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In today’s day and age, e-commerce is becoming an increasingly popular shopping tool. After all, why would you disrupt your day by taking a trip to the mall to shop for a brand new television when you can simply buy one online at the click of a button? Although the number of people buying goods online or in-store changes in accordance with the product, the number of shoppers using e-commerce websites such as Amazon Prime to do their shopping has drastically increased year on year.
Yet, with such a huge company to contend with, how do smaller e-commerce businesses satisfy their customers and retain their profit? Well, here’s the ultimate guide to e-commerce customer satisfaction…
Offer unbeatable customer service
Just because you are choosing to run your business behind a computer screen and away from the general public doesn’t mean your customer service should fail. In fact, offering unbeatable customer service is one of the best ways to retain a solid customer base that will return time and time again, which is hugely important as your profits could increase from 25% to 95% with just a 5% increase in customer retention rate.
Something as simple as placing your contact information (phone number, address and email) on your website is one of the best ways to offer this kind of service, as it’s important your customers know that you are friendly and approachable – rather than a ghost, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. If you want to tick all the boxes, offering personalized email communication through the form of special offers and coupons will also help you to showcase your customer service skills.Create a hassle-free checkout process
Although many people do look through e-commerce sites to simply browse and not spend, it’s your job to try and persuade these potential shoppers to buy your amazing products – rather than simply shop around and ultimately spend their money with a competitor. One of the best ways to do this is to create a quick and easy checkout process that will fill a customer with confidence and satisfaction.
If a customer feels worried or stressed about the checkout process, it could result in them leaving their basket behind and buying elsewhere. By ensuring that you have a hassle-free checkout process and plenty of payment options, you should keep customers happy – and potentially coming back time and time again.
Offer a high-speed website
With so many e-commerce companies to compete with, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd – but it doesn’t have to be impossible. As well as offering a hassle-free checkout process to ensure customers can spend money on your site, it’s also important to offer customers a high-speed website that will serve them well until they do reach the checkout.
Slow and complicated websites can often deter potential customers who get fed up with waiting for pages to load, which is why it’s important to evaluate your web host, run specific speed tests, and increase your user experience with a speedy website. Not only will this affect your e-commerce customer satisfaction, but it will also affect your Google rankings!
Always go above and beyond
E-commerce is an ever-growing business with new and improved companies setting up websites every single day, so it’s important that you satisfy your customers to ensure that they shop with you rather than your competitors. By going above and beyond and offering them little perks here and there, you should be able to give them something many websites do not.
This could be something simple such as offering free returns for items that are damaged or unwanted, an online chat system whereby customers can talk to a customer service assistant, special offer emails for customers who have shopped with you in the past, or even free gifts for customers who spend over a certain amount.
All of these added extras will show your customers that you care about their user experience, and will do everything you can to ensure that they are happy with their purchases.
The world of e-commerce can be a tricky business, but if you know how to satisfy your customers, you should be able to stand out from the crowd and succeed. Do you have any more tips to satisfy customers in e-commerce? Let us know in the comments!
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