Consumer expectations grow with every digital purchase — but don’t panic if you‘re struggling to keep up.
After all, you may not have Amazon-level resources to match the customer experiences delivered by the world’s most popular brands.
Still, you do have more options than ever to cultivate your own exceptional experience that increases revenue by better connecting with your customers. And your unique business needs will tell you which options to put energy and investment into.
The question then becomes, how do you objectively evaluate the CX you deliver so you can best allocate those resources?
Look in the mirror and get ready to revisit your roadmap
The end-of-year season is a good time to review and finetune your digital CX. Make smart investments by clearly defining your business objectives up front.
Balancing what the public wants with your organization’s goals is a daily challenge. Even our client strategists will tell you it’s not wise to simply adopt every people-pleasing ecommerce option like free returns.
Companies have to recognize their own barriers to goals before solving for customers’ wants and needs. Ask yourself:
- How prepared are you to increase your AOV with more sophisticated CRO strategies?
- Are you using customer data to fully understand your audience?
- What are your unique goals, opportunities and constraints?
- What does your long-term commerce strategy look like?
Your answers to standard questions like these will help you strengthen your ecommerce framework to address gaps and missed CX opportunities. It’s a lot to consider, but a sound digital strategy will always have your back
Review your tech stack: Is it helping or hindering?
Once you’ve identified what might prevent you from achieving objectives, you’re set up to optimize how you conduct transactions online.
The status quo is easiest — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s fine until your technology can’t support your growing business. MacGyver-ing suboptimal platforms with digital duct tape gets expensive, affects performance and won’t scale.
Many mid-market businesses choose readymade, customizable solutions like Shopify and WooCommerce early on, potentially re-platforming to Shopify Plus, BigCommerce or Adobe Commerce (Magento) as their online business evolves.
These popular products each have advantages. The right choice depends on your priorities.
How do you know the time has come to re-platform for improved CX, though?
Consider whether a different solution would:
- Offer greater personalization to improve KPIs
- Integrate with your CRM, ERP or PIM software to ease admin work
- Have a smoother, more responsive user experience
- Comply more fully with changing security and privacy regulations
- Implement updates with less downtime
- Carry the same experience across devices
- Align with bigger goals for your digital marketing campaigns
- Support your overall strategy for growth and be better designed to scale
Try building out a requirements list to guide your decision making.
Leverage customer data to drive real connections
“When we think about buying something, it really is an emotional experience,” UX designer and researcher Kristine Howell recently told us in a conversation about increasing customer loyalty. “And if you think about your product, your digital e-com experience as an emotional journey, you have to figure out, how do you connect with that person on that level?”
Chewy famously takes such connections to levels that go viral. Earlier this year, two Lightburners experienced this treatment individually and shared in a Teams chat, prompting others to chime in with their own stories.
“Unbelievable level of compassion and 1:1 customer care from a $9B company,” replied Clay Patterson, our Director of Digital Marketing. “It's a big part of why they're so successful.”
Real connection is key to what Kristine calls “a feedback loop” that fosters a deep understanding of your customers’ needs, desires and frustrations — to inform how your organization delivers what they need and desire without frustration.
Data drives that connection. Customers will tell you exactly what they want, but you need a centralized customer data profile to really hear them. Then using that information to take meaningful action closes the loop.
Opportunities to get valuable data for more fully optimized CX include:
- Offering a discount to those who create an account
- Making video and photo content shoppable
- Adding custom questions to forms
- Mixing media channels and platforms with strategic intention
- Creating valuable content that users can access in exchange for information
Your CX strategy will be unique — and that’s a good thing!
You have no shortage of opportunities to enhance your customer experience. Every element of the buyer’s journey from awareness through loyalty should ladder up to a fully defined organizational CX strategy.
There’s only one Amazon. Nobody will match that customer experience. You can still give your customers what they want with frictionless ecommerce that’s authentic to your brand, though — consistently through their entire journey. Connect more deeply with customers by carefully evaluating your own goals, your own data and your own technology.
See gaps in your CX? Need to talk through ecommerce concerns? Other questions? Ask us anything.