A successful business runs on many wheels. It might have high-quality products, affordable pricing, a top-notch marketing team, and more. Yet, it still might lose customers if it cannot provide a great experience to its users.
Brands have evolved when it comes to attracting customers, but so have the customers. They are aware of their preferences and needs and open to exploring other options at the slightest inconvenience. In other words, having a better product or being a more prominent brand is no more a crowd-puller in today’s business landscape.
However, suppose you can provide your customers with an unforgettable experience. In that case, the chances of attracting more users or retaining them become convenient. Simply put, the impression that you create of your brand to your customer is defined as customer experience. It lasts throughout their buying journey – and beyond.
To truly analyse your customer experience, ask yourself these questions:
- Am I giving them a great experience before the sale?
- Am I giving them a great experience immediately after the sale?
- Am I giving them a great experience in the long term?
We’ll dive into each of these stages in the customer journey and show you ways in which you can make your customers truly feel appreciated.
Before the Sale
Get to know your customers
Yes, this is possible. Customers don’t need to have purchased from you yet for you to be able to have an idea of their behaviour, what they like, what they need, or how you can help them. Using innovative technology like Octane AI, you can interact and engage with your customers as soon as they walk in the door, and make them feel at home. Octane AI powers conversational quizzes on online stores that ask visitors questions regarding their needs, wants, preferences and problems that need to be solved in order to recommend personalised products and content that leads to sales and help you create more targeted and effective emails. This is an incredibly effective way of making your customers feel valued and important before they’ve even had the chance to peruse through your store and gets your relationship off to a good start.
Leverage the power of VideoWise
Ever heard of shoppable videos? Then you might know of our first-class partner, VideoWise. This robust app takes visitors on an enticing visual journey by leveraging videos from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo or uploads and transforming them into high-converting shoppable videos. Nowadays, the ease of online shopping is what appeals most to customers and VideoWise saves shoppers time searching for & looking at products in online stores by bringing a virtual shopping experience straight to them as if they were standing in your store. Thanks to integrations with platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you can pull videos from either or all of these apps and use them to better explain products to customers, provide social proof, and ultimately increase your revenue!
Restore your customers’ Syte
Building strong connections with customers has never been easier thanks to Syte, a visual AI platform for the retail and eCommerce industries. Syte makes it easy and interactive for mobile shoppers to discover new products by using prime page real estate to display the most relevant product recommendations, all in a shoppable story format. Through shoppers uploading a single picture, they can find similar items in your brand’s inventory, pick the one they want, and make it theirs! Before your customers have even made a purchase, you’ll have managed to take them on an entire journey of discovery, giving them the keys to access your store and pick from items especially recommended to them. What better way to make your customers want to shop with you!
Immediately After the Sale
The experience your customers have with your business doesn’t stop once they make a purchase. What comes next is similarly important if you want to secure future sales and maximise the revenue you gain per customer and we have a few ways for you to do that.
Nurture your customers using Klaviyo
To understand why a customer’s post-purchase journey is so important, you’ll need to step into their shoes. These days, your target markets are overloaded with choices and have access to countless buying options. In such an environment, it’s not just the products that are likely to sway the consumer – the service they receive is also of the utmost importance.
After your customer has made a purchase, they will be expecting to be kept in the loop. Bear in mind that they have just parted with money and personal information to buy your product. So, it’s important you keep them informed and let them know that your company is on hand to deal with any issues relating to their purchase. Enter Klaviyo.
Beyond the more practical aspects of the post-purchase customer journey, Klaviyo empowers merchants to go the extra mile. Using well-targeted, well-timed email flows, you can give your target markets an incentive to shop with you again, build up trust and keep your company at the forefront of their mind.
There are a few things you can do to improve the post-purchase journey by leveraging the power of Klaviyo’s personalisation abilities such as:
- Thank you emails
- Shipping confirmation emails
- Review request emails
- Replenishment & restocking emails
- Product recommendation and cross-selling emails
- Winback emails
Retaining your customers is likely one of your top goals as an online seller, and keeping them coming back for more is a full-time job. However, by creating a great post-purchase email series, you can nurture your relationship with them, and restart the customer journey long before they’re aware they want to purchase again.
