How To Enhance Customer Experience On Your E-Commerce Store In 2024 (With Examples)

Introduction

Focusing on customer experience is no longer a choice.

Any e-commerce business that wants to stand out must make its customer satisfaction a top priority. If you think it’s not true, let the numbers do some talking.

• 61% of customers switch brands because of poor customers.
• 58% of shoppers feel customer service is super important for them.
• 38% of shoppers will pay more for their favorite brands, even if something is cheaper elsewhere.

As someone in e-commerce, you’d surely want loyal customers, reduced customer acquisition costs (CAC), repeat buyers, and fewer abandoned carts for your stores. Right?

The secret is remarkable customer interaction. It’s crucial for e-commerce growth in 2024.

This article is all about that. We’ll discuss the benefits of investing in customer experience and the strategies. Let’s start exploring more right away!

Benefits of Prioritizing Customer Experience

Business owners are often reluctant to make changes to improve customer experience. They see it as a daunting activity and shy away from investing time, effort, and money in it.

But, becoming a "customer-first " e-commerce business is a non-negotiable strategy for success in 2024. Here are some benefits of investing in customer experience.

Business Growth	More than 90% of shoppers will likely buy from you again if they like the shopping experience.
Higher Revenue	Repeat customers can spend up to 67% more than first-time customers. That’s likely because you earned their trust in the first interaction, and they can confidently order more.
Premium Pricing	Shoppers are willing to pay more for brands that provide seamless and enjoyable experiences. 39% will purchase from their favorite brands even if they’re getting it cheaper somewhere else.
Opportunity For Email Marketing	When shoppers have a great experience, they are willing to share their contact details with you for future promotional deals and discounts. Shopify users can use Wizpop to create engaging popups to collect shopper’s contact details.
Competitive Edge	When you focus on customer satisfaction more than your competitors, you’ll naturally have an edge. You can create differentiation at several touchpoints, such as a unique store UI/UX, generous return policies, unexpected discounts, etc.

Honestly, there are just too many benefits to avoid it. Even if you have to invest resources, you can get them several times back in profits.

That said, let’s explore the ways you can enhance the customer experience on your e-commerce store.

10 Ways To Enhance Customer Experience On Your E-commerce Store

Improving customer experience will have a direct impact on your conversion rates. Stores that understand this concept will always win the e-commerce game.

To ensure your store is a winner, here are 10 things to help you enhance the shoppers’ experience!

1. Store Speed

Slow stores are nothing but mood killers. With so many options available, people get jumpy and don’t even wait a few seconds for the store to load.

Statistics show that 79% of people who have trouble with site performance will bounce away. This means money lost.

It shows the importance of store load times for e-commerce stores.

Ideally, your store should load in 1 to 2 seconds. Anything above that will put you in dangerous waters. Reports show that the average load speed of pages ranking on the first page of Google is 1.65 seconds.

So, competition is tough. Handle the speed area first.

All the efforts and beautification won’t matter if it doesn’t load quickly for people to see. A survey even revealed that 50% of shoppers would prefer a quick-loading store over animations and video pages.

This shows that customers want speed over fancy graphics. It’s also one of the simplest ways for speedy load times – reduce file sizes and use lightweight elements. Implement lazy loading for more speed.

Shopify store owners can analyze their performance by visiting Shopify’s site auditing tool . If your scores aren’t satisfactory and you need help with optimization, consider consulting professionals.

They’ll weed out the elements that are slowing your store so you can deliver fast load times to your shoppers.

2. Focus On The Design

A brilliant shopping experience is all about the neat UI/UX of the store.

Everything from the first interaction should be easily navigable. Many store owners don’t realize how a messy interface can negatively impact sales.

Your goal is to make everything readily available so the shopper has no difficulty purchasing.

Take this Calvin Klein store as an example. It has a simple and elegant design and clearly mentions its categories on top.

Anyone visiting the store can choose their preference and start shopping from there.

On the contrary, many clothing brands display categories first (pants, shoes, shirts, etc.) and then make the segmentation. That can be confusing and make people leave your store.

Take some design inspirations from some top-ranking stores in your niche.

Stores that aren’t user-friendly will struggle to make sales even if they sell the best products in the region or the world. See the example below.

The store name says it sells flowers, but it’s a confusing collection of different categories. The website is also a single page, long one that diverts attention. Overall, you can see the stark difference between the two examples.

Ensure that you follow the best UX/UI practices to deliver an experience the shoppers don’t forget.

3. Allow Virtual Trials

With virtual reality and augmented reality, you can take your store to a different level. This technology allows shoppers to try out the products digitally so they can get an idea of how it’ll look after purchase.

IKEA is a good example to review.

The store helps people visualize their rooms and spaces with the furniture before they even buy something.

Several other businesses are doing it as well. For example, Nike allows virtual tryouts for shoes.

Sephora allows virtual tests for makeup.

Bottom line: Explore this technology and determine its relevance for your business. Often, shoppers can’t imagine how your products will look on them. This leaves them iffy about the purchase.

Decision-making becomes easier for them when they can get a visual image via VR and AR.

4. Personalize The Shopping Experience

This is so important for e-commerce businesses that want to succeed.

Reports suggest that 60% of shoppers become repeat buyers with businesses that offer a personalized shopping experience. That makes absolute sense because buyers feel understood and heard.

You can use data from customers to offer personalized solutions.

“People also buy” or “Frequently ordered with this item” is the easiest way to make an up-sell while understanding the customer’s needs.

Amazon is a classic example to review. They use the data from machine learning models (MLMs) to offer options to shoppers that they’ll likely buy.

If you are in a specific niche like perfumes or fashion, you can use interactive ways to deliver a “done-for-you” experience.

