Just how do you deliver the best customer shopping experience in today’s eCommerce?
As we see it, the answer is a story of two halves:
- Support and serve the shopper on-site to make it as easy as possible for them to find and purchase what they came looking for.
- Ensure seamless order fulfilment; with all products in their various sizes and variations in stock and ready to pick and ship.
We could go on – let’s face it, the topic of customer experience is pretty exhaustive! But today we’ll focus on these two fundamental factors.
Sympathy for the Seller
Now, we know online sellers have many investments that need to be made at the front end of their stores. It can feel like a constant battle between what you need to do to optimise what you have already vs installing a new solution that can take you to the next level.
What is the next best thing that will give you more revenue?
A tool that will increase conversion – and do so properly.
As much as you need to improve the existing kit in your tech stack, you need to look at the thing that will reduce barriers to conversion. That key lies in customer experience.
Optimising the User Experience
The last thing today’s consumer wants from their online shopping experience is for it to be complicated. They want to find what they’re looking for quickly, encountering the least possible friction.
As a seller, you spend a lot of money on paid search to appear in SERPs relating to what your customers are searching for. If they then land on your website on a generic category page, it’s going to turn them off. Today’s consumer just doesn’t want to have to filter through a ton of product pages to find what they came looking for.
No surprise then that, according to Statista, search and navigation is the most important site element for online shoppers in 2022.
In fact, no less than 61% of shoppers touted making products easy to find through simple search and navigation as the most important attribute of their online shopping experience.
Less effort on the visitors’ end means they can find the products they want without struggle, which increases their chances of buying.
In the US, Harris Poll research found that an unsuccessful search resulted in a lost sale for a retail website, as reported by three out of four consumers – with 48% purchasing the item elsewhere. In fact, more than half (52%) of the respondents said they would typically abandon their entire cart and go elsewhere if there’s at least one item they couldn’t find.
Search is now such a vital aid to conversion that a recent article from Shopify states online stores implementing a search bar are 2 to 3 times more likely to convert than those that don’t.
Is a native search tool expensive?
Search is actually a lot cheaper than a lot of customer experience tech/tools out there.
Additionally, it:
- Adds value for much less cost
- Enables you to make informed decisions on what you need to do
- Provides insight into how to position your products in the future
You can also glean a wealth of data from your search bar that can then inform how you sell, where you sell and what products you could bundle together.
How do you connect your shoppers with relevant results in the most intuitive way?
Look to implement world-leading customer experience AI that boasts a comprehensive suite of features that will supercharge your onsite experience.
Findologic is the leader in its field; offering a unique approach to helping eCommerce businesses complete the shopping experience for the online customer with a digital shopping assistant.
The platform and products automatically adapt to the online shop, drastically reducing maintenance and support and, at the same time, significantly increasing flexibility, usability and customer proximity.
More than just a search bar, Findologic has products that go above and beyond the typical native search functionality. You can use the platform to:
- Promote products that are most relevant to an individual customer
- Optimise your online shop to make product recommendations
- Ensure engagement processes run smoothly and independently
- Merchandise your online products to control exactly how they are displayed
- Create Shopping Guides to help customers decide which products are right for them
- Show stock availability at a glance for individual products and their variations
The best part? It’s extremely accessible. “One week’s budget spent on advertising will give you a whole year’s subscription for Findologic – for astronomically more return on investment,” according to Findologic’s Chief Revenue Officer, Steven Ledgerwood.
Just one last thing…
We’ve discussed that optimising your website so it’s easy to navigate to increase conversions at the front-end is key to providing an optimal online customer experience.
Though it has to be said, every front-end needs a lot of back-end work to operate effectively.
Once you’ve made the sale, you have to be able to deliver, after all.
Google data has found that Google searches for the term “in stock” are up 800% year-over-year and a recent study by Statista cites that 43% of online shoppers named the two most important attributes when shopping online as in-stock availability of desired items and fast, reliable delivery.
The key to giving your customers what they want is to marry your on-site super native search solution with end-to-end order management functionality.
This will provide full visibility of your multichannel orders in one place, enable you to keep track of your inventory across your sales channels and ship your orders as they come in.
Our products may work at different ends of the tech stack, but our solutions help merchants better together than they do separately.
Expandly is thrilled to partner with Findologic to give merchants conversion power and the confidence to fulfil their orders every time.
How about a free website audit? Contact Findologic to see how you can enhance your search results today!
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