Winning customers online is more competitive than ever. While ecommerce overall keeps growing at a healthy pace, the number of companies rushing to get a piece of the opportunity is growing just as fast, if not faster. Therefore, you need every advantage you can get.

The key to successfully winning more business online requires an end-to-end ecommerce experience that focuses on customers and their convenience. Whether your business is centered on one-time sales or a subscription model, generating customer loyalty through good experiences is now essential. This means making sure that your customers have an excellent experience with every aspect of your online business from shopping to checkout to post-sales support.

The Case for Investing in an Outstanding Customer Experience

An excellent customer experience with your online store not only secures the sale, it also helps your future revenue though repeat sales, referrals, or reduced subscription churn.

For one-time sale businesses, customers that report having the best experience spend 140% more than those who rate their experience as bad. Further, according to Neilson, if those customers that have a really good experience refer others, those new shoppers are four times more likely to buy.

For subscription companies, customers that rate their experience with a company as poor only have a 43% chance of being a customer a year later. In contrast, subscribers that rate their experience the highest possible are likely to remain loyal customers for up to 6 years. This has a huge impact on customer lifetime value and long-term revenue.

Touchpoints Leading to a Sale

There’s no one-size fits all in ecommerce. You need to tailor your touchpoints for your particular target customer segment. This includes your content, visuals and navigation. Test which options convert best for your business, but here are a few universal elements of a good online customer experience.

• Fast Load Times: Forty percent say they will abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load and every second added to a loading time can decrease conversions by 7%.
• A Seamless Branded Experience: This means having all your pages, including your cart page, consistent in appearance and optimized for mobile devices to reduce hesitation or anxiety to buy.
• An Easy-to-Navigate Shopping and Checkout Experience: Related to fast loading times, it needs to be easy for your customers to find what they are looking for and check out. Ensure all the information your customers need like reviews and multiple payment options are available and eliminate any unnecessary steps.

Fostering Loyalty

An initial purchase is just the beginning. It is just as important that a customer’s experience be great after their purchase. Between chargebacks, negative reviews and support calls, unhappy customers are very costly. Make sure your customers have access to your product as quickly as possible and have all the support they need to be successful with it.

You also need to be responsive to what they want whether it’s to upgrade or downgrade, look up their order or access billing support.

How to Optimize a Seamless, Personalized Journey

From your customer’s first encounter with your company through to purchase and after purchase, you need to stay on top of what they expect from you. Shoppers have a lot of choice so anything that is not optimized can cost your business a lot of missed revenue. This means tracking customer feedback and behavior and well as being transparent and responsive.

There are a lots of elements that go into a great customer experience, an-end-to-end ecommerce platform with customizable cart pages, secure payment processing, billing support and expert advice on customer experience best practices is a must to streamline the process. The result is better customer experiences, increased conversions and more repeat customers.