How to Optimize the Customer’s Shopping Experience in the Online Environment

Today, customers are spoiled for choices with more places to shop than ever before. When you are looking to solely build progressive web applications and apps with increasing mobile sales, it is also crucial to look at a few other facets. With a limited attention span, it is increasingly becoming critical to grab customer attention and provide them with an experiential retail platform.

With factors such as aesthetic online layout, improved customer service, smoother checkout process, and more, you can optimize the online shopping experience of customers. Your online space needs to be brought alive by optimizing it through various steps. Before making any speculations, let us explore the top ways to optimize the online retail experience.

1.       Feed information:

The biggest shortcoming of online stores has been that consumers cannot reach out to anyone. According to a study, nine out of ten customers bank on multiple modes of contact for online communication. When you provide multiple contact options to customers, they are able to contact you without any hassle. 

Hence, do not forget to include the phone number, address, mail address, and other contact details on your website. For a quicker response, you can even set up an online chat support system or WhatsApp texting. You can also improve the experience with detailed descriptions of products and informative landing pages.

The landing pages should give a complete understanding of the product and service you have in store. Hence, make sure you are up for comprehensive descriptions in addition to photographs for better understanding.

2.       Enhance shopping experience with videos:

In order to further optimize one’s experience, it is recommended to use videos. You don’t need to master creating the productions, as there are several video editing software perfectly curated for beginners. Alternatively, if you have the budget, you can hire an editor to do the job for you.

The videos can be a tutorial on the product and its usages, interviews with influencers having used the product or service, or an exploration of a few interesting facts and information on the niche. These videos can be posted on your website and other prominent platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and more.

3.       Streamlined checkout procedure:

It is annoying to be all ready to buy a product but fail to do so only because of a poor checkout process. Hence, the first step you could take is to install a streamlined checkout procedure. This is one of the best ways to improve customers' shopping experience, along with the sales figure.

You can use a payment processor accepting multiple options. Additionally, you can also include e-check, credit card, ACH transfer, and more. With a secured online gateway and faster checkout, consumers are impressed like never before.

4.       Increase the load speed of the site:

The online experience of the visitor starts much before the website is viewed. In fact, it begins as soon as the customer clicks on the link on the search result. The lesser time it takes to open, the more are the chances of consumers to stick around. A fast and responsive site is extremely critical to creating a positive experience online.

Slower websites are incredibly dull and discourage consumers from venturing any further with them. On the other hand, faster websites help create an impressive higher-end shopping experience, boosting the rank in the search results. It also tells your visitors that you value their precious time.

You can benefit from high-performance web hosting, which is customized to the site and the amount of traffic expected. You must also consider managed hosting or content delivery network, which helps speed up the website both nationally and internationally.

5.        Optimize it for multiple screens:

Your website will not just be viewed on a desktop or a laptop. In fact, as per a study, 89% of engagement comes from mobile phones. Hence, it can be viewed on multiple screens, including desktop, laptop, mobile, tab, and much more. It is crucial to understand the expectations of your views online and optimize the shopping experience accordingly.

You can redefine the look and feel by revamping the website, making a few alterations in the style and design by changing texts and images. It is all about grabbing the attention span of customers and further building the shopping experience. However, remember not to cramp the website with excess information.

6.       Improve the navigation of the website:

The simpler you keep the website, the better the usability. With limited navigation and features, you are able to engage in better interactions. If your website has motion effects as navigation, you can do away with them to better access the products, information, and services.

A hassle-free online experience comes with such navigation where a user is able to navigate without any difficulty. Make sure you review the navigation and strike a balance between your products and services while making them easily accessible to all.

You can always opt for larger drop-down navigation boxes to display your products better, making it easier for visitors to skim through.

7.       Focus on infographics:

The content – the king of the website – cannot do without impressive visuals. Your social media activity, branded communications, and advertising are the means of pitching to your consumers. This saves you from pitching the product or service again to the consumers once they arrive at your webpage.

Hence, you should make most of this opportunity to provide accurate information while encouraging them towards making the final call. Once they arrive online, you need more informative content than promotional ones. Hence, you must focus on more visual content like adding high definition images, 360-degree rotating images, and video explainers, which are the best way to flaunt what you own.

These visuals should be an accurate depiction of the brand's lifestyle. One of the ways to do so is by requesting your customers to contribute pictures as they use the product. These user-generated photographs help instill trust among potential buyers.

8.       Review invoices:

This tip is mainly relevant for dropshipping companies. Do not worry if you do not manufacture your own products; completely own the problems whenever you have any. To prevent a situation related to invoices, it is essential to review these invoices from the suppliers, especially before the products leave the warehouse.

At the same time, make sure that you check all inaccurate product orders, addresses, and quantities. This will prevent your customers from any hassle coming their way that can lead them to lodge a complaint against you.

9.       Build customer trust:

As per a study, customer feedback and testimonials are trusted 12 times more than any marketing pitch. What your customers convey in the reviews has a lot to say about your company and the brand. These feature great strength and also have the ability to invite or dispel online engagement. It is, therefore, crucial to use a few trust markers on the website, like the following:

• Certified Shop Badge from Google
• An SSL certificate to secure customer data
• Trusted reviews sites
• Brand logos, seals, etc., to showcase yourself as a certified retailer

However, if you are just starting out, it can be challenging to get customer testimonials with you selling only a few units. This is where you can trust professional writing services to create genuine and personalized reviews of your products or services.

10.   Be enthusiastic about your product or service:

It all boils down to how excited or hopeful you are about what you are selling. Show the customer how much you care about your product or the service. If you really care, your enthusiasm will be visible and passed on to your consumers. You can also use a specific customer service tone to encourage visitors to place an order.

For example, you can adopt a direct and friendly approach by popping several quotations such as ‘You’re all set’. With this, it increases the excitement level of the consumers, and they are often motivated to take the final step. This personalized tone goes a long way than any standard web copy.

A retail experience of a customer matters just as much online as it does offline. Thanks to the advent of technological facets, you can do much more today to make that happen. With the steps mentioned above, you can optimize the customer shopping experience. You can also get in touch with Fashinza, a B2B apparel manufacturing platform that helps clothing brands to manufacture the collections. With Fashinza, brands can now place an order, track, pay online, communicate, and receive daily updates. If you are an apparel manufacturer, you must reach out to make the process faster, more transparent, and hassle-free.