With the rapid growth of online shopping, it's more important than ever to have a digital presence and strong customer experience (CX).

Recently, we sat down with Adam Pearce (CEO, Blend Commerce) to explore some effective strategies for increasing your eCommerce sales this holiday season with phenomenal customer experiences.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to optimize your existing CX initiatives, these tips will help you attract more customers, increase conversions, and ultimately boost your revenue.

The 3 Stages of Customer Experience

According to Adam, if you're trying to drive sales to your Shopify store or improve CX for sale season, you must consider CX in three stages:

  • Pre-sales
  • During-sales
  • Post-sales ‌‌‌‌

At each stage, it's essential to make life easier for customers, hand holding them through the entire duration of their journey on your website & making shopping easier for them. ‌‌

"To create the best eCommerce customer experience, one needs to know what's going through the minds of your customers when they're on-site—whether they're feeling positive or negative. ‌‌We need to give different signs & signals to make their life easier."‌‌ - Adam Pearce‌‌

Pre-sales

Focus on improving navigation & search functionality

  • Invest in advanced navigation that makes room for spelling mistakes and colloquialisms commonly used by customers.
  • Enhance search function by keeping in mind the needs & wants of shoppers. E.g., say you sell shirts— organize your shirt collection by fit or by event instead of just color or size.

Analyze and think:

  • What is the job of a shirt in the customer's life?
  • Where can the shirt be put to use?
  • Who are the people who will buy shirt?

The answers to these questions (along with any other custom questions you have in mind) will help you to refine navigation & search, making it easy for shoppers to get what they want or find something useful.

Redirect customers to products that add value with their purchases

Improve CRO by creating on-site quizzes (5-6 simple questions) that help both the confused customer (I don't know what I need to get?) and the new website visitors.

Ask the right questions (5-6 max) and guide them towards something that will help them in the long run.

During-sales‌‌

Enhance Product Detail Pages (PDPs) with your brand story & voice

Add reviews, customer testimonials, certifications, and all that golden what-makes-you-more-awesome-than-your-competitor info on your PDPs. Cut through the long texts with fantastic imagery, visuals, and relevant iconography. And treat every product, collection, or home page as a single interaction point—representative of your brand story, voice & everything in between.‌‌‌‌

"Remember you're taking them (customers) through a journey—boost them up with your social proof & trust (reviews, testimonials) and then get them to the sale page. Customers want to know who the people are & what goes behind the product you make."‌‌‌‌

Customize checkout page

Insert your company logo, and use your branding typeface & colors to create a seamless customer experience that makes the shoppers feel connected to your business till the very end of their shopping journey.

Plan ahead

  • Strategically assess the value and the margin of your inventory products, specifically around fast-moving goods, and mindfully execute sales campaigns.
  • Create value-adding bundle products for upsells and cross-talks for new and returning customers; keeping their purchase habits in mind. ‌‌Don't forget to treat your loyal customers (returning shoppers who have purchased over four times) extra special!
  • Analyze data findings, and drive eCommerce sales by crafting personalized sales strategies (early access to deals, high discount, or special offers for only loyal customers, among others) for different groups of users.

Post-sales

At this stage, what are the goals?

  • To reduce the number of returns?
  • To relieve customers of shopping guilt, alleviate fears about delivery or product quality, and make them feel great about their purchase?
  • To create an unforgettable unboxing experience?

Put yourself in the customer's shoes, think about the emotions & experiences they're going through, and craft a well-intended response (emails, notification texts, SMS, or any other mode of communication) to acknowledge their emotions, and answer their questions.

Each customer type comes with different emotional responses (anticipation, fear related to product quality, among others) related to the product you offer. Address such responses at the earliest (within 12 hours ideally) and nip problems at the bud as soon as you encounter any related product delivery.

Continue building interaction post delivery of the product to get reviews/testimonials. Timing is crucial here — your customer won't review the product on day one post-delivery, right? Plan post-sales communications, thinking of the smallest moments that follow post delivery.

Adam's eCommerce Tool Recommendation: Penny Black ‌‌

Penny Black can help create personalized inserts within your packaging as well as print it inside the product boxes.

How to Improve Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

  • Follow up with customers with well-timed, relevant communications from the moment of delivery. It's advisable to wait for a few days post delivery that allows customers to 'experience' product, and then, request for feedback.
  • Add NPS (Net Promoter Score) at the end of each product, and analyze RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary value). Combine findings of both yardsticks to categorize customers in the right segments & understand their behaviour + habits deeper to bring them back for more.

How to use Zero-Party Data To Improve CLV

Create an email survey targeted at understanding customer lifestyle, habits & mindset. The email survey can begin with a question like 'describe your lifestyle' or something simple. Use the answers to personalize the rest of the flows and campaigns you intend to build in the future.

For example, if you're a shoe company, and your first question is describe your lifestyle.

The options may look like:

1. I work in an office

2. I work outdoors, and

3. I am retired.

‌‌At the back of these options, map relevant products for customers to check.

For existing customers, show something similar to their purchase, or send them a survey quiz and say, "Hey! We'd love to be able to give you better recommendations about products. Please put in your response."

  • Get on calls with shoppers in exchange for their time & feedback, and reward them aptly (gift coupons always work!)
  • Besides quizzes, use multi-stage pop-ups with personalized, fun questions before attempting to get email address or any other critical data information. Once data is collected, personalize the email to the T, recommending different products most suitable for them.
"There is so much you can do there, even with very little traffic.‌‌Make every customer interaction fun, exciting and engaging to get people to respond, followed by analyzing the data to craft an unforgettable shopping experience."‌ ‌

🛑 At Mason, we help you to learn how to grow your online business.  Join us at https://getmason.io/modemagic/ and get the lowdown on how to scale your Shopify store fast.

🙌 Get in touch with Adam Pearce; if you want to know more about Blend Commerce or how to retain customers & build brand loyalty: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shopifyexp...

🎉 Join our community to learn the latest about D2C Marketing, including eCommerce strategies for customer acquisition, how to increase the lifetime value of a customer, among other DTC eCommerce business tips, DTC growth strategies & playbooks— everything right here: https://getmason.io/makerslist/‌

This article was written by

Tarunika Rajesh
Tarunika Rajesh
iWrite. iStudy.