It’s vital for ecommerce brands to create a good impression. With no opportunity to physically interact with customers or to wow them with an IRL store experience, paying attention to the digital aspects of their purchase journey is essential for any online retailer looking to win lasting loyalty.
Here are five ways that a less than professional feeling can creep into your brand’s customer experience. All common – but all easy fixes!
Bad Communication
The number one bugbear of most customers when it comes to dealing with online commerce. Poor communication can sneak into many different stages of the buying journey – a disappointing or impersonal chatbot experience as you’re trying to find out more information about a product… radio silence as you wait to hear when your order will be delivered… or slow replies when you get in touch about an issue you’re experiencing with the product.
Solving the problem
Top notch communication needs to be baked into your brand. By mapping out each potential contact point, you can make sure you’re providing the right contact methods, and put resources in place to ensure people can get the answers they need. The real hack here, however, is to reduce the need for communication in the first place by preempting your customers’ requirements. This might look like automated professional invoices being sent before they’re requested, customized Shopify notifications that give a clear, branded update of an order’s progress, or customized returns slips in each order that give clear, friendly returns advice.
Poor Brand Consistency
Online stores depend on clear, consistent branding. It’s how you stand out from your competition and build up a dependable and familiar digital profile that your customers grow to recognize and – most importantly – trust. When your branding is patchy, your brand looks unprofessional. It’s all about paying attention to detail. Fail to do so, and you give the impression that you simply don’t care about providing a joined up experience for your customers.
Solving the problem
Start by reading through our free guide: The FORSBERG+two Guide to Ecommerce Branding. This will give you a great grounding in the various elements of your branding that can be polished and coordinated to deliver the very best impression. From customizing your order paperwork to defining a clear brand tone of voice, these little touches and tweaks add up to impressive impact.
Unclear Sales and Return Policies
Uncertainty around your store’s policies for sales and returns could be denting your conversion rate. Additionally, you’ll damage important relationships with pre-existing customers if you fail to clearly manage their expectations after a purchase has been made. Although we’re always aiming to reduce them, returns of online goods are commonplace. Being open and honest about your policies (rather than making your customers go searching for the information) helps your brand to look much more authentic and trustworthy.
Solving the problem
Make your policies clear and fair – and keep everything out in the open when communicating them with your customers. With free returns becoming more commonplace, if you don’t offer this benefit, it's increasingly important that you’re clear on this. Ensure that information is clear before, during and after the purchase.
Substandard Packaging
As ecommerce has become the standard for the majority of our purchases, unboxing experiences have also increased in their importance. Products arriving in unsuitable, cheap or damaged packaging give a poor first impression of a brand, and don’t put the customer in the best frame of mind to start exploring their new purchase. Additionally, items which arrive in inferior packaging may have been damaged, which needlessly necessitating a return. It’s a loss for the brand and a disservice to the customer.
Solving the problem
There’s a fine line to tread when it comes to packaging. We all want our purchases to be delivered safely and professionally. But customers are increasingly frustrated with “over packaged” items, and see these deliveries as wasteful, as well as difficult to unwrap and dispose of. Research environmentally friendly packaging. This can be just as effective as less sustainable alternatives, meaning you’ll deliver a great unboxing experience and well-protected purchases. You can even share your decision to go green on your brand’s social media channels.
Low Quality Product Images and Descriptions
So many disappointing purchase experiences could be solved or avoided completely if brands invested a little more time and effort into their product images and descriptions. From images that undersell your product (or which give a false impression – especially when it comes to size – we’ve all seen the stories!), to descriptions that leave shoppers with more questions than answers… so many product pages do a disservice to brands and their customers.
Solving the problem
Dedicate proper time and resources to uploading new products. Big drops and releases are no excuse for rushed product pages. You can also outsource additional product information and valuable context by allowing customers to leave reviews that include their opinion through the lens of personal context. Attributed reviews include customer information that’s relevant to the performance or fit of a product (such as height and build when reviewing a dress and giving details of the way that it fits them).
