Why Online Feedback is Vital for Ecommerce Managers
The eCommerce industry has experienced a tremendous amount of growth in the past decade. Having jumped from 3.5% of all retail sales in 2008 to nearly 11.9% in 2018,
This growth – in combination with a (still) relatively low market share – represents a huge opportunity for more innovative eCommerce companies looking to overtake their traditional counterparts.
However, in order to latch on to the ‘growth train’, these same eCommerce companies (and therefore, eCommerce managers) are going to have to put their best foot forward. In other words, they’ll need to be sure that they are providing a first-rate online customer experience. And the best way to do this is to start listening to the voice of the customer. After all, your customers can be your best resource in terms of understanding what you’re doing wrong (or right!) on your website or mobile app. So allow me to introduce you to online feedback…
The headstone to a sustainable customer-retailer relationship, increased online conversions and improved customer loyalty, online customer feedback can be a real competitive advantage for companies in the ecommerce industry. However, collecting the right customer feedback takes careful planning and a firm understanding of the journey your customers take when buying a product on your website or app.
In this article we will analyse three reasons why online feedback is a great addition to the digital toolkit of every ecommerce manager.
As an ecommerce manager, you play a critical role in coming up with online sales and marketing strategies, developing these initiatives and managing the execution of website and mobile app projects. Put simply, you’ve got a lot on your plate. But I think we can all agree that your biggest focus lies with the customer. Online feedback is a great way to collect deep and meaningful insights from your customers that enable you to keep your online channels up to par with their expectations.
To show you just how useful a feedback solution can be, let’s take a look at some advantages of using a feedback tool on your website or mobile apps.
1. Helps ecommmerce managers find points of friction across all stages of the online journey
As you might’ve noticed, the online customer journey is rapidly evolving. Today these journeys are longer and more complex. There is no singular purchase point but rather multiple touchpoints that must keep customers engaged. The tricky aspect of having so many touchpoints, however, is that ecommerce companies cannot remain hyper-focused on the purchase itself like they have in the past, but rather they must focus on maximising the value of each stage.
Despite futuristic advances like two-hour delivery and a new drone service, long-term success starts with knowing the fundamental market opportunities and potential points of friction.
Shopify
In ecommerce, this customer journey can be broken down into several Moments of Truth (MoTs). MoTs are crucial as these are moments in which your customer forms an impression of your company or brand, such as searching for products, search result pages, the actual purchase of a product and after-sales service (returns & delivery). For a smooth on-site or in-app journey, these particular moments must be effortless for the customer.
This is where online feedback plays a crucial role. Collecting feedback during these MoTs will give you the best insights into how you can improve and enhance these touchpoints.
Three great ways to collect this online feedback (in practice):
- Collect Feedback on Website / In-app Content. Read more here.
- Collect Feedback within purchasing funnels, using metrics such as Customer Effort Score or Goal Completion Rate. Read more here.
- Determine the loyalty of your customers (post-purchase). Read more here.
Note: Relevancy is key…
Part of attaining good feedback is knowing how to ask the right questions. In other words, smart question routing strategy is key.
With a more in-depth understanding of your customers’ pain points, you’ll be more better equipped with the knowledge to improve those areas and in doing so, enhance the customer experience.
2. Online feedback leads to increased online conversions
From lead capturing, analytics and UX testing to page optimisation, online performance and marketing automation, there are plenty of tactics to choose from when trying to boost conversions. However, feedback will give you the deepest insights and means to make meaningful changes to important online funnels.
For starters, it’s a great way of reducing shopping cart abandonment – which is something that occurs in nearly 77.3% of online orders. Using exit feedback forms, you can collect insights into why your visitors are leaving the checkout process. In practice, this is done using metrics such as Customer Effort Score or Goal Completion Rate, which is often combined with an open comments section. These forms are triggered in cases where it’s clear the visitor is trying to leave the page or website, e.g. mouse movement towards the exit button or the URL bar.
Having this feedback at your fingertips enables you to quickly uncover this valuable insight in real time and immediately implement measures to drive improvements for website performance and customer experience.
Note: it’s important to mention that increased conversions often stem from continuous improvements made to online funnels and web pages, which means your website or app should not be a static medium but rather something that is changing all the time.
3. Helps ecommmerce managers capture leads and close the loop
A feedback solution that offers real-time capabilities gives ecommerce managers a huge competitive advantage. Not only will it shorten response times between you and your customers (which has a tendency to boost loyalty), but it will also enable you to capture visitors while they’re on your website, including live leads.
When a customer fails in reaching his/her goal on your website and they have provided you with their contact information, they become a lead. Having this information available gives you the opportunity to rectify the situation on time and help the customer convert. This is perhaps one of the most critical factors for you as an ecommerce manager, considering you’re likely judged largely based on online performance based KPIs such as sales figures and loyalty.
And the last step, of course is to close the loop with the customer. After all, your customers expect that if they’ve taken the time to provide feedback, your company should take to the time to provide a follow-up. Don’t underestimate the importance of this!
Give your ecommerce website a competitive edge with online feedback…
I hope this article has helped you – an ecommerce manager – understand the importance of collecting voice of customer data. Now it’s up to you to decide which feedback tool you will use to give your ecommerce website its own competitive edge.
