Tips to Improve Customer Experience for Your WooCommerce Store
We all have heard this saying, “The customer is always right”. Customer experience is one of the most important aspects of your business. Giving high priority to customers never holds you back. It strikes a balance between interactions and experiences throughout the journey.
As a WooCommerce store owner, you must first address your customers’ concerns, and then address the issues that prevent your customers from purchasing your products. You cannot sit back and relax while your customers have negative experiences with your store.
The eCommerce industry is booming, and customers have plenty of options at their fingertips. It is more likely that no excuses will be enough to cover up your loss. So it will be burdensome for you and your business if you lose customers due to customer dissatisfaction.
In this article, I’m going to share some tips with all the WooCommerce store owners out there so that they can improve customer experience for their business.
So, let’s get started.
Understanding Customer Behavior Online
Customer satisfaction is critical to increasing your store’s revenue. An individual customer who has a positive experience with your store is more likely to become a repeat and loyal customer.
Customer experience influences a customer’s willingness to be loyal. If you want to keep your customers to you then you must focus on their user experience.
Understanding customer behavior will help you in choosing your target audience for your store and creating more desirable product and service offerings.
It won’t necessarily tell you who is interacting with your store but what’s important is how they are interacting. Let’s check out some key factors that influence customer behaviors.
- Psychological
A customer’s personality, perceptions, well-being, self-esteem, and beliefs are all included here.
They are difficult to quantify, but they can have a significant impact on a customer’s decision-making and purchasing decisions. A person who values or is motivated by family ties, for instance, will exhibit different purchasing habits than a person who is driven by independence and self-reliance.
- Individuality
Including gender, age, and income.
Individual attributes can range from more lifestyle-based characteristics like hobbies and daily routines to more demographic characteristics like gender, occupation, and location. Age and generation are two examples of individual attributes. Generation Z and Generation X buyers have different buying habits that require distinct advertising strategies.
- Societal
Includes family and friends. The cultural background and social networks of customers are important here.
People who interact with each other regularly can influence their purchasing behavior and processes. What is the most influential social aspect for a customer? Many researchers believe it is related to the family. Some have even observed how families pass down brand loyalty through generations.
- Economical
The socioeconomic situation and social class of a customer also influence their behavior.
Personal income, family income, and credit can all influence what a customer is buying. Customers have more purchasing power for new products, both basic and luxury when the economy is thriving on a larger scale. On the other hand, a weak economy can result in lower buying power.
- Situational
Situational aspects include the environment and circumstances in which customers find themselves when making a buying decision, whether in a physical store or an online store.
Holidays are a common situational factor that marketers take advantage of because many consumers are not working and have more time to shop. Other situational factors, such as mindset, mood, and attitude, are more personal.
How Do Customers Make Buying Decisions Online
Each customer persona will have a unique reason for choosing your WooCommerce store, and it is critical to identify it. Consider the external factors influencing the customer’s purchasing decision in addition to the products or services.
The customer decision-making process may appear confusing, but when making a purchase, all customers follow the same basic steps to determine which products and services will best meet their needs and from where they will buy them. Thinking about the context of the customer’s needs is an excellent way to identify areas for improvement in the customer experience.
The decision-making process is critical but let’s break the ice for now. There are some basic steps in the customer decision-making process. This is the process by which customers determine whether or not to make a purchase.
The steps are?
- Problem Recognition
- Informative Search
- Alternate Competitor
- Purchase Decision
- Retention Behavior
Problem Recognition
Customers will always seek a solution to their problems. To be more specific, whether influenced internally or externally, the same response that occurs is ‘desire’. Once a customer recognizes a desire, they must gather information to determine how to fulfill that desire.
By creating a comprehensive and detailed brand campaign for your WooCommerce store to increase brand awareness and recognition, you can identify the needs of your customers and gain their trust. Above all, you want them to believe they have a problem that only you can solve.
At this point, you can influence customers.
Informative Search
Consumers once more rely on internal and external factors, as well as previous interactions with a product or brand, both favorable and unfavorable, when researching their options. During the information stage, they may browse options in person or consult online resources such as Google or customer reviews.
Your task as a brand is to provide potential customers with the information they require in the hopes that they will purchase your product or service. Make a funnel and plan out the types of content that will be required. Present yourself as a reliable source of information and knowledge.
Word-of-mouth marketing is another crucial tactic. Because people tend to believe their friends and family more than they do businesses, it’s important to include user-generated content on your WooCommerce store, such as user reviews or video testimonials, etc.
Alternate Competitor
Customers nowadays have developed criteria for what they want in a product. They are now measuring their potential options against comparable alternatives. Alternative competitors may show up with lower prices, additional product benefits, product availability, or even something as personal as color or style options.
