Optimizing and simplifying replatforming, increasing conversion rates and personalizing the experience, we guide you towards best practices to transform your customers into brand ambassadors.
With the continued growth of e-commerce, the customer experience has become one of the key elements of business success. Today’s customers are increasingly demanding and expect a smooth, seamless shopping experience, from product search to delivery. To help companies meet these expectations, in this article we’ve put together three practical tips for reinventing the customer experience and creating a seamless experience for consumers.
Risk-free replatforming
What is replatforming?
Replatforming is the process of migrating a website from one technological platform to another. This delicate stage can be accompanied by bugs, data loss or errors affecting site performance. This can impact on the website’s performance, its SEO or the quality of the customer experience, and therefore on sales and profits.
Ensuring risk-free replatforming is then necessary, and requires prior risk analysis, comprehensive pre- and post-migration testing, data backup, as well as ongoing post-migration monitoring.
.Shippingbo facilitates replatforming by offering Plug and Play and API integrations, enabling the use of the best technological solution for each company department. This approach, known as Best of Breed, ensures that every component of the site functions smoothly, without the risk of interference or conflicts with other elements of the site. What’s more, Shippingbo offers carrier mapping capabilities that enable selection of the carrier best suited to customer needs, to avoid any impact on sales during migration.
Improve your conversion rate
The second tip for reinventing your customer experience and improving sales is to increase your conversion rate. Indeed, a high conversion rate is essential to turn visitors into buyers on your e-commerce site. To achieve this, it’s important to follow a number of steps.
- Step one: Increase your site’s traffic
To increase traffic, we advise you to promote and offer fast, free and guaranteed shipping in your organic and paid marketing campaigns.
Indeed, consumers are increasingly sensitive to fast delivery, which has become a norm, due to marketplaces programs like Amazon Prime. By offering fast delivery, you can attract a broad demographic for maximum potential traffic. Stores that offer free or discounted delivery generally record lower cart abandonment rates and higher conversion rates.
In fact, a buyer may be attracted by low prices or sales, only to be stopped at the basket or checkout when they notice high delivery charges or slow delivery times.
- Step two: Offer a simple, seamless shopping experience
Next, it’s essential to offer a simple, seamless shopping experience. To achieve this, your site needs to offer a clear product page, with essential information only, as well as a simple, eye-catching add-to-cart feature. It’s also advisable to regularly encourage consumers to return to the shopping cart to improve conversion rates and avoid shopping cart abandonment, which averages 69.80%.
- Step three: Personalize the customer experience
Personalizing the customer experience has become a key element in online sales strategy. Indeed, consumers are now accustomed to a fluid, intuitive and personalized online shopping experience, which takes into account their preferences and needs.
To achieve this, the CMS (content management system) must enable merchants to personalize the shopping experience for their customers. An optimized payment experience is crucial to improving conversion rates. A simple, intuitive checkout page reduces the risk of cart abandonment and increases the likelihood of customers completing their purchase. Tools such as our partner BigCommerce enable merchants to create a simplified, one-page checkout experience, optimized for all types of device.
In addition, to offer a personalized experience, such as product recommendations based on previous purchases or pages consulted, the CMS must enable merchants to collect data on customer behavior. This can be done through the use of cookies, survey forms or by analyzing sales and site navigation data. This enables customers to discover products that meet their needs and preferences. It can also encourage repeat purchases, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
It is also possible to offer special deals and promotions based on customer preferences and purchasing behavior. For example, offering a discount on a product that the customer has consulted several times, or on a product similar to those they have purchased in the past, can encourage purchase and loyalty.
Personalizing the customer experience is important, as it creates a relationship of trust with the customer by offering a tailor-made shopping experience. This can translate into increased sales and customer loyalty, as well as improved customer satisfaction.
- Fourth step: a simplified, comprehensive delivery experience
Finally, for a complete and satisfying shopping experience, it’s important to simplify the delivery process. Consumers are not looking for a carrier, but for a shopping experience based on delivery criteria such as speed (standard / express), proximity and availability (home / relay), and ecology (decarbonized or not).
To meet these criteria, it’s important to choose the carrier best suited to the customer’s requirements. Tools such as Shippingbo can help you find the carrier best suited to your needs, thanks to its carrier mapping functionality that facilitates the delivery process.
Guaranteed 24-hour delivery
Ensuring fast delivery has become an essential criterion for consumers. Indeed, with the advent of marketplaces, customers now have access to a multitude of suppliers offering similar products. To stand out from the competition, it’s crucial to offer fast, reliable delivery times.