Check out the example below:

This company sells commercial scents. It offers a quiz to help you understand what fragrance best suits your indoor atmosphere and shares free samples. This is next-level personalization.

So, come up with ideas that can help your business the best.

5. Easy Checkouts

Complex checkout processes can frustrate your shoppers, and they’ll leave you with abandoned carts.

We’re sure you don’t want that. So, here’s what you do – make checkouts as simple as possible.

You can lose 22% of sales because of a complicated checkout process. Calculate that loss over a few years, and you will easily understand its impact.

One idea to avoid this is to allow guest checkouts – without signups or unnecessary information.

The shopper will enter their address and details, pay for the goods, and finalize the order. That’d be ideal. However, if you need to have signups, then allow social signups.

See the example above. The shopper can easily sign up with their existing accounts with just one click.

These measures will make it easy for people to finalize their purchases with least resistance. Remember, the internet world is full of distractions. If people feel your process is difficult, they can procrastinate and bounce away.

Easy checkouts are essential for a top-notch customer experience.

6. Work On Customer Support

Let us tell you a secret – you can literally print your business name on customers’ hearts with awesome customer service.

Over 60% of customers love businesses that quickly resolve their issues.

40% even prefer 24/7 customer service. This is almost non-negotiable for businesses that operate across multiple time zones.

There are some things you can do, for example:

• Offering live support chat on your e-commerce store.
• Training your on-call staff to be polite with customers.
• Offer a helpline number for people to talk directly if needed.
• Install chatbots to answer FAQs and take queries to answer later.
• Provide thorough after-sales services for customer satisfaction.

Customer support can get you more referrals and get your business many repeat customers. Without satisfactory customer service, your business is at a disadvantage.

72% of customers can switch brands after just a single negative interaction. So, don’t sleep on customer support and service.

7. Make Detailed Product Pages

Your product pages are super important.

They push your shoppers to become buyers. Don’t take this opportunity lightly.

The example above is a good one to study. It has a thorough description and multiple photos for shoppers to visualize what they’ll receive.

Also, ensure that your pages answer any doubts or resistance in the minds of your buyers. Here are some tips for good product pages:

• Use high-quality images.
• Take pictures from different angles.
• Use the right keywords for the description.
• Focus on the product and remove any possible distractions.

Pro tip : Your descriptions will also help you rank better. Choose words with a decent search volume and low difficulty to rank better.

Another tip : Use HD images but compress them. Heavy images will slow down your site and do more harm than good.

8. Offer Exclusive Discounts To Members

This is your chance to turn casual shoppers into loyal customers.

Starting an exclusive members-only club can benefit your business a great deal.

This is also a chance to offer a personalized experience to your customers. For example, if you see someone buying a product every other week, you can offer them a deal to buy 4 in one go.

With an exclusive club, you can build an email list to market your products and turn your stock into cash.

Checkout the example below:

Calvin Klein uses a popup to offer discounts to its visitors and make them a part of the exclusive group.

You can see the offers – discounts, early access to sales, and the “15% off on your birthday” is simply a personal touch that’s hard to avoid.

You can use Wizpop to create engaging popups for your store and achieve your marketing goals.

9. Be Clear With Shipping & Returns Policy

Your customers will hesitate to purchase from you if they are unsure what will happen if they don’t like the product.

Stats show that 18% of your shoppers can become abandoned carts if your returns policy isn’t clear. The number can be much higher depending on your business and geographic location.

Don’t leave a hole in your shipping and returns policy. If there’s something your shoppers should know, highlight it. You can even mention it on your product pages so there’s no ambiguity in shoppers while they make a purchase.

See this example from Levi’s store. They have visible shipping and return policy sections on their home page. This makes people confident and likely not hesitate to buy from you.

10. Use Social Proof

This is your lottery ticket to winning customers.

Social proof validates your store, product, and business. When people see that X number of people are already satisfied with your services, their resistance to you lessens.

90% of shoppers look for reviews before making a purchase decision. And 70%+ shoppers specifically look for stores with reviews.

So, gather every client testimonial you can to make your store credible. This is an important part of the customer journey and you shouldn’t take it lightly at all.

There’s a reason why giant e-commerce platforms like Amazon display reviews with every product.

Displaying how many people have brought your product over a certain timeframe is also a way to establish credibility.

Show your ratings proudly; they’ll help you push the product.

Bonus Method To Enhance Customer Experience

Offer free shipping or unexpected deals.

This can massively increase your conversion rates. In fact, research shows that free shipping can increase average order volume (AOV) by 97% and reduce abandoned carts by up to 18%.

Look at the example below.

See how clearly the message mentions about free shipping for a certain order value.

Suppose someone wants something that costs €41. They’ll likely push their order to €49.99 to avoid shipping costs.

Another example is Zappos. They offer free shipping for all order sizes. They’ve even mentioned it in their shipping policy.

So, utilize this to your benefit. If the budget allows, do go for free shipping.

Or price your products so that the shipping cost is covered. Look at the impact it can have on your business. Don’t miss it, as it is crucial for a memorable customer experience.

Implement the tips above, and you will be set to grow your e-commerce store. You can also utilize professional help to speed up optimization and enjoy more sales in the on going holiday season 2024 .

Conclusive Thoughts – Optimize For More Profits

We’ll not lie; e-commerce is a tough space to conquer. Without having stores optimized for customer experience, you’ll have difficulty succeeding.

By implementing the strategies above, you can deliver a great shopping experience to your customers in 2024.

If your e-commerce is set up on Shopify and you want optimization, contact us.

But don’t skip these points even if you handle things on your own. These strategies can truly set you up for success with customers!