In this article, we’ll share with you 5 ways you can improve your ecommerce customer experience in 2024.
You’ve heard the phrase “the customer is always right,” but when it comes to your online store, the customer doesn’t always tell you what they’re thinking or feeling when considering a purchase.
📈 According to Emplifi, 49% of consumers have left a brand in the past year due to poor customer experience.
When a potential customer visits your store, you don’t see their facial expressions or body language (like you would with a retail store), and you certainly don’t see them leave. It’s also much harder to gain feedback from these potential customers because might not return.
So if you want to encourage more loyal customers and improve sales significantly, creating a great customer experience for your online store must be a priority.
We’ll go through each of our 5 tips in a moment, but first, we need to get one thing straight – what is ecommerce customer experience in the first place?
What is ecommerce customer experience?
Ecommerce customer experience is the experience your customer has of your ecommerce brand on and off your actual ecommerce store.
For example, when visiting your ecommerce website, customers will experience it by clicking on links, looking at products, and potentially buying from you. How they go about this is usually dictated by your website design, navigation, features, and more.
Essentially, no matter if it’s intentional or not, you create an ecommerce experience within your store. Once that guides a customer from landing on the homepage or shop page of your ecommerce site to the checkout.
This is called the customer journey, and it’s well worth ecommerce companies improving this with some of the techniques we’ll list below.
This also includes the experience you give potential customers away from your online store. From your social media posts to your customer emails. All of which contribute to your customer’s digital experience of your business.
Okay, so now we know what it is, let’s consider why it’s so important.
Why is ecommerce user experience important?
A good ecommerce customer experience strategy will hugely impact your online store’s sales and customer loyalty.
By improving the customer’s journey from landing on your site through to checkout, you’ll ensure you won’t lose precious new customers along the way.
You’ll have removed barriers, made browsing your store simple, helped them find what they’re looking for, and made buying from you a no-brainer.
With all this in place, customers will not only keep coming back (because you have great customer retention), but they’ll also help spread the word.
To achieve all this, though, there are some key things you’ll need to do as an online retailer to improve the customer experience of your store. We’ll go through each of these below.
5 ways to improve your ecommerce customer experience
We know improving your ecommerce customer experience is an absolute must for your ecommerce business. So let’s take a look at some of the key areas of your store you can improve to boost it.
1. Improve your checkout process to reduce cart abandonment
Let’s start with the checkout flow, because by improving this part of your store, you’ll make a huge, positive impact on your sales.
The main goal of your checkout is to lead people to complete their purchases. So if there’s anything on the checkout page that distracts them from this goal, you lose potential sales by inviting them to click away.
According to a Baymard Institute survey, there are 6 primary reasons why customers say they abandon their checkout:
- High delivery fees
- Customers have to create an account
- Slow delivery times
- Lack of trust
- Complicated/overwhelming checkout
- Lack of relevant payment options (including credit card, PayPal, and more)
These reasons alone are worth making sure your checkout process is up to scratch. If you see your store in any of these, or you know you’re losing sales due to checkout/cart abandonment, improving your checkout should be a priority.
👋 Want to see what other important metrics you should be tracking in your ecommerce store? Read our ecommerce metrics guide.
How to improve your checkout process
The good news is, using optimization and improving your checkout doesn’t need to be a complicated process. With a WordPress plugin, you can get it done in just a few clicks.
Specifically, we recommend Flux Checkout for WooCommerce.
Flux Checkout simplifies the checkout process by creating a multi-step checkout. The layout is easy for customers to understand, distraction-free, and super fast – helping them checkout easily.
Flux reduces the number of fields customers need to enter while giving the store owner everything they need to fulfill the order. It uses address autocomplete, which converts your multiple lengthy address lookup fields into a single field.
By getting rid of the excess and speeding your checkout up, Flux will effortlessly reduce cart abandonment with a better checkout experience.
Flux Checkout for WooCommerce
Prevent abandoned carts with a slick multi-step checkout experience, designed for your customer’s device.
2. Improve your product descriptions to increase conversion rates
So often, product descriptions are long, hard to read, and don’t tell customers why they should buy from you.
In this example, the cleaner’s features are written, but none of them answer the buyer’s concerns. It’s a pretty basic product description.
Above is a description of a similar product. Let’s take a look at the difference.
In this example, the description is written in the customer’s voice, and their concerns have been answered. This company knows their customer inside-out and has no problem talking directly to them.
We also recommend breaking up product descriptions with headings, bullet points, and short sentences to capture customers’ attention while they skim your product pages.
To improve customer satisfaction and improve their online shopping experience, address your customers’ needs and concerns.
Take a look at your existing product descriptions and ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you addressed customer concerns and pain points?
- Are you talking directly to and in the voice of your customer?
- If a customer skimmed the page – would they see the most important information at a glance?
Then re-write them while putting your customer first.
3. Include product recommendations to help customers find products relevant to them
You may think that product recommendations are just for you, the store owner. After all, they make you more sales. But, product recommendations make a huge difference for customers trying to find products in-store.
📈 In fact, according to Accenture, 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.
