4 Easy-To-Implement Actions for a Seamless Customer Experience

Contrary to popular belief, a product is not the sole driver of customer satisfaction in and of itself. There are a host of other factors that contribute to a customer’s decision to buy your product such as its effectiveness and competitive advantage. Of the various factors involved in a customer’s buying decision, are you keeping an eye out for a seamless customer experience? 

With Shippo’s 2021 State of Shipping Report showing that 41% of consumers do at least half of their shopping online, the online customer experience becomes a pivotal part for businesses to prioritize. If your customer doesn’t have a positive experience and tells others about it, you might miss out on future sales. After all, 60% of customers who are new to your product trust reviews from other buyers and acquaintances. 

What is a Seamless Customer Experience?

While customer experience is a broad term that includes many different components such as brand perception and brand awareness, we define a seamless customer experience as the ease with which a buyer can navigate your e-commerce website and/or app to buy a product or service. We also include whether a business adds any value to the customer’s buying experience.

In other words, a seamless customer experience not only includes how easily a customer can navigate your e-commerce website/app, but also how efficiently you’re using your website’s available digital real estate to positively influence your customer.

Why is a Seamless Customer Experience Important?

Customer experience is vital to the success of your product; from the initial Google search to the customer’s review of your product, each step can directly influence your product’s success. While your product may speak for itself, that won’t matter if your customer never ends up purchasing because the journey to the product was slow, confusing, and inefficient. Hence, a product is only as successful as the customer experience of reaching it. 

How Can You Ensure a Seamless Customer Experience?

Shippo’s 2022 E-commerce and Shipping Benchmarks Report highlights four easy-to-implement actions to help you create a seamless customer experience for your e-commerce customers.

(1) Personalize the Customer Journey

Not every product will be a fit for every customer – and that’s OK. But, you should have a clear idea of your ideal customer – and keep them in mind when pitching your product – in order to maximize product/market fit. You can accomplish this by doing market research as well as tailoring your website experience to your ideal buyer.

You’ll want to make sure your brand’s style and tone stay consistent with your customer throughout the buyer’s journey. This means your blogs, product descriptions, and follow-up emails all communicate in a way that resonates with your customer.

By creating a custom experience that resonates with your ideal customers and their particular needs, you separate your brand from the already competitive environment in which you operate. In fact, a study by Hiver shows that 38% of customers agree that the second most annoying thing is receiving robotic auto-responder emails.

So, adapting to – and prioritizing – the changing needs of your customer demonstrates that you both care for them and are up to date with the industry at large. 

(2) Leverage Unused Real Estate

One under-utilized avenue for customer customization and personalization is the package tracking page. Online Customers visit the order tracking page 3.5 times on average per order, allowing businesses to influence the customers more than once when they check-up on their order status. In other words, customers frequent the order tracking page, which, for the most part, is not used for any purpose other than showing the customer’s order progress. Why not add more value to your customer with the addition of one of the following: 

• Relevant accessories or products 
• Additional discounts or promotions
• Marketing material for other relevant products
• Comparison of your product to similar competitive products

As an online e-commerce business, it’s important for you to keep the customer interested and within your product sphere. Other important ways to use the tracking page more effectively include promoting exclusive opportunities and adding features such as a reply-to email address to foster customer support. By adding avenues that enrich the customer’s buying experience, you are enabling them to make smarter decisions from a single page. Moreover, you’re maximizing digital space on your website or application, which gives you more bang for your buck. 

(3) Optimize Your Website 

Before you can ever think about leveraging unused real estate, make sure your existing e-commerce site is well optimized for oncoming traffic. According to eastsideco.com, slow site load speeds can prevent 79% of customers from returning to your site. Customers want to get to their product as quickly as possible, so much so that a delay of even a single second could reduce conversions by 7%.

Site speed notwithstanding, it’s equally important to consider the opportunity each customer creates for your business. Nowadays, data is the name of the game, and with each visit on your website you can analyze your customers’ choices, buying patterns, preferences and so on. Each of these factors can inform changes that further enrich the customer experience on your website. 

For instance, if you observe that a certain product or service on your website receives more traffic, promote that particular product or service more. Similarly, if you notice that customers shy away from a specific product or service, reconsider its place in your inventory – or consider re-imagining it to better suit your ideal customers’ needs.

(4) Automate Your Processes

An added way to optimize your e-commerce business is to automate the shipping process. The last thing you want as a growing business is to get a bad reputation because you made an easily avoidable error on someone’s order. Due to increased competition in almost every industry, a bad review can have a ripple effect across your whole business. 

To prevent human error and speed up processes, use Shippo’s automation, such as the ability to save default preferences and use “If-Then” rules, to save your time and keep up with demand. For instance, if you use Shippo to optimize product shipping, anyone who is fulfilling those orders can instantly print the label because you’ve already established all the automation rules. 

Automation not only saves time because you can ship out your products more quickly, but eliminating human errors also saves you a lot of hassle, especially during peak season. 

With peak season just around the corner, a seamless customer experience will ensure that both you and your customers have a smooth time with orders. And once peak season is over, the above recommendations still apply to your business because they integrate with your everyday workflow, making everyone’s lives easier.

To learn more tips on how to create a better experience for your customers as well as optimize your operations and see where your business stacks up with the overall e-commerce industry, be sure to download a free copy of our 2022 E-commerce and Shipping Benchmarks Report.