So you have started selling online and your customers are purchasing items directly from your website. Great. However, are your customers as satisfied as they could be? Is the shopping and checkout process as simple as possible?
We will look at how analytics can help you continuously improve your customers’ e-commerce experience. We will go over how to optimise for different devices, how to improve navigation and search, how to optimise your product pages, and how to use customer accounts to improve the checkout process.
The first step in optimising the e-commerce experience is to ensure that the purchasing process runs smoothly on all of the devices that your customers may use. This includes more than just laptops and desktop computers these days.
Assume you assess your analytics data and discover that many people visit your site from their mobile devices, but they rarely make a purchase. That’s a sign that customers using mobile devices or tablets may struggle to see your product pages or complete the payment process smoothly. You have some work to do.
One excellent option is to implement a “responsive design” into your website. This design is adaptable to different screen sizes. Alternatively, if you want to ensure a more consistent shopping experience on smartphones, you could create a dedicated mobile website. OK, you are covered for all types of devices now. Here’s another chance to improve the shopping experience. Suppose your analytics show that a lot of people visit your home page, but they do not go any further and look at your products.
You will want to make it simple for your visitors to browse and find what they’re looking for. This begins with simple navigation that your customers can understand and use. Typically, categories and subcategories will be used to organise your inventory in a variety of ways. Consider the case of a furniture maker. You could begin with broad categories such as different rooms in a house. Then, in each category, you could include subcategories of furniture pieces, such as “bed frames,” “desks,” or “dining room tables.”
So, what’s the best way to approach this? The answer, of course, is the one that your customers prefer.You can conduct formal testing to see how your visitors react to different arrangements, or you can simply poll your friends, family, and trusted clients to see what they prefer. People will always prefer to search for something specific rather than browse through various categories and subcategories, no matter how you arrange your site navigation. As a result, it’s best to cover both options and include a search function on your website. Your product pages are yet another excellent way to improve the shopping experience. What if you notice that a lot of people visit your product pages but don’t add anything to their shopping basket?
You could include a video of a craftsman at work or a gallery of photos from various angles to help customers get a better look at a specific piece of furniture. Make sure the entire photos are of professional quality and that they load quickly.
You can also write great descriptions with lots of details and measurements—whatever makes customers feel confident that they’re ready to buy. The final topic we’ll cover is how to improve the e-commerce experience by utilising customer accounts.
You may notice in your analytics data that customers shop on your site, add items to their shopping cart, and then leave without completing their purchase. Encouraging customers to create an account can help to streamline the process and make this less common in the future.
When a customer makes an online purchase, you can allow them to save their shipping and billing information, as well as their payment preferences, in an account on your site. This will also make future purchases simpler. If you are feeling particularly ambitious, you can also use a customer’s previous purchases, recent searches, or recently viewed products to recommend specific items that may be of interest to them. If they have recently purchased a dining room table, for example, you could suggest the best sets of chairs to match the design and wood finish.
Of course, you can always reward your loyal customers with special offers and discounts—many shopping cart solutions include these features by default. To summarise: E-commerce optimisation is a continuous process that necessitates a consistent experience across devices, smart site organisation, and smooth checkout using customer accounts.
Taking this approach will assist you in your quest to provide the best service possible to current and potential customers.