the customer experience.
- Analysis of the performance of marketing campaigns
There is no doubt that marketing campaigns are one of the most important factors used in attracting customers, and based on the efforts of these campaigns, it is possible to improve the process of reaching customers, and thus increase the conversion rate and purchase orders from the online store, as a result of the success in influencing customers, and persuading them to get what They really want to.
Therefore, it is important to focus on analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns constantly, to know which marketing strategies fit the actual customer journey, and what the best methods used for them, and then develop the following marketing campaigns to reach the highest percentage of customers, and reconcile their aspirations and the desired experience with what you offer in Online store.
- Invest in content marketing
One of the things that contribute to improving customer experience and access to your site, is to focus on writing content in accordance with the standards of search engines so that customers can reach you easily during searches, and your content is visible to them in the first results, so it is always one of their favorite options.
This requires investing in a content marketing strategy and producing it for the different stages of the customer journey. If you want to produce exclusive content that helps you top the search results, you can hire a specialized content writer, who is responsible for choosing the topics that match your online store and help you attract customers, while giving them a unique experience in the content.
In conclusion, the success of online stores is no longer limited to providing the appropriate products and services, but rather focusing on all the factors that make it easier for the customer to get what he wants, which includes all aspects of his experience from the first moment of the purchase decision, until he sale, which is what It can be done by focusing on improving the customer experience, as one of the most important tasks required in your online store.