Your marketing materials should be designed to persuade customers that your product is superior to alternatives. It will be ideal for your WooCommerce store if you can overcome objections by researching your competitors so that you can answer questions and compare benefits.
Maybe then you’ll be able to establish yourself as the best option for your customers.
Purchase Decision
This is the moment the customer has been anticipating: the purchase. Consumers should reach a logical conclusion on the product or service to purchase after gathering all of the facts, including feedback from previous customers.
If you’ve performed your task properly, the consumer will recognize your product as the best option and decide to buy it.
Retention Behavior
This stage of the consumer decision-making process requires both the consumer and the seller to reflect. You should always keep an eye on the following as a seller:
- Did the purchase meet the consumer’s identified need?
- Is the customer satisfied with his or her purchase?
- How can you maintain contact with this customer?
Remember, it is your responsibility to ensure that your customer has a positive experience with your product.
Following-up emails, discount coupons, and newsletters could all be used to entice the customer to make another purchase after the initial purchase. You want to gain repeat customers, and in an age when anyone can leave an online review, it’s more important than ever to keep customers satisfied.
Maybe then you’ll get to see that your customers are returning to your WooCommerce store and acting loyal to your products.
How You Define WooCommerce Customer Experience
The customer experience refers to how a WooCommerce store interacts with its customers throughout the purchasing process. As the WooCommerce store becomes more crowded, retailers must find new ways to entice customers to buy from them regularly.
It is the total of your customer’s interactions with your WooCommerce store. It starts when a potential customer first comes into contact with your store, whether through a conversation with a friend, viewing an advertisement, conducting a web search, or any other method.
The first impression is extremely important. The next major event is a visit to your WooCommerce store, where everything from graphics to copy to the purchasing process, product search, and web page performance can influence perception.
If the visit was satisfactory and the item met the customer’s expectations, the payment and transaction completion stages will follow.
Conversion rates can be significantly increased by improving the customer experience. The following are some suggestions for improving your WooCommerce store’s customer experience.
Strategies to Follow for Improving Customer Experience
Customers expect a positive experience from online stores, not just a transactional relationship. To differentiate your company from its competitors, you should provide a delightful customer experience. Let’s see what strategies lead to a better customer experience.
Extensive Customer Research
You can make changes once you understand what draws visitors to your online store. Because trends change over time, so will preferences. People will lose interest in something that used to be popular.
You should conduct extensive customer research to improve the content of your eCommerce website. If you want to impress your customers, give them interesting items that meet their needs.
This step is feasible if the information is gathered ahead of time.
To capture your audience’s attention, you should be aware of behavioral patterns and online trends. As a result, your visitors will be excited about your brand throughout their interaction.
Offer Special Deals & Discounts to Customers
Users shop online because they expect additional incentives such as offers, discounts, or redeemable coupons. Creating a coupon code system can help ensure that your customers get a good deal and stay loyal to your store. You can also provide them with more personalized and customized coupons and promotions. It can assist you in establishing a loyal customer base for your eCommerce store.
Likewise, by offering limited-time deals and discounts, you can effectively create demand among your target audience. If executed correctly, this strategy can also help you promote newly launched products as well as products that had less visibility or were initially overlooked. Once you have established a regular customer base for your WooCommerce store, they will also purchase non-discounted products from you.
First-time user offers, clearance sale offers, free returns and exchanges, combo offers, volume discounts, flash sale offers, and seasonal discounts are some popular WooCommerce sales incentives on your stores.
Additional Payment Systems
Another way to improve your customer’s shopping experience is to offer them a variety of payment options when they check out. Consider how inconvenient it is to be unable to locate a payment system that you are familiar with.
Customers would rather cancel their order than place one because it would be inconvenient for them to set up new payment options.
To avoid this problem, provide a different payment system to assist your customers in checking out their shopping carts.
Place Banners on The Page in Key Areas.
People prefer to visit online stores and websites that are memorable and catch their attention right away. The best way to accomplish this is to create large and appealing banners to highlight your WooCommerce stores’ new promotions, additions, products, launches, and offers. These banners should highlight your store’s key features, inform visitors, and direct traffic to specific pages.
Many eCommerce websites fail to attract customers because their banners are overshadowed by written content or product images. As a result, it is critical to exercise caution when deciding on banner placement and how it appears on your store page alongside the rest of the product content.
These banners should be eye-catching, colorful, and festive, while also reflecting the essence of your WooCommerce business.
Optimize Store Performance
The key to a successful eCommerce store is a fast-loading website that allows customers to quickly browse products. Even if website speed has no direct impact on WooCommerce sales, it may be the deciding factor in acquiring new customers. If your website takes a long time to load, your customers may abandon it. As a result, you must ensure that your website loads quickly.