If you can give customers a personalized experience by showing them related products and additional products via upsells and cross-sells, you’ll make a huge impact on sales.
These product recommendations can be at every point in your customer’s journey – hitting all the touchpoints, including:
- On the product page, in the form of a Frequently Bought Together section.
- On the product page with grouped products or bundled products.
- After the customer adds a product to their shopping cart in the form of a cross-sell popup.
- At the checkout, with personalized recommendations.
- Post-purchase with an offer customers can add to their order with one click.
How to add product recommendations to your ecommerce store
Adding these highly effective recommendation techniques doesn’t have to be complicated.
With the WordPress plugin, Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce, you can add these in just a few clicks.
You’ll be able to personalize them depending on the product customers are looking at or have in their cart and boost sales as a result.
Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce
Use proven cross-selling techniques to increase the average order value of your store.
4. Encourage customer loyalty with wishlists
Sometimes, a customer will visit your site, like what they see but decide not to make a purchase.
This could happen for a variety of reasons, including:
- They may not be ready to commit.
- They might not have the money right now.
- They might feel the need to do more research.
These situations are hard to control. Without actual contact with a potential customer, they may decide to leave your site and never return.
We don’t want this to happen.
If a customer has decided they’re not ready to purchase, our new goal is to give them a reason to return and purchase later. In this case, by adding wishlists to your online store.
By adding wishlists to your online store, you’ll be able to:
- Keep customers coming back to buy items they’re unsure of or buy regularly.
- Reach more people as they share their lists with friends and family via referrals.
- Create a connection to your site for special occasions like weddings, birthdays, or Christmas.
- Help you gauge the popularity of your store’s products by using metrics. Allowing you to set up future promotions, adjust stock levels, and more.
How to add wishlists to your ecommerce store
Adding wishlists to your online store may seem like a bit of an undertaking, but it can actually be done in just a few simple steps.
In this case, we recommend the WordPress plugin, Wishlists for WooCommerce.
With Wishlists for WooCommerce, you’ll be able to add wishlists to your WooCommerce store in just a few clicks.
Customers will be able to create their own personalized wishlists that they can keep private, make public, or share with friends and family.
Wishlists for WooCommerce
Increase sales, conversions, and visitors with multiple Wishlists for WooCommerce.
5. Make your product images a priority
The product images in your ecommerce store set customer expectations. Not only do they demonstrate your products to a person who cannot physically hold or touch them, but they also act as a way to convince customers to buy.
Customers tend to look at product images before the words in your online store. So if your product images aren’t appealing, you may lose customers before they even read the product name or product description.
We don’t want this to happen, so it’s time to make your product images high-quality and appealing.
Aside from the product images themselves, how they’re displayed in your store is also important. When customers visit your product pages, they’re usually presented with a product image gallery. If this gallery is easy to use and browse through, customers will have a better experience.
This includes being able to:
- Zoom in on images close enough to see the details.
- Cycle through the images in the gallery with ease.
- See different images depending on the product variation or option they’ve selected.
- Use this gallery and all its functionality on their mobile device.
- Include product videos in the gallery and more.
If your product gallery doesn’t do all of these things, then your customer’s experience may be suffering. So let’s improve it.
How to upgrade your product image gallery
Improving your product image gallery needn’t be complicated. With the WordPress plugin WooThumbs for WooCommerce, you’ll be able to do it in just a few steps.
This easy-to-use plugin will upgrade the default WooCommerce product page gallery into one that’s sleek, fast, and incredibly easy to use.
Customers expect online stores to have the most user-friendly and modern features possible. So by upgrading your product gallery with WooThumbs, you’ll meet their expectations and boost sales while you’re at it.
WooThumbs for WooCommerce
Enable zoom, sliders, video, fullscreen, multiple images per variation, and customisable layout options for your product imagery.
Improve your ecommerce customer experience today
So there we have it, 5 ways to improve your ecommerce customer experience. By implementing the techniques above, you’ll make a huge impact on your store’s sales and customer loyalty.
It might sound like a lot of work, so how can you achieve all of these results? The best way to do this effectively is with our Iconic Conversions Bundle.
WooCommerce Conversions Bundle
Increase your WooCommerce store’s conversion rate and watch your revenue skyrocket. Includes Sales Booster, Flux Checkout, and WooThumbs.
The Conversions Bundle comes with our powerful plugins Flux Checkout, Sales Booster, and WooThumbs. Buying the Bundle will save you 40% and help you address most of these issues.
But even better, our ‘All Access Pass’ will get you all of our WooCommerce plugins so you can create the most intuitive and conversion-oriented ecommerce experience on your website today.
All Access Club
Get all 14 Iconic plugins plus every plugin we make in the future. Increase conversions, optimize your store, and get access to special discounts and offers.
The WooCommerce extensions mentioned in this guide:
- Flux Checkout for WooCommerce – Simplifies the checkout process and provides a user-friendly experience.
- Iconic Sales Booster – Creates lucrative offers for customers throughout the buying process.
- Wishlists for WooCommerce – Keep customers coming back by adding wishlists to your ecommerce store.
- WooThumbs for WooCommerce – Upgrade your product page gallery and watch conversions skyrocket.