9 Tips for a Stunning eCommerce Customer Experience [2023 Guide]

It’s expected that in 2023, global eCommerce sales will reach over $6.5 trillion! However, it’s crucial to understand that customer experience is vital for eCommerce success.

Simply put, a customer that is happy with the way you’ve treated them, is much more likely to do business with you again, and recommend you to other people.

However, an unsatisfied customer is almost guaranteed to never use your services again.

Now, the question is: how to achieve the ultimate shopping experience for your customers?

Since achieving that level of eCommerce customer experience is not an easy task. It requires a combination of many skills, and qualities.

But first things first.

What Is eCommerce Customer Experience?

Customer experience begins right from the moment a person hears about your brand for the first time, and goes all the way to the time when that person has completed his purchase.

Here’s a rough outline of some most common scenarios:

1. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Did they hear about your company from a friend? Was it a recommendation or a warning?
2. The coolness factor. Is social media or are advertisements your strength? Perhaps you’ve won your customers over right from the start, just because of your influence.
3. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. People want to be your clients. Your main job is to make sure their entire shopping experience is as easy as possible. From a fast-loading website to top-notch customer service – it’s your duty.
4. Gangway, old timers. It’s important to keep up with the latest technological trends. This is not only about getting the attention of your youngest customers, people from all ages are now actively using new technologies.
5. We got your money, now what? You’ve managed to turn your visitor into a customer. Congratulations! Your work is not done, though. If you want that customer to keep buying from you, you need to make sure the post-purchase process is smooth and pleasant. You can achieve this by using the best practices, which will inspire brand loyalty.

Now, let’s get onto the part you’re all waiting for.

9 Tips for a Stunning eCommerce Customer Experience

1. Personalize the customer shopping experience.
2. Offer rewards and surprises.
3. Ensure your website is user-friendly.
4. Have a knowledgeable customer support team.
5. Publish educational support content.
6. Display user reviews.
7. Take care of the post-purchase details.
8. Create appealing product pages.
9. Be present across all channels.

1. Personalize the Customer Shopping Experience

Personalization was, and still is, the most crucial aspect of all online and offline business endeavors at the beginning of the 2020s. A generic shopping experience will not impress any of your customers. Even if everything else was great, they’ll be left with a feeling of unsatisfaction and boredom.

From Steam to Amazon, there’s a reason all the big players rely heavily on personalization. It can help you create brand loyalty, drive impulse buying, and lead to fewer returns.

So, go on, display products that the user has shown interest in, similar products to the ones they’ve already purchased, personalize ads… basically, everything you can think of to make the experience more personal, will help.

2. Offer Rewards and Surprises

Rewards create a feeling of excitement. Unexpected, pleasant surprises stimulate the release of dopamine. Therefore, your clients will start associating your brand with happy feelings, and subconsciously want to continue visiting your website.

Gamification is a proven method of increasing your eCommerce sales – rewards points for shopping, free shipping, bonus items, discounts – everything counts.

3. Ensure Your Website Is User-Friendly

What does it take for your website to be user-friendly? Think of all the essentials that would account for a seamless user experience, such as:

• A fast-loading website.
• Easy navigation.
• Simple checkout process.
• Product availability.
• Working links and buttons.
• Functional search bars.
• Easy to find contact information.

Make sure to take care of all the small details that could frustrate your potential customers and send them in the direction of your competitors.

4. Have a Knowledgeable Customer Support Team

What do your clients do when they have issues? They contact customer support. Regardless if it’s by chat, email or phone, it’s essential to have a knowledgeable, friendly and fast customer support team.

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Think about your own experience – how nice and valued you felt when a customer support representative solved your problem and managed to make you feel special in doing so.

Or, the opposite scenario, when a representative was inadequate and completely ruined your experience with said business.

Having a great customer support team does matter. It’s one of the eCommerce customer experience metrics you should follow – you can simply place an automated email system, so that every customer can fill in a short feedback form.

5. Publish Educational Support Content

Does your eCommerce website need to have a blog? If you ask us, the answer is definitely yes. The logic is that on your blog, you can publish content that is relevant to your products, and provide existing and potential customers with valuable information.

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Does your eCommerce store sell organic products? Yes? Great, then you can use your blog to write about the benefits of organic products, compare them with others, and genuinely spark the interest of your audience.

On top of that, if you apply the best SEO practices, and get your articles in the top 10 of SERPs, you can attract thousands of new customers through organic traffic, without having to do anything sales-related.

6. Display User Reviews

Nowadays, everyone reads user reviews before deciding to use a product or service. Hiding your reviews is not a viable option, as 93% of online shoppers state they influence their purchase decisions.

Clients will probably wonder why you haven’t displayed reviews – are they mainly negative? If so, it’s much better to address them, then choose to hide them and leave people thinking you do not know what to do or worse, do not care about fixing the problems.

Additionally, don’t forget that while you may hide reviews on your website, there are plenty of other platforms created specifically for such a purpose, so you won’t be able to hide yourself from bad reviews forever.

Just address the negative comments, and show that you are looking forward to resolving any possible issues as soon as you can. It’s as simple as that.

7. Take Care of the Post Purchase Details

If you want your customers to do business with you again, you should not stop your efforts when the purchase is complete. You see, the best eCommerce experiences can also happen after the deal is done.

One thing that is important is to keep track of the shopping cart abandonment rate. Knowing what causes your customers to leave their purchases at the last step of the buying process can be essential to preventing it from happening.

Another influential factor to keep in mind is your mobile optimization, and the way your checkout process is on different devices – it might be great on PC, but terrible on mobile.

8. Create Appealing Product Pages

Are you selling the same product that can also be found on other online stores? It’s okay. What’s not okay, though, is copy-pasting the product descriptions and thinking it will get the job done.

First, it’s not very good for SEO, and second – users much prefer appealing product pages with detailed descriptions, photos, and whatever else you can think of, even AR examples of how the product looks in a real environment.

A creatively crafted product page can make all the difference in the world. It can be what inspires users to buy from your site, instead of another one.

Also, always try to emphasize the benefits of your products, not the features. Tell your customers how the items will make their daily lives easier, and include real-life examples, if possible.

9. Be Present Across All Channels

It should go without saying, but doing business in the modern world requires you to be omnipresent. Your presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube etc., is very likely a must. Every platform out there, that is relevant to your business, you should make use of.

Just as Home & Garden brands did. According to the Feed Marketing Report 2022, the home furnishing sector substantially increased their sales through the past 2 years when expanding their multichannel presence.

You should also create a feeling of consistency with your followers by keeping the same tone of voice no matter the platform. Social media can help you boost your eCommerce lead conversion rate.

What’s more, you can use features such as the in-built marketplace of Facebook, for example, to offer your products directly to your followers. Remember, if it’s convenient for your customers, and delivers a pleasant eCommerce shopping experience, why not do it?

In Conclusion

Creating and maintaining the ultimate eCommerce shopping experience is not possible unless you invest time, effort, and dedication to the process.

A customer-centric approach has multiple benefits. Mainly, making sure that a happy customer is a buying customer.

Now, it’s up to you to use the insights from this article to establish a fun, and memorable electronic commerce experience. You can do it!