If you want to improve the ordering experience of your online customers, there are a few important things you should consider. Your website is your opportunity to turn visitors into customers, and just like any physical store, giving them attention and a straightforward way to transact is the chief priority.

From the attractiveness of the landing pages to the ease of paying and the quality of your logistics, all contribute to the experience customers have when ordering from you.

You could have the most desirable products on the market, but if your shop window is not clearly laid out or if you don’t offer a variety of payment options, then customers will go elsewhere.

We will go through 5 of the top ways to improve your customer experience and get more visitors to convert.

5 Ways to Improve Customer Experience:

1. Have an Integrated POS System

Retail in 2021 demands selling on “Omni-Channels”, which refers to the different channels a customer finds your products and transacts with you.

Those channels can be a traditional high street store, concession in a department store, your web store, etc. You want to integrate these channels so that you have one point of sale for all of them.

Point of sale is where a retail transaction is completed, and being able to unify online and in-store transactions into one payment system is better for your business.

Automating this process will simplify your job and give you more time to spend on your customers, leading to a boost in sales. Hence it will improve your customer experience.

2. FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions

80% of the questions that customers ask are about the same things. What’s the price, what is the warranty cover, how long to ship.

These common or “frequently asked” questions can be covered in a dedicated section that lists the answers. Customers are used to navigating to FAQ sections to get information.

So, you need to incorporate one and make sure it has accurate and comprehensive information for the most common questions that keep coming up.

It will save your CS and sales team time and give customers that information upfront which will make their lives a lot easier.

3. Chatbots to Guide the Customer

Chatbots are an easy and low-cost way to enhance the experience on your website. Their use is becoming more popular and rightly so because they have so many benefits.

They use artificial intelligence to respond to customer questions, so you don’t have to have human CS or sales agents online around the clock.

Together with the developer, you programme the map of responses and information you want to present to the customer depending on their actions on the screen.

The simplest example would be a multiple-choice question presented to the customer as they land on your site, do they A. Want to learn about the company? Or do they B. Want to find a particular product. If the customer clicks A, then the about us page and information are presented.

If it’s B, then a product menu is displayed to select the category of products they are interested in. Read more about chatbots here and how they can benefit your website.

4. On-site Search and Menus

Most of your customers arrive at your website through search. Once they arrive, they will likely search within the site, and this is called “on-site search”.

Research from eConsultancy shows that as much as 30% of visitors perform the on-site search, data shows they are twice as likely to purchase.

Having a robust, quick, and clean search engine is key to giving your customers exactly what they are looking for.

Each customer is different in what information they are looking for, so a generic menu will only fulfil a proportion of queries, and the search bar will address the rest of the queries.

Many sites use a free google search bar add-on. It’s cheap, but it is not very sophisticated and will leave your customers frustrated that the search results do not return the most relevant data.

5. Ease of Contact if You need to speak to someone

All of these four features on your website will improve customer experience but sometimes human touch is still required.

There is nothing more infuriating for shoppers than not contacting the company when they need more information. The information they cannot find is often the final piece of information that will convert them into paying customers.

Have a contact form, a phone number, a live chat, or a Twitter account for customers to reach a knowledgeable sales agent for any questions they may still have. This can often make the difference between a sale or an abandoned checkout.

Conclusion

There you have 5 great ways to improve the shopping experience for your online customers.

If visitors find it difficult to navigate your website or find the information they desire, they will quickly bounce and search elsewhere. You’ve worked hard on driving targeted traffic to your site.

Make sure you give them every reason to stay on the site and buy.