You can achieve this by selecting the best WooCommerce hosting platform. You can also choose a theme that will make your website faster and avoid complicated plugins and themes that will slow down your website’s performance. Several tools can assist you in optimizing your website’s speed and reducing processing time.
Make Your Store Mobile-Friendly
People shop online from anywhere; they can track their orders at any time, even if they are at home or on the subway.
All of this is more accessible with portable devices, which have aided e-commerce growth in recent years.
If you own a WooCommerce store and want to grow your customer base and profit margins, you must have a mobile-friendly website.
The statistics are clear: mobile devices account for more than half of all web browsing.
As a result, having a WooCommerce site optimized for small screens allows you to remain competitive and attract new customers from this demographic.
Always run mobile device tests on your website. Testing is required to ensure that your site is ready for public use.
You can also use mobile testing to see if something is wrong with your store. As a result, you can quickly solve and debug problems. Don’t disappoint your customers by providing a slow website experience.
Mobile-friendly features on WooCommerce will help you impress your customers and increase sales.
Maintain A Calming & Simple Theme
Every WooCommerce store owner wants their store to be visually appealing while also standing out from the crowd.
You might also believe that overly flashy or complicated themes will turn off customers because they will have difficulty finding what they are looking for and navigating the site.
Making things simple is the best way to accomplish this. Fonts are one of the many things that can be changed at any time.
You can also use images to enhance the appearance of your website. Having a gaze banner, for example, that stimulates people’s interest in what you have to offer is critical.
Include a logo at the top of your page to let people know who your company is affiliated with. You can also use a header image on the left side of your website to showcase some of your most popular products or services.
You can also use themes to change the look and feel of your site, or come up with other creative ways to improve its appearance.
With so many options, it’s important to remember that most stores benefit from simplicity. It keeps everything in order and allows visitors to easily find what they’re looking for.
It should go without saying that good website performance is essential.
After Checkout, Implement Upsells & Cross-Sells
Upsells and cross-sells are popular features in many eCommerce stores. When you search for a specific product on an online store, it suggests a few more similar items. Upselling is a technique that encourages customers to spend more money by providing equal or better products and related offers. It also implies that the recommended products may be more expensive, resulting in customers purchasing more expensive products.
Cross-selling is a similar technique that encourages customers to buy additional services, items, and products related to the selected item for a slightly higher price.
You can market an upsell or cross-sell immediately following the checkout process. Strategically implementing both of these techniques can assist you in increasing the sale of your WooCommerce store and redirecting the focus of your target audience to specific products.
Display Customer Feedback
Testimonials are essential for any business. Customers will base their decision to use your brand on previous reviews, regardless of the type of business you run.
Customer feedback has become a valuable resource. 88% of customers use online reviews to assess a company’s customer service.
When a new audience contacts your brand for the first time, they are unlikely to trust it immediately. As a result, testimonials are critical in convincing people to do business with you.
Customer engagements can be highlighted in a separate section. Please include a few sentences describing what they say about your shop, items, and even customer experience. It will reveal how you conduct business professionally.
Display your visitors’ client testimonials from the start, once they have formed an opinion of your store (and give you great feedback).
They will not decide whether or not it is worthwhile to take a stroll through your site once they have gotten a sense of it (and received great comments).
Use an extra widget to display testimonials about you, as this will quickly pique your visitors’ interest.
People are now looking for third-party confirmation when making an online purchase. Here’s why customer advocacy is so important.
You can turn every customer into an advocate by focusing on providing exceptional customer experiences and expressing your company’s desire to go above and beyond.
Make Shipping Easier for Customers
Customers consider the shipping method and cost when purchasing non-downloadable products. Incomplete and ambiguous shipping information can often discourage people from making a purchase. As a result, it is critical to simplify shipping methods for your WooCommerce store’s customers.
Because the products are shipped to different locations, the shipping cost may be higher than the customer anticipates. You can choose to temporarily hide the shipping method or cost on your WooCommerce store to keep your customers engaged. It also improves the customer experience by allowing your customers to choose between available shipping options and by allowing them to set customizable filters.
Several plugins provide a variety of options for simplifying shipping for your WooCommerce store customers. You can get such plugins allowing you to hide shipping based on order subtotal, countries, postal code, and a variety of other factors.
Use Video Marketing Strategies
Many clients would rather watch YouTube content than read a lengthy blog post to learn about a company.
With this in mind, you are aware that video marketing, such as product demos and tutorial videos, may convince your target audience to visit your eCommerce site.
When consumers see a video embedded in a post or on a page, they are more likely to click on it rather than ignore it.
