3 ways customer experience can boost your ecommerce ROI

3 ways customer experience can boost your ecommerce ROI

Ecommerce is a continuously growing industry, with global sales expected to reach $5.5 trillion by 2027. In 2022, European companies grew as they generated revenue through ecommerce sales. The country with the most significant ecommerce revenue was Ireland, with 33%.

For the last three years, ecommerce has grown in volume and importance. Online shopping activity remains well above its pre-pandemic levels.

Yet, in 2022, 44% of Pure-play e-retailers (online retailers) report being unprofitable.

Despite the hype surrounding ecommerce, many investors and big retailers realize it takes a lot of work to be profitable. Factors include high marketing and advertising costs, low margins, and competition from Amazon.

There are a number of ways to boost your ecommerce ROI, but here are three of the most important, related to the shopping experience that retailers can directly influence.

How can customer experience increase ROI?

In simple words, great customer experiences mean returning customers. More customers, more profit.

To succeed in ecommerce, you need more than just digital platforms and expertise. You need a comprehensive strategy that focuses on delivering value to your customers at every step of their journey and makes them return every time.Let’s simplify them into this 3-step approach to boosting customer experience:

1. Send people to your online store.
2. Help your customers discover products.
3. Optimize your conversion rates.

1. Send people to your online store

How an online shopper finds a product or store is the fundamental part of your ecommerce strategy. Getting more sales starts before a prospect even reaches a product detail page. This could involve:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that your website ranks high for relevant keywords
• Paid advertising campaigns to target potential customers who are already searching for the products or services you offer.
• Social media marketing to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.
• Email marketing to nurture leads and keep them up to date about your latest products and promotions.

2. Help your customer discover products

Making your ecommerce site’s search easy to use helps visitors find what they want. Whether customers know what they want or need help, they’ll have a buying-focused experience.

Keeping your product filtering simple, intuitive, and customer-centered is KEY.

If your product filters are not good, some customers won’t find what they want and will leave your store. This will lead to fewer sales and lower profits.Filters can either be:

• Keyword Based Filters
• Visual Based Filters

Keyword Based Filters

There are two rules about ecommerce filters: simplicity and personalization. To create great ecommerce experiences, it’s important to focus on the customer. It’s not the same journey for a user buying shoes as for the one buying a bike. 

For example, The Baymard Institute did a study. They discovered that the kind of filters provided is important. Most users in any industry want these five filters.

• Price
• User Ratings Average
• Color
• Size
• Brand

Websites will also need to offer other types of filters that are specific to each category. For example, these category-specific filter types could include fabric, occasion, and neckline.

Macy’s is Best-in-Class when it comes to filtering their products. When looking for “Wide Leg Pants” and “Women T Shirt,” the filters adjust based on the product, providing a smooth experience for users.

Sites with mediocre product list usability have a 67-90% abandonment rate. While optimized sites have lower abandonments (17-33%) for users searching for similar products. This translates into as much as a 4-fold increase in leads.

Visual Based Filters

Even with better keyword technology, only 16% of big ecommerce sites have good filters. This is due to the high implementation costs for ecommerce sites.

Visual search is a new technology. It could change how people shop online. With the recent rise of AI, it can lower costs to have better solutions for search filters.

How?

Artificial Intelligence can identify pictures and display similar products that shoppers have seen or popular items that are close by.

Wordless search allows shoppers to find products by using images instead of text. It’s very useful when shopping for things like clothes and home decor that are difficult to describe.

56% of online purchases in the UK are in the Clothing category. Meaning more than half of shoppers need a visual aid.

AI can recommend products, create personalized offers, and provide virtual assistance, resulting in 20% higher customer satisfaction.

For secondhand store Swap.com, implementing AI was pivotal to their success. Their biggest challenge as a company was to make available all the racks of amazing clothes that they have in-store into an online setup.

After implementing Wordless Search, Swap saw a +4.7% increase in conversion rate, an 8% increase in AOV and a 10% uplift of GMV. Across the split test, customers experiencing the buying journey through Miros brought in 2.6x more revenue per user, compared to the control group.

Best of all?

That in less than 60 seconds, Swap.com users can search and find what they love without typing any keyword, making this experience TikTok-like and as engaging as scrolling through social media.

3. Conversion rate optimization

Conversion Rate is an ecommerce metric that describes what percentage of website visitors in a given time frame turn into customers.

CONVERSION RATE FORMULA

Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) x 100%

Since there’s always room for improvement, there’s Conversion Rate Optimization to increase the number of sales on a given ecommerce site.

What CRO does is optimize that metric by running hypotheses experiments and fixing what’s broken in existing website elements.

The goal of each incremental change should be to make it easier for your buyers to find the items they want, add them to their carts, complete a seamless transaction, and return to buy from you again.

There is not a “perfect score” for CRO, since it will always depend on the industry and the other efforts brands are making to bring customers to the site. What’s true is that even big brands get this wrong.

For example, at Marks & Spencer, many products are incorrectly sorted into separate subcategories instead of being offered as filters. This can be confusing for users trying to find the right category, and it can also limit their options since they may be forced to choose from a narrower selection of products.

A good A/B Testing for this website would be to improve its navigation so users could find exactly what they want and desire and make the site as pleasant as if the shopping was happening in their physical stores.

Let’s take a look at an example of how implementing something like a visual search tool could improve Marks & Spencer’s navigation:

A user-friendly main navigation UI is as important as having a well-organized category taxonomy. This is because the user interface is what users see and interact with, and it largely determines whether they can navigate the site intuitively or will be frustrated at every turn.

Running continuous website audits can help retailers identify the optimizations needed for their sites. Keep always an eye on:

• Streamlining the checkout process
• Creating clear product descriptions
• Making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for

To succeed in the competitive and ever-changing world of e-commerce, adopt these three strategies for boosting ecommerce ROI and achieving profitability.