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8 Ways Your Online Store Can Create Fantastic Customer Experiences
You're sitting in front of your computer, and you've found some furniture you really love. Or perhaps it's a new computer, some gourmet coffee, or a small trinket that you forgot to buy while you were on vacation. Online shopping has become so ingrained in daily life that the miraculous convenience of it seems mundane.
What does it take to spark wonder in online shoppers these days? The bar is certainly higher than it used to be. We at Fulfillrite believe you can still create fantastic customer experiences, and indeed, it's not even particularly hard to do!
Our whole business is based on shipping items. We do this for eCommerce, crowdfunding campaigns, and big one-off projects. We've seen a lot of items come and go through our warehouse (hopefully including yours someday). With this in mind, we'd like to share some tricks of the trade that we've seen our savviest clients using. They really know how to craft fantastic experiences for their customers!
1. Personalize Your Store
Digital communication can feel cold and sterile. We're biologically-driven creatures and some deep part of us doesn' recognize that the person on the other side of the screen is a person. That's why personalization is so valuable in online store design!
Dale Carnegie once famously said "a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language." There's a reason entire articles are written on how to personalize automated emails. There is a reason while YouTube keeps you watching videos endlessly with customized suggestions. Amazon is unbelievably good at upselling products through recommendations.
Every step you take to personalize your online store says, to the user, "You're special" That goes a long way in crafting fantastic customer services. Some ways you can do this include:
- Using people's first names in email subject lines
- Allowing users to create wish lists
- Picking a good recommendation plugin to upsell items
- Sending "happy birthday" emails
2. Use Amazing Product Photos
Let's be honest - anyone who has ever run an online store will not be even slightly surprised by that statistic. Amazing photos can take a store from looking like a mom-and-pop shop to a polished enterprise. In a world in which high-quality website templates are available to everyone, quality photography is a key differentiator.
Even deeper than that, photos help ground online shopping in reality. They provide a sensory experience that you would otherwise have to go to a physical store to get. In fact, good photos can even look better than real life - sharper colors and more flattering angles. This can take online shopping from being a cold and sterile experience to being a glamorous one, like flipping through a fashionable magazine.
Our actionable tip? Hire a photographer! If you can' find somebody who takes product photos, find a wedding photographer - they know how to capture glamor.
3. Describe Your Products in Detail
You know what I can't stand? Product pages that don't describe the product very well! This is not just some weird quirk of mine either - "98% of shoppers have been dissuaded from completing a purchase because of incomplete or incorrect content"
As hard as it is to get your mind around a statistic that uses the phrase "98% of shoppers," it's harder to still to understand why product pages are often incomplete and wrong. For many people, creating a product page is a hassle. Don't treat it like a hassle, though - treat it like a huge opportunity to increase your store's conversion rate!
A little polish goes a long way. If you need help writing great product pages, check out this post.
4. Fulfill Orders Quickly and On-Time
It's no secret that people expect online orders to show up faster than ever. After all, Amazon has been offering free two-day shipping for years. There's talk of one-day shipping in the near future, too. For better or worse, we all have to compete with the giant. It's unavoidable, especially considering that 63% of online shoppers expect three-day delivery.
At Fulfillrite, our entire business is based on shipping packages quickly and intact. Nothing can ruin the customer experience quite like a broken item or a late shipment. No amount of beautiful online website design can fix that.
Our tip to you is simple: outsource fulfillment. It's easier, more reliable, and sometimes even cheaper to have a third party ship your orders for you. We'd love to help you get started with that.
5. Implement a Generous Return Policy
People return items…a lot. Far more than you'd expect, with return rates often being 20% or higher in eCommerce. No matter how perfect your order fulfillment process may be, there are simple, unavoidable facts that you have to face when you're shipping items online.
Items change hands a lot during shipping. That means a lot of items, particularly fragile ones, break. There are ways to reduce the frequency of breakages, but you can never drop it down to zero.
Furthermore, it's hard to gauge certain characteristics of products when shopping online. It's easy to order the wrong size shirt or curtains that look like they're a different shade of blue in person. As such, even well-described, well-photographed products have to be returned as well.
Our advice to you is simple: make returns easy to build trust in your brand. As many as 88% of customers say that ease of product returns makes a difference in where they shop. To make returns difficult is to leave money on the table.
6. Customize Your Packaging
If you're an avid reader of Packwire's blog, it's no surprise to you that a custom folding box can make a big difference in customer experience. After all, when items show up in plain brown boxes, it's hard to really appreciate the experience of receiving them! A company can easily elevate their brand with a custom shipping box or branded mailer box packaging for unique product presentation.
Savvy business owners have realized that we live in a world of unboxing videos. We live in a world of Instagram photos and Snapchat stories. Pretty packaging drives people wild and it's one of the most effective levers for creating an amazing customer experience.
Our advice to you on customizing packaging is…well…listen to Packwire! They've got a whole bunch of posts on the subject with great advice, including:
- Custom branded Packaging in eCommerce
- A Quick Guide to Packaging Design
- Words on the Box: Copywriting and Packaging Design
7. Add Goodies and Extra Marketing Materials to the Box
Nothing can bring delight quite like putting a few extra goodies in the box. Goodies can include something as simple as a coupon, as personal as a handwritten note, or as complex as the swag you'd give away at a trade show. The point is, pleasant surprises make for fantastic customer experiences!
Not only do extra items in the box delight your customers, they also give you a chance to upsell. It's not as hard to do this as you think, either. Fulfillment centers like our own can pack additional items and insert marketing materials for a marginal extra fee.
8. Compete on Quality, Not on Price
If you're paying close attention to the tips above, you'll notice that the majority of them coalesce around a common theme. If you are in the business of creating fantastic customer experiences, you are probably competing on quality and not price. Remember: that's quality in the eyes of your customers based on their unique desires - not necessarily some imagined "objective" best!
People are complex. We're not always seeking the cheapest option. We don't make decisions with minmax spreadsheets - at least not at the consumer level. People buy products that meet emotional needs. This is especially so when your intention is to create fantastic experiences and not just to give people what they need in the moment.
Talk to your customers. Figure out their likes and dislikes. Listen and learn - you'll be glad you did!
Final Thoughts
You want your customers to remember who you are. Treating them kindly and being creative can go a long way toward creating fantastic customer experiences. By following the tips above, you can take your online store from being humdrum to being memorable, and by extension, more profitable!
Need help filling orders for your business? Contact Fulfillrite today to request a free quote.
Brandon Rollins is a Marketing Consultant at Fulfillrite. His main areas of expertise are online marketing and supply chain management. He also runs Pangea Marketing Agency and Pangea Games.
