Customer Experience: The Key to every successful E-Commerce

A satisfied customer returns, recommends, and leaves valuable reviews. Learn how customer experience can make a difference in your online sales.

“The priority of every online store is to deliver the best possible customer experience,” said Elías Manopla, founder and general manager of the online store development and marketing agency Simplify in Panama.

The consumer experience includes a customer’s interactions with a brand from the moment they discover it to when they make a purchase and become loyal. “That experience should be as friendly and simple as possible because, at the end of the day, that’s what often determines whether a customer buys or not,” he added. Additionally, it should extend across all stages of the customer lifecycle— the journey consumers take to engage with brands and become customers.

According to the business magazine Forbes, these stages are: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.

Reach: grab attention for your online store

In the first stage, customers discover the brand through ads or their own research. “An online store alone won’t necessarily achieve the expected results. Hence, the importance of marketing and investing in attracting and retaining customers,” Manopla explained.

To expand their reach, e-commerce businesses can use search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and paid social media campaigns.

Manopla explained that SEO enhances the online store’s content so search engines can easily find it and display it in search results. Meanwhile, SEM involves paying to have the store featured among the top results on Google and other search engines. Another option is to run paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

All these efforts help increase brand awareness and draw more user traffic to the store. “That’s when they arrive at the brand’s website and begin evaluating the product,” he said.

Acquisition: the magic of making the first purchase

At this stage, users begin interacting with the brand by browsing the online store, reading product descriptions, reviewing answers to frequently asked questions, and evaluating shipping options, payment methods, and return policies. According to Forbes, the goal here is to “establish a communication channel with the customer, providing information, live support, and offers to maintain their interest in the brand.”

Having a user-friendly, easy-to-navigate website with clear and complete information is essential for a positive experience. “When the customer — just before deciding to make a purchase — wonders how long it will take for the product to arrive or if they can return it, and can’t find any visible answers, there’s a serious problem with the store’s effectiveness,” Manopla stated. Without clear answers, users may leave the page and never return.

Conversion: it all boils down to the small details

This happens when a user becomes a paying customer. “Before that purchase conversion, there are other important steps, such as subscribing to your email marketing list,” the expert pointed out. “When a customer visits your website and doesn’t make a purchase but leaves their email address to receive information, discounts, or promotions, you’re turning an anonymous visitor into a recognizable prospect to whom you can send direct messages.” He added that these messages can encourage purchases when used properly to build trust and avoid being seen as spam.

“The customer experience on the website directly influences conversion: it should be easy, clear, and inspire trust,” he said. “A good product and price, a clear message, the promise of value and delivery, and the shipping cost-all of this impact conversion.” Manopla emphasized the importance of offering competitively priced delivery options. “We must take into account that shipping costs are often one of the main reasons why a user abandons a purchase,” he warned. That’s why some businesses cover shipping costs when a customer spends more than a certain amount.

He also emphasized the importance of data in evaluating customer experience. “One of e-commerce’s benefits is that every action is measurable,” Manopla said.

There are tools, such as Google Analytics, that allow you to monitor website performance and gather information about visitors to identify patterns and trends. Another example is the e-commerce platform Shopify, which enables merchants to create and customize their online stores by collecting data on visit numbers, conversion rates, average spending per customer per transaction, and the number of customers who return after their first purchase. These metrics help you assess business performance and make informed decisions.

Retention: how to encourage your customers to return repeatedly

It involves turning a one-time purchase into a long-term relationship. “The best channel for retention is email marketing,” Manopla said. This means sending emails about new products, special offers, and promotions to keep the brand in mind and encourage customers to come back. “Between 30% and 40% of an e-commerce’s revenue typically comes from email marketing,” he stated.

Other retention strategies include sending text messages (SMS) or using WhatsApp. The expert mentioned tools such as Klaviyo and Revi, which help send automated messages to recover customers who left items in their carts and didn’t complete their purchases.

Loyalty: a community that loves your brand

This occurs when a consumer becomes a regular customer of the brand and even recommends it to others. To foster this loyalty, there are programs that provide specific benefits to returning customers, such as earning points or receiving extra discounts. “Loyalty programs seal that relationship with an additional benefit because, if the customer earns points, they will prefer to spend them with you rather than try another brand,” Manopla said.

These programs help create a top-notch customer experience and build lasting customer relationships.

 

 

This content was written and/or produced by the GFR Media BrandStudio team for Popular.

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