You have started selling online and customers are buying items directly from your online store. It's wonderful! But how satisfied are your customers? How easy is the purchase and payment process for them?
How can you use analytics to offer better and better service to your customers?
Let's consider ways to improve visiting, searching and navigating the online store from different electronic devices. Also, the means to use customer accounts to update your product pages and optimize the checkout process.
For the improvement of e-commerce, first of all, it is necessary for the customer to be able to purchase the desired item without hindrance through any electronic device. Nowadays, many other means are used for this purpose besides laptops and computers.
Let's say, looking at your "analytics" data, you see that many people visited your online store via mobile phone, however, very few purchased items.
This may mean that shoppers accessing their mobile and tablet devices do not see product pages well, or experience some obstacles during checkout. To solve these problems, you should take the following steps:
One solution is to install a "responsive layout" on the online store. This type of scheme can adapt to different screen sizes.
Or, if you prefer smartphone-friendly shopping, creating a mobile online store specifically for smartphone shoppers could be the solution.
There is another way to facilitate the purchase process. For example, analytics data shows that many people visit your online store, but they do not look at the products described there.
In such a case, you need to make it easier for the customer to find the products they are interested in. And this starts with navigation, which should be easy for the user to understand and use.
As a rule, you should use categories and subcategories to organize your inventory. Let's take the example of a furniture manufacturer:
You can start with a broad category, such as different rooms in the house. Then, add a sub-category - different pieces of furniture in the corresponding room, say "beds", "desks", "dining tables".
What is the best decision in this regard? The one that the customer likes the most. You can simply ask your friends, family members or loyal customers about their choices to get the reaction of consumers.
No matter what type of navigation you prefer, there will always be someone who only has a specific interest and doesn't want to search through different categories and subcategories. That's why we recommend using both options and adding the search function to the online store.
Product pages give you another opportunity to optimize your online store. Let's say you see a lot of customers visiting your product pages, but not adding anything to the cart.
In this case, you can add a video of the craftsman at work.
Or a gallery of photos that will show the furniture to the buyer from different angles. Photos must be of high quality and load quickly.
Also, you can attach an interesting description to each item, with relevant details and measurements.
Finally, let's consider how we can optimize the online store with customer reports.
Based on your analytics, you may notice that users are selecting items on your page and placing them in the cart, but then leaving the page before completing the purchase process.
Therefore, it is advisable to encourage the user to create an account, which in turn will help prevent such cases in the future.
When a buyer completes an online purchase, they should be able to save their shipping, billing, and payment information to their account.
This will help him in future purchases.
To improve the design of your online store, you can offer the user the ability to: view past purchases, new search results, or recently viewed products to make it easier for him to find the product of interest.
For example, if a buyer has purchased a dining table, you can offer a set of chairs that match the design and material of the table.
And of course, you can encourage your loyal customers with offers and discounts created especially for them: for this, many different shopping cart options are used.
In short: creating and optimizing an online store is a continuous process that requires thorough knowledge of electronic devices, reasonable organization of the online store, and creation of a flexible payment system through a customer account.
The above tips will help you offer the best service to your current and future customers.
