10 Ways To Create An Unbeatable e-Commerce Customer Experience

Goods and services aren’t the only things that your customers get when they shop at your online store. The e-commerce customer experience, despite being intangible, is part of the package as well.

The overall experience that customers have while interacting with your brand, products and webpages is an important factor that can potentially drive sales up or lead to losses and less patronage.

Read this article to know more about how to improve the e-commerce customer experience, and how the big name brands do it!

• e-Commerce customer experience? What’s that?
• Why is e-commerce customer experience important?
• 10 e-commerce customer experience strategies for you to try out!
• Best e-commerce customer experiences: Examples from 3 big name brands 
• Some last words

e-Commerce customer experience? What’s that?

Essentially, everything that customers do in relation to your brand, from liking your social media posts  to finally checking out with your products, all make up a customer experience (CX) that you must create and shape.

Customer experience management (CXM) accordingly provides a framework for you to improve your marketing, web or app design, and even your delivery process in order to enhance the experience that customers have with your online business.

When managing the e-commerce customer experience, however, it’s important to note that you should primarily consider your customers' perception instead of your own.

Although you may prefer a certain way things on your site are arranged, your customers may have a different opinion and you should seriously take that into consideration.

Why is e-commerce customer experience important?

Given its overarching nature, e-commerce customer experience can help build brand loyalty, bolster your reputation, and even lead to business growth and partnerships. Here’s how.

1. Loyalty is built on experience

An excellent online shopping experience free of hassle that delivers exactly, if not more than, what the customer expects can help develop their trust in and long-term loyalty to your brand.

In fact, nearly 75% of consumers reflected that the e-commerce customer experience can greatly affect their purchasing decisions.

Getting people to come back repeatedly to buy your products and check out what you have in store is, therefore, hugely dependent on creating a positive customer experience that leaves the customer wanting more or all of it, all over again.

2. Set yourself higher to set yourself apart

When two stores have the same product, which one would you go to? The one with a better online shopping experience, of course.

Differentiation from competition can hence be achieved with better customer experience management, as it shows your customers that you can provide the best value for their money.

For instance, by building a supportive member community or offering promotions exclusive to your online shop, you can set yourself as the more appealing option, attracting more customers and potentially leading to better sales and profits.

3. Growth, partnerships and more!

Good customer experiences lead to brand loyalty, which in turn leads to more sales.

A strong customer base and increased sales then enable you to develop partnerships with other business, suppliers, and influencers to grow your online store even more. You can even leverage the reputation and profits afforded to you by good CX to negotiate terms with your current partners and expand your e-commerce business across geographical borders!

10 e-commerce customer experience strategies for you to try out!

Customer experience management is not a matter to be taken lightly, as there are numerous factors that make up the entire experience which you must consider and address.

Don’t worry though, Choco Up has got you covered. You can read about 10 strategies for stepping up your e-commerce customer experience below!

1. Please your customers: Personalize everything you can to their liking

To achieve commercial success, you should undoubtedly strive to constantly please your customers. Personalizing your e-commerce store with shoppers’ habits and characteristics is a good step in the said direction.

According to one consumer study, 4 out of 5 customers are actually more likely to make a purchase from a store that offers personalized experiences, and about 90% of all online shoppers find personalization rather appealing.

Recommendations based on products they’ve purchased before, promotions on special days (such as their anniversaries or birthdays), and the simple act of changing the language of your store for certain locations all count as personalization that can improve the e-commerce customer experience and your overall business performance.

Other similar strategies include loyalty programs, discount notifications, and tailoring your landing pages to customer preferences.

2. Create and support a community 

Even at the early stages of growing your online business, creating and sustaining a community of loyal customers can help you reach greater heights later on.

These loyal customers can offer genuine feedback about your products to help you improve, and may even serve as staunch advocates for your business online, hence encouraging more people to buy your products and join the community.

Friends, family, and your first customers can make up this group at first, but you can surely build a larger one that represents and helps your brand as you expand.

3. Plan your social media content: Go social, go viral!

Social media is a sort of battleground where you and your community can constantly promote your brand to get others to learn about and join your cause.

To this end, colorful, catchy and engaging online content could be carefully planned and posted at opportune times of high user activity and engagement.

Partnering with influencers and creating hashtags or trends for customers to follow on their own accounts can also help keep people engaged, garner online attention, and bring your brand to a wider audience.

4. Keep your customers safe, and let them know they’re protected

A data breach that risks your customers’ personal and financial information could kill your business.

Creating a safe online shopping experience is therefore of utmost importance, and you can let your customers know they're protected to further inspire trust in your brand and your store.

5. Capitalize on mobile shopping  

Mobile users account for approximately 54.6% of all online global traffic, so ensuring that your site can effectively cater to mobile devices is an e-commerce best practice that you should follow.

Any mobile sites you have should be designed so that they look just as dynamic and appealing as they do on a desktop browser, and they should also be routinely optimized to ensure speed and efficiency.

Learn more: e-Commerce Best Practices: 15 Actionable Tips To Follow

6. Remember UX every step of the way

In line with providing an e-commerce site with mobile-friendly design, the overall UX or user experience is another factor that should constantly be in your mind for your site’s design.

User experience largely involves the experience that customers have while navigating your online site, so it still falls wholly within the scope of e-commerce customer experience.

