Eight Tips for an Excellent E-Commerce Experience

With online shopping booming in popularity, the pressure is on for e-commerce store owners to provide a stand-out experience that their customers will love. Today, there are literally hundreds of thousands of online shops, so making yours stand out from the crowd for all the right reasons is absolutely imperative to keeping your business afloat.

No matter what kind of products you are selling online, getting the user experience right will help your brand build a stellar reputation. We’ve listed eight essential tips for an excellent e-commerce experience. 

#1. Optimise for Mobile

With a huge percentage of customers today using their mobile devices to access online shops, it goes without saying that your shop should cater to this. In addition to making the entire user experience more difficult, failing to be responsive to mobile devices means that your SEO and Google ranking can be severely negatively affected.

Using a design that’s responsive to all mobile devices means that your customers will have the best experience when shopping with you, no matter what device they are using. 

#2. Be Secure

Today, having a safe and secure website is more essential than ever before, particularly when you are taking payments from customers online. Although many payment systems such as Stripe and WorldPay offer secure payment services, don’t think that this is enough of a reason to put off getting SSL certification! The green padlock in the browser is something that should exist on every online shop to show customers that their information is secure.

Whether they are paying or entering their details to sign up to a newsletter, SSL certification offers peace of mind and can improve your Google rankings too. 

#3. Offer a Variety of Payment Options

The more options your customers have when it comes to making a payment, the better the user experience will be for them. As standard, you should offer your customers the option to pay by debit or credit card, but it’s also worth looking into alternative options.

Examples include PayPal, which is more secure as the customer don’t need to enter their payment card details directly, or Klarna which provides customers with the option to spread the cost over a series of more affordable payments. 

#4. Offer Informative Content

Your customers will benefit from informative, interesting content that helps them get the most out of their purchases, and this will also enable you to boost your reputation and build authority in your niche. Having a blog section on your website will enable you to do this in addition to providing your site with more links that can improve your Google ranking and make it easier for customers to find your site. 

#5. Boost Your Customer Service

Using a multi-channel customer service strategy is the best way to ensure that your customers are able to get the help that they need at any time. A combination of telephone support, email, web chat and an FAQ page will ensure that your customers can get answers to their questions at all times. 

#6. Keep Your Customers Up to Date

Keeping customers up to date with the latest from your brand will make sure that it’s always at the forefront of their minds. One of the best ways to do this is by staying active on social media; using Facebook and Twitter to let your followers know about new products and deals will encourage them to purchase more. You can also add the option for customers to sign up to an email newsletter to stay in the know. 

#7. Offer an Easy User Experience

From the moment they enter your online store, customers will want to easily find whatever they are looking for. If browsing, they’ll want to see the items that are the most relevant to them. An easy-to-find search bar is a must, along with a menu bar that’s easy to navigate and where they can find exactly what they need.  

#8. Offer an Easy Returns Process

Lastly, it’s wise to be prepared to have to deal with customers who want to return their purchases. Offering a streamlined, free returns process to customers will make the entire experience more pleasurable for them and will encourage them to return in the future. Bear in mind that the returns process can make all the difference when it comes to whether or not the customer comes back to your brand. 

Do you have any of your own e-commerce tips to add? Let us know in the comments!