What’s the most important thing you can do to keep your ecommerce store healthy and profitable? Is it ensuring a fully stocked e-store? Or maybe it’s all about attractive marketing?
As an ecommerce entrepreneur, it can be easy to get caught in the weeds and lose track of what’s really important. Sure, a stockpile of popular items and smart marketing strategy are important – but these aren’t the most important factors in your ecommerce success story.
Well, then what is?
The correct answer, is meeting your customers’ expectations. Below we will cover customer expectations and why they are essential to ecommerce.
Start with Solid Research
In order to meet your customers’ expectations, you must first know what they are. Brands all too often assume what shoppers’ needs and wants are. Then they foolishly pour a bunch of time and resources into a pet project that fails to address consumer concerns.
It’s better to ask your target audience what they want, and what they expect. Glean insights from customer surveys, social media polls, and the like. You can also pilfer data from similar studies conducted by your competitors. After all, you are likely gunning for the same shoppers.
Common Concerns
While it is best to do you own research, today’s consumers usually look for a few common themes. These include convenience, ease of use, and availability. Keep in mind, these are just general themes which can be applied to any number of efforts.
For example, “availability” might apply to the availability of specific products or the availability of your help staff after hours. Meanwhile, convenience might be as simple as the ability to order products online; or as complex as a wide array of delivery options, including overnight shipping.
The key takeaway here is while most shoppers do want the same things – it’s important to get clarity on the specifics.
- Overt Stocking Information: Have you ever had a shopper complete an order, only to have to inform them the chosen product is out of stock? It’s a nightmare. Nine times out of 10, they won’t accept anything other than a refund. You can’t blame them. They’d already made their decision.
To avoid awkward customer interactions like this, share overt stocking information. Simple messages like “Only 2 Left!” will alert customers of dwindling stock and may even motivate them to complete their purchases quickly. A win-win.
- A Clear Path to Checkout: When customers open your checkout page, they expect to be walked through the process with no interruptions. Unfortunately, some ecommerce vendors mistakenly believe this is a good time to push extra products or advertisements. These will only distract the shopper and could lead to high rates of cart abandonment.
- A Sense of Security: Customers are giving you personal financial information to complete orders and they expect you to keep it safe. Unfortunately, some ecommerce sites lack even the most basic security features, such as SSL certification.
Luckily, popular ecommerce platform providers like Shopify bake security features right in. What is an ecommerce platform, exactly? An ecommerce platform provides the ability to build your own store more easily. This is made possible with a nice variety of customizable design templates and the other essentials key to doing business online.
- Active Listening: It helps to show customers you are actively listening to their recommendations. If buyers answer a post-purchase survey saying they want more shipping options, share a blog post or an image on your website saying, “You said it, we listened: New shipping options at checkout!”.
Similarly, you can host social media surveys or polls asking customers to share what’s most important to them (holiday deals, exclusive promotions, eco-friendly packaging, etc.). Once you have your answers, make the changes necessary before announcing it to your followers.
So before you make a change to your e-store, be sure to run it by your customer base. After all, it’s their expectations that mean sink or swim for ecommerce entrepreneurs.