Right from the beginning, the aim of your eCommerce business is to attract customers to your online store and encourage them to click the buy button. eCommerce sites invest a lot of time and effort into these two key goals, but there is another factor that might be even more crucial for your long-term success: customer satisfaction. Did your customer leave your site feeling good? Did he receive his delivery on time? Did she find answers to her questions?
Most businesses don’t make their money by burning through a continuous stream of new customers. If a customer leaves a shopping experience at your site with a positive feeling about your business, you’ve created a loyal customer who will refer his friends. Repeat customers save you money on marketing costs. That’s capital you can invest to grow your business and create even more happy, repeat customers.
It’s the little things that make eCommerce shoppers happy. Here are four ways to bring the happy to your customers so they can bring it back to you.
1. Website Wayfinding
Street signs (and the map on your phone) help you navigate through an unfamiliar city. What kind of wayfinding have you provided to help your customers navigate your site? If it’s not obvious how to get to the page they want, they could end up frustrated and turn to one of your competitors. Good wayfinding draws customers in and leads them on a shopping trip through your site that leaves them — you guessed it — happy.
Whether you hire a web designer or build your eCommerce site yourself using one of the many platforms at your disposal, clean and simple is a good rule of thumb. Read up on the ideal number of products to show per row and per page. Give your customers lots of opportunities to return to the product they just viewed. Make sure your site reads well on mobile. Don’t add features that slow down loading.
The beauty of eCommerce is that you don’t have to have a huge amount of startup capital to build a sleek and appealing online shop (but don’t skimp on visual design with the funds you have). Everything you invest in making sure your eCommerce site is easy to navigate will come back to you many times over.
2. The Personal Touch
Your customers may be buying over the internet, but they don’t want to be treated like bytes or bots. Let your customers know you’re there for them, and they will shop happily.
Great customer service is a key ingredient in the personal touch, but many eCommerce retailers take the concept further. Consider adding a handwritten thank you note to each order. Call customers who abandon shopping carts.
New tools can help you engage with your customers on a personal level, even if you don’t have a room full of customer service reps at your disposal. Consider a live chatbot to engage with shoppers and answer questions in real time.
3. Speed
We live in a fast world. A study by Radware found that even two seconds in page loading time can make or break an online purchase.
Your customers are happy when they can order your products efficiently and receive them quickly. The time it takes to get your products off the shelves and onto a delivery truck can make a big difference in customer satisfaction. Look for ways to find efficiency in the warehouse. Find a fulfillment center that gives you the option to offer same-day shipping.
Location matters, too. With strategically placed fulfillment warehouses, you can offer two-day shipping to almost everyone in the US, and that will definitely make your eCommerce customers happy.
4. Free Shipping, Free Shipping, Free Shipping
There’s a saying that only three things matter in real estate: location, location, location. For eCommerce retailers, substitute free shipping and you have a mantra for an industry. And free shipping often hinges on location, location, location.
Customers love to order online, but they hate to pay for shipping. If free shipping will kill your profit margin, improving the location of your fulfillment warehouse could make a big difference. With just one or two strategically placed third-party fulfillment warehouses, you can be within a couple of delivery zones of almost everyone in the continental US.
Studies have shown that people rate their experiences based more on what happens at the end than the average of the whole experience. When you provide fast, free and accurate fulfillment, you bump up your odds of leaving your customers in a happy place.