Because this content type is easily accessible, people may quickly check it to view the message. It’s ideal for people who don’t have time to read a lengthy product description.
Implement Augmented Reality Technology
Augmented Reality (AR) technology enables you to see virtual graphics that are generated right in front of your eyes.
You can examine and estimate how the product will appear in reality by using this digital overlay image.
AR technology benefits eCommerce by allowing customers to see the “real” product without having to visit a store. Assume you’re looking for new clothes. Because each company has its sizing measurements, determining the size will be difficult.
Because the old internet store only offers computer photos, you can’t be sure if the shirt will fit your body. Nonetheless, you can try on the garment as if you were in a physical store by using AR technology.
Improve Your Website’s Overall User Experience.
Finally, the most important factor influencing the growth of your WooCommerce store’s sales is its usability and the experience it provides to your customers. The more convenient and user-friendly your website is, the more customers you will keep. Customers will lose interest if they have difficulty navigating the website and finding products easily.
As the owner of a WooCommerce store, you should take extra precautions to ensure that your website is convenient, easy to use, and properly optimized. Make sure to customize it, use SEO optimization for its page contents, and include clear buttons that customers can easily find.
A practical and user-friendly design will increase customer usage, converting them into a loyal and regular consumer base, which will automatically increase your WooCommerce store’s sales.
The Importance of A Positive Customer Experience on Your WooCommerce Store
You undoubtedly understand the importance of providing excellent eCommerce customer service. But, for the sake of clarity, let’s take a look at the three main things you’ll be able to accomplish by maximizing the above tips to improve the customer experience for your WooCommerce store.
Creating meaningful client satisfaction is essential for establishing trust with your intended audience and keeping them coming back over time.
Develop a distinct selling offer to increase overall value. Another significant benefit of improving your eCommerce customer experience is that you will be honing your brand’s unique selling proposition.
Customers’ brand interactions are never the same.
The modern customer experience you provide should be distinct enough to provide value that your clients cannot get elsewhere while also being familiar enough to encourage engagement and development.
Customers will have no reason to leave your company if you provide something of value that they cannot get elsewhere.
Furthermore, once your brand has established a distinct customer experience in your industry, the overall value of everything your company has to offer will increase.
Providing an exceptional customer experience is critical to meeting your company’s goals. This practice applies to both your financial and team’s “bigger picture” objectives.
On a financial level, providing an exceptional experience to your clients has numerous benefits, including:
- Increased frequency of sales
- Higher-order average values have been increased
- Better advice and lower acquisition costs
Again, your loyal customers will gladly pay a little more for your goods or services, resulting in more profit for your WooCommerce store.
When you look at the big picture, you may be able to reinvest these extra profits into your company, allowing it to increase its efforts across the board. You’ll be able to earn more money as a result.
You will be able to make much more progress toward your company’s ultimate goal. And, once you’ve achieved those goals, you can aim even higher.
Your financial success benefits your suppliers, influencers, and any other company entity with which you collaborate.
When you help your clients succeed, you set off a chain reaction that benefits everyone in your organization.
In the grand scheme of things, this also allows people in your company’s sphere of influence to provide more value to ecosystem participants.
How Improving User Experience Can Benefit Your WooCommece Store
Customer Satisfaction
One of the best results of tailoring the shopping experience for each customer at your business is this. One study found that if a customer’s first experience with an online store was good, more than 40% of them would return.
Many business owners put a lot of effort into their marketing plans to encourage repeat business. Therefore, you should make an effort to personalize the customer experience because it could have a big impact.
Uncertain Purchases
If a salesperson suggests a product based on a conversation with you, you are more likely to purchase that product. Even if you had no intention of purchasing that product on that particular day. Upselling based on previous purchases would be a highly profitable strategy.
Revenue Growth
Customers who receive personalized service are more likely to buy a more expensive product. User experience is a legitimate concern, and it does help an online store generate more money. Increased conversion rates generally would also be a result of more personalized customer experiences. Here is a different article on conversion optimization tactics.
Reduced Returns and Refunds
The extremely low return rate of impulsive purchases is another encouraging point in favor of personalized service. Impulsive shoppers make the unplanned decision to keep the items they bought. This is a very encouraging statistic that would motivate owners of online stores to tailor their customer experience.
Wrap Up
Improving customer experience is a clear destination for eCommerce as it evolves. You must always ensure that your customers have a smooth experience while shopping on your WooCommerce store and interacting with your products. The advice provided above will undoubtedly assist you in creating an outstanding WooCommerce website.
These suggestions are simple to implement and can be implemented quickly. You can easily satisfy your customers while increasing product sales. The suggestions are simple but effective for any WooCommerce store.
So, without further ado, start improving the customer experience for your WooCommerce store using these tips.