When it comes to the eCommerce business, your eCommerce customer journey experience is paramount. Unfortunately, many eCommerce website owners often mistake selling good products on their eCommerce as all they need to attract customers and generate sales. It is during their process of tracking their consumer journey that they would realize that 80% of their customers are abandoning products in carts for months without getting back to them.
It is at this junction that they say asking throbbing questions like:
“What could have made them abandon their carts?”
“Aren’t the products good?”
“Doesn’t the product meet their expectations?”
And many other burning questions.
Many eCommerce website owners do not know how to create an awesome eCommerce customer journey that will prompt their customers to make an effective purchasing decision, which can be heartbreaking. That is why we at Expertrec take it upon ourselves to provide the five ultimate and practical tips that will help you improve your eCommerce customer journey. With this practical guide, you will learn how to enhance your eCommerce customer journey, generate more leads, and skyrocket your sales.
What is the eCommerce customer journey?
The eCommerce customer journey is the stages a customer undergo in an online store. From the moment they become aware of the product until they make a purchase.
Here are the five stages of the customer journey:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Acquisition
- Retention
- Advocacy
A smooth customer journey will have a positive impact on your business. Imagine 50 prospects visiting your site, filling their carts, and making a purchase. You will be happy, won’t you?
On the other hand, a bad eCommerce user journey makes customers visit your online store, abandon their cart, and patronize your competitors.
Custom Search Bar for eCommerce Customer Journey
5 Proven Ways to Improve the eCommerce customer journey
To make your customers fill their carts and make a purchase, which skyrockets your sales, here are the five tips to improve the eCommerce user experience:
1. Make your site mobile-friendly
Your eCommerce website is likely to convert prospects into buying customers when it is user-friendly. Therefore, the UI of your site should be attractive and easy to navigate. To save you the stress of building your eCommerce website from scratch, you can use prebuilt eCommerce website architects like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Wiz.
These website builders have awesome features that you can use to beautify your site. However, each of these platforms has similar features and, at the same time, some unique features. Therefore, you must research which one is best for your business or consult our expert at Expertrec.
Also, imagine you want to buy a product on an online shop, and the page takes 60 or 90 seconds to load. Of course, you’ll stop and try another site, won’t you?
That’s the same with your customers. When they discover that a page takes too much time to load, they bounce or leave quickly. According to the research conducted by BigCommerce in 2021, 53% of customers will leave a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
People’s attention span is very short. If you know the page load time of your website is slow, check your server’s speed and reduce the size of images. Alternatively, you can create a mobile application. When the marketplace was too big and difficult to function properly on mobile devices, Amazon introduced a mobile app in 2011.
Furthermore, many users may wrongly spell the products they are looking for on your website. While this may be their fault, you are the one at the risk of losing money. Hence we recommend using an excellent eCommerce custom search. Lastly, most users tend to forget their addresses, contact numbers, card details, and other personal information, so asking them several times will rip them off, which increases the rate of cart abandonment. To lower this rate:
- Consider using the autofill option.
- Let the transaction process be stress-free.
- Use card payments like MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Apple Pay, Payoneer, etc.
2. Create FOMO & add social proof
Perhaps you’re wondering: “What the hell is FOMO?”
Before you leave this page in annoyance, FOMO is an acronym that means ‘Fear Of Missing Out. So, for example, let’s say you want to buy a product on an eCommerce website, and you see: “Price goes back to $20,000 as of Jan 9”; “There are 50 bags left, so get yours. Now.”
This would quickly spur you to take action because you don’t want to miss the offer. Since we human beings have a first-class degree in procrastination, using FOMO will surely work on your customers.
Moreover, to improve the eCommerce user journey, add social proof. Since we humans are social beings, we tend to buy things when we discover that other persons or friends have purchased that particular thing.
So, show your customers the number of persons that have bought the product; or the positive reviews of people who have bought. For example, “Over 5000+ Americans have bought this lawnmower” or “Daniel, Woods, and 3 of your friends have bought this machine.”
They would make a buying decision because they want to join the bandwagon or don’t want to miss out on what their friends are enjoying. So always include FOMO and social proof on your site, newsletters, and social media copy.
3. Implement up-selling and cross-selling
Upselling and cross-selling is other effective strategy to improve the user journey are up-selling and cross-selling. These two tactics have been tested and have increased the rate of conversion.
Upselling is when you present an upgraded version of the product on your site. Immediately after your customers have put a product into their carts, your site should pop up and show the advanced version of the product. However, showing is not only enough, but also differentiating between the older and newer version. Since human beings love new things, they will go for the upgraded version and buy.
On the other hand, cross-selling is when your site shows similar products to the ones that customers have put into their carts.
For example, Clara needs to buy a school bag from an eCommerce store. As she puts the bag into the online cart, the site pops up similar products she needs, such as notebooks, pens, shoes, and other school-related stuff. If Clara has forgotten or never knew to include notebooks or pens, she would add them to her cart.
You can also send up-sell and cross-sell emails even after they’ve bought many products from your online store.
4. Leverage social media
One of the ways to drive customers to your selling website is through social media. It’s also one factor that increases the revenue of eCommerce websites.
Customers love when an eCommerce site has a page on a social media platform and interacts with customers. This increases the brand’s credibility and makes customers stay committed.
However, before you dominate any social media platform, conduct research to know where your target audience is converging. Is it Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Then, once you know it, dominate it and stick to the rules that guide it.
For example, if it is Instagram, you’ll connect more with your audience through visuals: pictures and videos. While Facebook allows for many words, you should incorporate storytelling to make it engaging.
Unlike Facebook, you must maintain the rule of KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) on Twitter. Keep your text or message short and go straight to the point. You can also add pictures to make customers grasp the message.
Now, here is an important thing to note: you have to be consistent on any social media platform. If you can’t show up every day, get a calendar, and be strategic with each of your posts. Also, always respond to your customers’ questions; it commits them more to your brand and becomes difficult for other competitors to steal them.
5. Incorporate Custom Intelligent Search Bar
Search bars are important for the eCommerce customer journey to help them navigate your website easily. With an excellent eCommerce custom search bar like Expertrec, customers can search through your eStore. The Expertrec search bar is compatible with all eCommerce website architecture, including WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Wiz. Also, in cases where your shoppers don’t get the spelling right, Expertrec intelligent eCommerce search bar will still navigate a way of showing the right result to your shoppers. Plus, it is three times faster than the conventional search bar that comes with may prebuilt eCommerce store. And can easily be configured to beautify your eStore without any lines of code.
Conclusion
So, there you have it! Creating a great eCommerce customer journey will make a positive impact on your business.
If you can give customers an awesome treatment, you will forever win their hearts and make them stay committed to your brand.
Apply the five tips we have highlighted, and you’ll begin to see massive results!
