11 Tips to Improve Customer’s Experience on your Website
Online buyers are now finding more ways of shopping for their favorite products, brands, and manufacturers. Every buyer narrates a different story if you ask about their experiences about an online store. Some may recommend the one that offers low prices, deals, and discounts; while others may suggest high-quality products. In between, there is a significant role of web design and different elements that are keeping customers intact with the store, which they may never recognize. For your assistance, I am sharing some useful tips to improve customers’ experience on your website.
1. Add a search bar
If you are running a multidisciplinary store with lots of products and categories, finding an item may not be less than a challenge for your target audience. Help them easily find their required products with a search bar. Place it in the footer or any other prominent position on the page.
The search bar works by taking input in the form of a word or phrase and bringing results matching the query. The users find products of their choice and proceed to the checkout. It simplifies the entire buyers’ journey as they don’t have to go through several products and scroll through the categories.
2. Play with colors
Color psychology plays an amazing role in user experience as it is a significant form of visual communication. Use the colors to help customers in recognizing different signs, signals, boards, banners, and offers. For example, yellow, pink, and green are good for calls to action like ‘buy now’ or using red for giving warnings. Colors and signs convey more than just words so use them for better understanding.
3. Secured Shopping
Brands and export-quality product manufacturers need to keep their shopping spaces private and confidential. Their products are designed and manufactured for a specific community that’s why their target audience also needs to shop in a private space. If you are also into such a business, you can force customers to login to access the catalog. It filters the traffic and allows only serious users to browse the products. The improved user experience provides a confidential shopping space that results in higher conversions.
4. Allow Live Chat
Your potential customers may have several questions to ask, but the time-consuming mechanism of sending an email or calling the support group may stop them from doing so. Simplify customer support with a live chat feature.
There are different ways of implementing chat features, which depend on budget. You can start with a basic live chat option that works with pre-programmed messages and replies. It can be updated with support agents or backed by artificial intelligence for real-like communication.
5. Optimize page loading speed
Fast page loading is significant for providing a hassle-free user experience. Internet users are quite happy to explore more options if your website is not loading properly in their browsers. If it is slow or lagging, the users may quickly click the back button or move to another tab for more options that are competitors. In other words, it is the poor page loading speed that is diverting your potential customers from competitors. Ask your web developer to optimize your website for better speed and performance along with mobile-friendliness.
6. Ensure faster checkout
The difficulty in the checkout is among the main culprits of cart abandonments and declined sales. Revamp the checkout page with a minimalist design, simple options, and quick ordering to deliver a matchless customer experience.
The default checkout page comprises multiple steps that acquire information in parts. It only moves further if one set of data is provided. It consumes a lot of time between the multiple steps. The customers may lose the data they enter if the internet disconnects.
To fix the issue, you can transform the conventional checkout into one page where customers can fill in all the details at once and place the order. To further improve the user experience, you can remove or modify different fields of the checkout to make the design simple and relevant. Take the information you need to process the order and hide irrelevant fields.
7. Collect and display reviews
Happy customers often do not bother to leave positive remarks about your product or services, or they may simply forget to do so. Their experience matters the most in the purchase decisions of new or potential customers.
Encourage your customers to share a few words about your business and display them with the product or service they consumed. You can automate the process with different extensions and applications. Giveaway discount coupons and vouchers to ensure they leave reviews, which may simplify the shopping experience for the upcoming buyers.
8. Add multiple payment options
Customers who are unable to find a payment option they are comfortable paying leave the website with the thought of trying other stores. The way every customer selects a different kind of product, they do have preferences for the payment methods. Some may like to pay through credit card; others may like to use digital wallets or prefer to have cash on delivery.
Keep every aspect of payment in mind and add multiple ways of receiving payments. Additionally, you may also need to think about the local and global payment gateways. If you are running a multiregional store, consider whether the payment options you offer work across the borders or not.
9. Personalized content
Customers know a lot about the product by the time they reach its landing page. They have gone through reviews, comparisons, feature matches, and price differences. Now, on the product page, they are looking for a quick summary with a few features in bullet points to form a decision.
Writing huge paragraphs may not help them a lot. Use the space for short and crisp content that communicates more in the limited space. Summarize the entire product in a few sentences, and explain the product below the scroll so that they can read if interested.
10. High-quality product photography
Online buyers want a clear picture of a product as they can experience it in the physical world. Some products are difficult to explain in a usual image. For example, the fabric quality and stitch of a product need high-definition photographs so that customers can have a close look despite browsing it from miles away.
To provide an exceptional customer experience, you need to allocate budgets for professional photography. You can provide a 360-degree view by covering the products from different angles.
11. Free Shipping
Spending a penny on shipping seems to be as huge as thousand bucks to the online consumers. They have gone through the price comparisons and made up their minds, but they are still reluctant to pay for the shipping charges as it seems to be an extra cost.
You can simplify shopping by allowing free shipping. There are tools to automate free shipping offers if you set the rules and conditions. For example, you can display free shipping bar on a specific product or cart amount. In pursuit of getting free shipping, customers would like to add more products to the cart or increase the item quantity.
Final words
Apart from reviewing and implementing some of the useful tips I have discussed in this post, you can strengthen your research and observation as well. Use your website as a consumer or let an unknown person place an order on your website to review the activity as a user experience audit and quality assurance. You may find bottlenecks in buyers’ journeys that may be specific to your web design or business. If you find it so, please don’t forget to share it with us too.