What’s more, customers with a positive shopping experience are more likely to return for further purchases, and to recommend your store to friends and family. Ensuring 24-hour delivery is therefore an effective way of building customer loyalty.
- Step one: Ship your orders by today’s standards
The first step to ensuring a 24-hour delivery promise is to optimize logistics and make sure you’re not overwhelmed by an influx of orders. To achieve this, good inventory management and well-organized logistics are essential. Products must be easily accessible, and the supply chain must run smoothly to avoid delays.
It is also important to implement an efficient, automated order processing system to reduce the time needed to process each order. This can be done by using OMS and WMS to automate order processing and warehouse management, and thus minimize errors.
All this can be supported by a TMS, designed to manage order dispatch, from handover to the carrier, right through to arrival at the customer’s premises. The latter must be equipped with reliable carrier mapping.
- Step 2: Ship the same day
To achieve same-day dispatch, you first need to optimize your preparation sessions and manage orders as they come in. Depending on the data, between 45% and 67% of orders can be dispatched the same day, with pick-ups between 1pm and 5pm.
It is therefore essential to collect orders from all sales channels in real time, and to prepare them before collection. In fact, 45% of daily orders are placed between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and can be dispatched the same day, while 22% of daily orders are placed between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. and can also be dispatched the same day.
By optimizing preparation sessions and managing orders as they come in, it is possible to maximize the number of orders dispatched the same day, and thus meet customers’ expectations in terms of speed of delivery.
- Step 3: Manage your activity peaks
To ensure rapid delivery and thus customer satisfaction, it is essential to manage peaks in activity. The beginning of the week is often marked by an influx of orders, as 40% of weekly orders are placed over the weekend and must be dispatched on the same day (Monday) to meet delivery deadlines. To avoid delays, it is therefore crucial to plan for efficient management of this peak in activity in terms of logistics and personnel.
In addition, the seasonal nature of your business can lead to peaks in activity and different staffing requirements. For example, the difference between activity in February and December can be +40%. To adapt to these fluctuations, it’s important to be able to easily adjust human resources according to needs. Shippingbo can facilitate this flexibility by enabling rapid take-up and efficient management of orders and shipments. So, by being able to adapt to seasonality and peaks in activity, merchants can ensure a smooth and satisfying customer experience, boosting customer loyalty and retention.
- Step 4: Use a network of logisticians
The third step in ensuring a 24-hour delivery promise is to use a network of logisticians like the one offered by Shippingbo. In fact, to keep such a promise, you can rely on experts by delegating your logistics to logisticians so you can concentrate on your core business. They can offer you solutions tailored to the needs of each individual retailer.
The advantage of such a strategy can be the internationalization of your e-commerce business. Top skus (the most popular products) can then be managed by a logistics service provider based in the various countries where merchants sell. Using this approach, shipping costs can be reduced and local carriers can be used to deliver products, offering a faster and more cost-effective delivery experience for customers.
Longtail products are shipped directly from their own warehouse in their country of origin, using cross-border shipping solutions. This method enables merchants to ship products worldwide, without having to invest in overseas warehouses or distribution centers.
- Step five: Customer experience to build loyalty and reduce marketing costs
A satisfactory customer experience can be a differentiating factor in a competitive market. This means taking into account all the key elements of the purchasing experience, including logistics.
Ensuring a satisfying customer experience includes: delivery of products quickly and in good condition, a clear and easy-to-use returns policy, and quality customer service when needed. Customers must be able to easily find the information they need on the site, place an order without difficulty, and receive accurate notifications on the status of their order and delivery.
Providing a quality customer experience helps build customer loyalty, giving them a reason to return for future purchases. In addition, satisfied customers are more likely to leave positive reviews, which can attract new customers through word-of-mouth. Finally, it can also reduce marketing costs, as it’s generally cheaper to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a successful customer experience is not limited to the simple acquisition of products, but extends to the entire purchasing and delivery process. To reinvent the customer experience, it’s essential to focus on marketing and logistics as key elements of customer satisfaction. But even better: the key lies in integrating your tools to manage your post-sales activity.
The tips presented in this article, such as optimizing logistics, same-day shipping, managing peak activity, using logistics networks and personalizing the customer shopping experience, can help merchants improve their customer experience and reduce marketing costs, while increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction. In short, by adopting these strategies, merchants will be able to stand out from the competition and offer their customers an exceptional shopping experience.
