Seamless means more than a great shopping experience. In the one-stop world, seamless means ideal. It’s the mantra every industry desires to embrace. Because when we work with people, time is money, exchanges are invaluable, and how industries and consumers support each other makes all the difference.
Nothing is more crucial to brick-and-mortar success than the buyer’s shopping experience. Online selling is not only at an all-time high but shows no signs of slowing down in this recent market. Meanwhile, we can instantly express our shopping experience with a button.
Retailers (YOU) must ensure the business can meet and exceed customers’ shopping needs. Because when a buyer’s shopping experience fails, the company fails.
Let me share how you can deliver a seamless experience throughout the customer’s journey and win them during this Mega Sale Season:
Be easily discoverable: Value and Credibility
Just before your customer buys, they need to feel interested. Make sure they are aware of your presence. Online research has been part of the trend. Labels in somebody’s searches with reasonable, easy-to-understand details help customers quickly find what they need and make their shopping journey a pleasure.
APAC shoppers prioritize products and sellers authenticity. In Southeast Asia, keyword containing “official” has gained by more than 125% in Vietnam using chính thức, 15% in Singapore with the use of the term Official Shop, and 70% in Thailand (ออฟฟิเชียล). Searches for the term “genuine” has grown by 20% in the Philippines (totoo), especially during the peak shopping season in 2021 vs. 2020.
Creating a Business Profile is easy. This establishes your brand’s credibility online and helps people find your products quickly. Companies must verify your profiles, which relaxes consumers that information on the page- operating hours, photos, promotions, and sales, are reliable.
Connect with people exploring Google and allow them to discover your products quickly by listing them at no extra charge on results across Google Search, Shopping, and Images. Think about using visually rich creative to make your products more discoverable in the results feed. Allow shoppers to feel confident about the quality of your product. Add details on how a customer can reach out to you when needed.
Smooth website: Navigation and Quick checkout
A significant way to give a great customer experience has a smooth website or app. Ensure the site or app loads quickly and contains clear product descriptions with high-resolution product images to help buyers find what they need to purchase effortlessly.
When e-commerce giant Lazada optimized its homepage to enhance load time by 3X, its mobile conversion rate improved by 16.9%, which is why you should take it seriously, the faster the transaction is, the more consumers can buy your product.
Use Grow my Store to evaluate your retail website’s customer experience and checks how it stacks up against competitors’ shops. It provides precise and clear recommendations for improving your site and boosting your business results.
A smooth web-to-app transition is also an essential part of the e-commerce customer experience because it enables customers to go from an ad to the relevant app page directly and efficiently complete their purchase in the app. Brands can accomplish this frictionless web-to-app shift with app deep linking. When Shopee implemented deep links to make a smooth shopping experience for app users who searched on their mobile browsers, it boosted checkouts by 126%.
Payment Flexibility: Options for customers
Customers likely ask about various accepted payment methods when working in retail with omnichannel commerce or owning any brick-and-mortar business. Do they have Paypal? Visa or Mastercard? Maya or Gcash? How about Buy Now, Pay Later like Atome? Customers want options to make purchasing easier.
Juniper Research data report states that over 2.1 billion customers worldwide will use a mobile payment or mobile money transfer by 2020.
Providing many flexible payment choices means more people can purchase your products and services. It’s also crucial to have tools and strategies in place so that when these questions come, they can be transacted as fast and efficiently as possible. We all know how frustrating long lines can be. Time is money, and consumers want to spend it wisely.
A Harvard Business Review report unveiled that 73% of shoppers used numerous ‘reality’ channels to find and purchase products. While this doesn’t necessarily mean giving VR glasses to shoppers, it does mean analyzing new ways of showing customers a genuine and even experimental shopping experience.
Final Thoughts
Consider the business from an outsider’s standpoint. The retail strategy should be easy and guided when somebody steps into the physical store or clicks on the homepage. If anything, it requires to be faster or more catered to the general message as a label, oust it.
Seamless represents no more stop-and-go. Seamless means the perfect customer experience. It means you can shop with care and confidence and get the essential product and services.