Nobody should ever be confused, feel lost, or get frustrated while using your online shopping site, so you should implement an “intuitive user flow” which follows a typical checkout process that customers may already be familiar with.

7. Streamline shipping and delivery

Although e-commerce delivery may seem less glamorous compared to the colorful social media posts or dynamic website of your online store, it still serves the vital role of finally getting your purchased products to your customers.

As such, this portion of the customer experience should be optimized to avoid any delays, shipping mistakes, or outright failures that would cost you customer trust and even sales.

Pro tip: If you can offer free shipping without hurting your bottom line, why not do so? It’ll certainly make purchasers happy. A seamless and hassle-free shipping and delivery experience contributes much to your customer experience.

Learn more: e-Commerce Delivery: An Insider’s Guide for Online Businesses

8. Step up and strengthen your customer service 

Another significant aspect of a great e-commerce customer experience would be effective customer support.

While interacting with your brand, your customers may have many different questions or concerns that can’t be addressed by your posts or pages alone.

By providing a live chat portal or quick-response contact form, you can support your customers and address their specific issues through conversational commerce.

More than 50% of customers have actually stated that they’re less likely to purchase from a brand with poor customer service, so it’s time for you to step up your game!

Learn more: Conversational Commerce: The Secret To 10X Your Customer Experience

9. Offer coupons, discounts, and surprises!

To further build and maintain customer loyalty, you may also want to explore offering coupons, discounts, and surprises to your customers every so often!

You can include these offerings in your marketing posts, the check-out process, the actual product package (for customers to use in their next purchase), or anywhere else you think customers will pass through often and are highly likely to see them.

These coupons could encourage additional spending, or good word of mouth about your store.

10. Tell your story: What do you stand for?

At the end of the day, your customers are still people with real concerns and very real lives you can relate to.

Telling your story, how your business started, and what it all stands for can therefore help you establish stronger relationships with your customers and whatever community you have built around your brand.

Did you start your business to address a hassle that a lot of people in your area experience? Are you a parent making products that help with kid care? Or are you providing a solution to a problem that you yourself came across?

A customer’s experience can be enhanced by knowing that they have a firm connection with you and your products, and your brand story forms the foundation of it.

Best e-commerce customer experiences: Examples from 3 big name brands 

Without actual examples to demonstrate how the above-mentioned strategies work in practice, they may be difficult to grasp and apply.

Here are a few big name brands you can check out to gain some insight on how you can create a better customer experience.

1. Louis Vuitton

As a world leader in the fashion and luxury goods industry, Louis Vuitton provides one of the best customer experiences in the e-commerce industry, making each person they cater to feel a sense of superb luxury and exclusivity.

Louis Vuitton’s e-commerce site is easy to navigate, features promos based on the season, and even includes a “Wish List” that users can fill up with their desired bags, belts, and purses once they’ve registered a My LV account.

Those with the said account can then avail of personalized notifications whenever promos or new collections come about. Thereafter, they have a variety of channels for customer service, ranging from email, a telephone number, WhatsApp, or even Apple Messages.

Hold on… Did we mention they also offer free shipping?

2. Casetify

Casetify caters to millions of global users with their dynamic phone case designs and other customizable merchandise.

Similar to LV, Casetify’s online shop is clear, simple, and easy to navigate for anyone seeking out a new and shiny phone case with a special edition Sailor Moon or Harry Potter illustration.

Furthermore, their social media presence is an excellent example of how to leverage online trends, influencers, and other social media tools to boost engagement and sales. 

Several countries have their own dedicated Casetify Instagram accounts that help them better connect with local communities, but the main Casetify Instagram account itself has more than 2.7 million followers featuring hundreds of customers, celebrities, as well as events promoting the Casetify brand.

3. Samsung

Lastly, Samsung continues to provide an excellent customer experience for its community of mobile users and digital fans, rivaling the likes of Apple and Huawei. Their online store can be used as a clear blueprint that already features nearly all the strategies we’ve discussed so far.

To be specific, Samsung’s platform is personalized from the get-go, and shoppers in each country have access to unique pages that are still sometimes similar. Most of their landing pages across the globe have:

• A support page where you can contact them through email and live chat 
• ClubS, a member program for discounts, promos, and more
• An Education Store and Corporate Employee Offers
• Both delivery and store-pick-up options

Apart from that, Samsung has additional pages to their company info, brand identity, and newsroom so both current and potential customers can regularly read up and learn about the Samsung story.

Some last words

Be it the way that you manage your marketing content or how you arrange the home buttons in your online shop, there are many points of your brand’s customer experience you can further tweak and improve along the way.

Each of these points for improvement presents an opportunity to develop stronger relationships with your customers that are built firmly on the remarkable customer experience you provide, hence encouraging more repeat purchases and setting your business up for further growth.

Looking for more resources and insights to grow your e-commerce business? Choco Up can help!

As a global technology and financial services platform, we not only offer revenue-based financing — a type of flexible, zero-equity funding — for digital merchants and startups. We also provide a wide array of how-to articles and business growth solutions for our clients.

Whether you’re just starting out or trying to grow an e-commerce business, Choco Up can always be your trusted funding and growth partner.

In the past, we’ve helped clients like BuzzAR and eBuyNow grow their user base and revenue by 10X and 5X respectively. You can learn more about our funding here.