Shopify POS
When customers have peace of mind with a clear returns and exchanges policy, they’re often more likely to make a purchase. You may not be aware, but a large majority of online shoppers review a retailer’s return policy and check the policy details before ever making a purchase. So, whether a product is the wrong size, colour, or didn’t arrive on time, a streamlined returns and exchanges process is key to creating a good customer experience.
That means making sure that shoppers can easily exchange products when they aren’t satisfied. And the Returns & Exchanges feature for Shopify POS helps store owners and their staff seamlessly process these transactions — which means quick and easy returns or exchanges for customers.
In addition to keeping these transactions hassle-free, the new feature gives store owners the ability to accept online returns in-person. In-store returns and exchanges for online orders provide an added level of convenience and a great opportunity to connect with your customers.
Customers don’t need to worry about return labels or pay expensive shipping fees to return an item they purchased online. This means you can provide customers with a better return experience than many major national retailers.
The Long-Term Experience
Rewards for Loyalty
If you’re looking to drive sales and boost your customers lifetime value, loyalty programmes are a perfect and effective way to do just that. It may seem like all loyalty programmes do to achieve this is through rewarding customers, but underneath all that, there is a connection being forged between brand and customer that builds commitment through repeat behaviour. It also reinforces a strong sense of value on your part, by treating your customers in a way that makes them feel special and important to you.
Enter LoyaltyLion.
LoyaltyLion is a data-driven loyalty and rewards platform that powers ecommerce growth. Using this app, your online store can merge with a specialised loyalty program that incorporates real-time insights to help you create memorable experiences for your customers that keep them coming back. This doesn’t only have to be confined to your loyalty program alone, but can extend over into all your marketing activities and be used to further personalise customers’ journeys with your brand.
Using this robust platform, you can create a loyalty program that rewards customers by way of tiers. Every time customers reach new levels, they unlock greater rewards. This type of program provides customers with an incentive to continue shopping with you and in doing so, propels your store’s revenue flow. You can also take advantage of LoyaltyLion’s comprehensive features to design numerous program ideas using A/B testing in creating unique and engaging experiences for your buyers. Proven to increase retention and spending, LoyaltyLion is trusted by thousands of fast-growth ecommerce merchants worldwide.
Get that trust
It's essential that a company can prove that its brand is a trusted one, and one way that businesses can achieve this is through the incorporation of reviews, showing other potential customers how happy other buyers have been since purchasing from your store. Reviews have the power to influence a customer’s decisions and increase your credibility.
REVIEWS.io is the perfect choice for displaying reviews on your Shopify store and gaining a nod of approval from site visitors. And, because this platform is also a Google licensed review partner, you have the power to increase your store’s visibility on Google, which is what you want to do since a large majority of consumers check online Google reviews before visiting a business’s store, so checking this box is a must as a Shopify merchant.
The app allows customers to leave all sorts of reviews, including video reviews and the ability to review the company as a whole or an individual product. Customers can also review via SMS, which has shown to be a more popular way of giving their two cents as opposed to email thanks to its quick and easy convenience. Another reason we love REVIEWS.io is its ability to drive sales by helping Shopify merchants to focus on specific demographics. By gaining local reviews, your brand can build a stellar reputation in your area, and surpass your competitors.
Showcase your brand to all your potential buyers using REVIEWS.io and give other customers the chance to build a genuine relationship with your brand.
Here’s your plan
Enriching the customer journey means paying attention to your customers from beginning to end – and then some. And it’s not as easy as it looks. It is a relationship just as important as any other, and like all relationships, you are required to give your time, effort and energy to make it work. In making sure you can create the ultimate customer journey, try and check these 3 points:
- Which stage are you weakest at?
- Create 3 ideas
- Test. Fix it. Test. Fix it.
If you’ve done that and you still don’t feel like you’re doing as best a job as you can, why not give us a call and let us pour new life into your customer experience so that you have one less thing to worry about?
Published: July 21 2022
