How to Create a Fun and Shoppable Experience
When you’re trying to get setup with an online business, or you’re trying to revamp your existing business to become more profitable, one of the principles you really must keep in mind is that a really good customer experience is essential to your success. Remember that customers will always have other options, so they need a reason to choose your site over the competition’s.
Even if you have a superior product, that is often not enough to offset a negative experience that customers might have on your website. Yes, quality products are important, but if you don’t provide a satisfying customer experience to all your site visitors, they probably won’t be around long enough to find out how good your products are. Here are a few tips about how you can provide that satisfying shopping experience to your customers.
Make it mobile-friendly
These days, you simply can’t ignore the reach of mobile devices, because they have now outstripped PC’s and other computers in terms of their popularity in making online purchases. That means you have to be sure that your site is attractively presented to users of mobile devices, and that all your content can easily be displayed without excessive scrolling or manipulating of the screen right or left.
If your site can only be seen by doing all kinds of screen manipulation, it will quickly become a nuisance to a user, and they will more than likely abandon your site in favor of one which is more mobile-friendly. Take some time and test it yourself – go to your own website and see what it looks like on your cellphone. Make a note of how easy or difficult it is to browse through product screens, and how easy or difficult it is to progress through the checkout process. If you get the least bit frustrated during this test, you can count on your normal users being even more aggravated, and that means lost customers.
Keep it simple for customers
Another key to providing a very fun and shoppable experience for your online customers is to make everything crystal clear, and as simple as possible. If any selection or ordering routine raises confusion in the mind of your customers, there’s a chance you’re going to lose them. If there’s even one roadblock along the way, that might be enough to send a customer scurrying off to the site of one of your rivals.
Make sure all instructions you provide on your site are easy to understand, and that there’s no way confusion can creep in to muddy up the waters. You might want to conduct a few tests with dummy customers you setup, so you can see how easily they navigate through the ordering process. This should help to uncover any sticking points, so you can have these tweaked to become clearer and more manageable.
Make the checkout process easy
More online shopping carts have been abandoned because the checkout process was somewhat confusing than any business person would care to think about. The truth is, shopping cart abandonment ranges anywhere from 58% to 81%, depending on which industry you’re associated with, and the average across all industries is a whopping 70%.
Just think of that! A full 70% of your customers might progress all the way to the checkout screen, and then find some reason for terminating the process. As often as not, the reason for this termination is some kind of confusion which creeps up, or because you don’t have a strong payment gateway which accepts all kinds of payments. This makes it absolutely essential that you make sure the checkout process is as flexible and as understandable as possible – that way, your customers will have a fun, shoppable experience, and you will profit by it.