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It doesn’t matter how great your products are or how competitively you set your prices – if you don’t provide an exceptional customer experience online you’re going to struggle to make money through your ecommerce website.

We all know how important customer service is for brick-and-mortar stores when it comes to securing sales and repeat business. Customer experience is equally important for online stores, and figuring out how to improve customer experience online is essential for ecommerce retailers looking to grow.

What is the online customer experience?

Online customer experience doesn’t just relate to your website – it refers to every single interaction a consumer has with your brand online. This includes your site and mobile apps, but also your social media channels. Basically, it’s any digital touchpoint.

While the most important channel for an ecommerce retailer is undoubtedly the website, don’t overlook those other channels for providing a consistent brand experience.

How can you use interest free finance to improve online customer experience?

Whether it’s a mobile responsive website or app so they can shop on their devices, getting in touch with you easily via a chatbot, or a streamlined checkout process, modern consumers want flexibility and convenience at every step of their online customer experience.

This expectation of a customer experience that works for them also extends to payment options.

The customer of today doesn’t want to have to wait for that dream purchase or be hit by high fees or rates of interest. They want to buy now, pay later and get on with living their lives. This is particularly true for Millennial and Gen-Z consumers – a massive 87% of 22 to 44-year olds want to break up large purchases into monthly installments. However, that doesn’t mean they’re looking for the typical credit card model that results in racking up debt.

At Duologi we offer 0% retail finance options so your customer can spread the cost of their purchase over time when cash is a little tight. We can provide payment terms ranging from 3-60 months for purchases between £150 and £15,000.

Flexible retail finance doesn’t just make your customers happy – there are genuine benefits for your business too. Retailers that offer their own financing options have to carry all of the credit risk, but with Duologi you’ll be paid in full when the customer makes the purchase. It’s us that the customer has to pay back.

Other general tips

Want to improve the online customer experience even further? Check out these four other tips for creating exceptional buyer journeys.

1. Make relevant and engaging blog content

A lot of your website visitors will be in the research phase of the buyer’s journey rather than looking to make a purchase at that moment. You can create a website that only caters to those consumers ready to buy, or you can attract consumers who’ll become customers in the future.

To do this you need to create relevant and engaging content, and your website’s blog is the best place to do so.

Create articles that answer the common questions and objections your target audience has about your products. Not only does this content increase your organic website traffic (website visitors that arrive via a Google search that’s not an ad) but it also means your brand will be top of mind for the consumer when they’re ready to make the purchase.

2. Be easy to reach

The internet age has made us all impatient. Although in the past consumers expected to receive a response from brands within days, that’s now dropped to hours or, in some cases, even minutes.

Your business needs to be quick to reply but also easy to reach. This means making your contact details easy to find, but also implementing a live chat on the website or on social media that’s monitored constantly throughout the day. If this isn’t possible out of hours, automated chatbots can fill the gap, but you should set clear expectations for when the customer can expect a reply from a human. Hint: it should be the next day.

3. Have a good website

A great online customer experience doesn’t start with the shopping cart – it has to run through the entire website.

Here are some of the most important ingredients a high converting ecommerce website needs:

It should be fast.

Nothing contributes to a high website bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who enter your site but leave before engaging further) than slow load times. In fact, bounce rate increases by 32% when load time increases from one to three seconds, and by 90% from one to five seconds, according to research by Google.

It should be easy to navigate

Make your website navigation clear, logical and easy to navigate. Your customers don’t want to have to go looking for products within complex nav menus that don’t make sense. Include a site search feature too so people can easily find the products they’re interested in.

Straightforward checkout process

The more steps in your checkout process, the more likely it is customers are going to abandon their carts, so simplify it as much as possible. Progress indicators can help as it shows the customer exactly how long they can expect the purchase to take.

4. Book a consultation to discover more

Want to find out more about how Duologi can significantly improve your customers’ online experience and supercharge your conversion rates? Book a free consultation and step into the future of online retail.