The concept of positive customer experiences as a means to increasing marketing costs in e-commerce

Personally, familiar or even inspiring? Only in rare cases describe as customer contact on e-commerce shops. This is understandable focus but most shops on automation, handling high volumes, speed and low cost. However, positive customer experience and a good online experience can be an important success factor for e-commerce companies – especially in times of rising prices media that make customer acquisition more expensive and complex. The design of positive experiences aims to change the behavior of customers: a better image of brand or company, an individual customer communication and increased confidence can have a positive effect on central KPIs such as direct page view, click-through rates and conversion. Thus, also costs can be minimized. Knowing the own customers and to understand and implement this in the communication and in the offers, therefore is the recipe for success that will be for the next ten years, the growth drivers. This, however, a significant change in the mindset, the organization and the IT landscape of many e-commerce companies is necessary.

Positive online experience to create

How can such a positive experience for the customer to create? They originate from the customer of his nature and his needs: for security, pleasure, recreation or social connections. For the implementation of e-commerce include the areas of familiarity, individual treatment, entertainment and confirmation will be considered. Familiarity with the customer arises, for example, if feels recognized. This includes in particular the knowledge to store names, personal circumstances and shopping behavior. An individual and preferential treatment can be done by adapting Discounts, first access to products, better services and of course tailored to the customer offers and information. During the entire purchasing process, the customer would like to talk to. Screws may be interesting information or surprises such as segment-specific shopping music here. The customer wants to purchase before and one after his confirmation that he had received met with his selection of the products and stores a good decision. This can be achieved through a transparent purchase history and feedback messages.

In addition to the factual satisfaction with price, convenience and speed give exactly these experiences to the customer a positive feeling based on the brand of the shop. To design can in principle use all customer touch points: Newsletter, Mobile App, Social Sites, Online Store, call centers, parcel delivery, etc.

Use contact points for positive online exprience

In the shop itself, there are numerous ways to implement positive experience associations. Various measures provide useful, for example in the design and content of shop windows, chat function and ordering process. If the customer has already left data on previous purchases, an important starting point is created [1] . What can eg be all cut in the online shop to the customer?

In the shop window should be integrated in the first place the customer’s name and his purchase history. Depending on the customer segment adapted imagery, content and product images can be displayed. Attractive are also the appropriate status, specific, time-limited offers. Of what is important customers can shop do its contact point with contact data, possibly even with image and name. For the entertainment surprising Shopping Music comes into question focused on the shopping behavior of customers.

Another possibility is the customer chat . Here, customers can directly be welcomed and asked about their satisfaction with the final order on entering the online stores. The chat can also be used to satisfy the customer directly help in the procurement process or to get feedback or to respond to crashes in the purchasing process.

The design of the ordering process should eventually disclose what products the customer has already bought what questions he had and what was edited. For this purpose, the shop can make available to the customers two weeks after ordering a positive confirmation email. In addition, appropriate payment methods can offer for different customer segments or status groups.

Infrastructure for data usage

The measures described provide a little insight of how to complete customer data in the online shop for analysis but also use for real-time interaction. This is based on an infrastructure that enables this data sharing. This includes not only the appropriate IT landscape, but also the mindset and the know-how of employees and adapted processes. In order to implement the topic of customer satisfaction and positive customer experiences in particular, it therefore requires a comprehensive change in e-commerce companies. Before embark on business, they need to define the requirements and analyze what changes are needed and what effect this may have.  

Measures that create positive experiences for customers, such as special offers or better services, first of all cause significantly higher costs. This shop operators can define what action ever be in the budget, they have the customer value determine and define on this basis, which means are provided for each customer segment. For segmentation , other criteria from the master data can be identified other than the customer value. They allow you to specifically target the response and the deals on the target group. As part of the subdivision by customer status , the corresponding benefits for the status groups are defined. These services per status group then depend on the customer value and according to the segmentation properties. They include a precise assignment of the communication, the voucher ups and other measures. For example, A customers could receive higher coupons, wertigere e-mails and a four-week money back guarantee.

By an appropriate assignment logic shop owner can specify the conditions under which obtain the respective status groups or segments defined communication or a defined range. To receive a reminder call A customer if they have differing not purchased from your average one month. Other award logics can be parades, birthdays, visit the shop, an adaptation of the profile status, but also a change of status group.

For the communication should be established which different designs and layouts of advertising media are used and which receives the letter and content relevant target groups.

The data management needs existing data of purchasing behavior to provide general behavioral data accumulate at the customer level to complete the picture of the customer. Among the new information in customer behavior are browsing activities, the use of social media and the involvement of other media via mobile app at the customer level. This can also be defined as survey data can be generated through the online shop or e-mail.

As metrics for assessing the positive experiences, alongside the classic KPIs of e-commerce as click through ratio additional metrics are considered. Previously stored KPIs such as visit duration, dropout rates and direct hits measure the quality and satisfaction.  

This action summary shows how e-commerce a deeper customer relationships can be established, then the direct page views, click counts and conversion rates increases. For shop owners must disqualify the customer contact points so that the customer gets the feeling of familiarity, appreciation and individual treatment. For this purpose, but existing customer data must be used and processed in an appropriate manner. This is only possible if the measures are based on extensive changes in the corporate structure. They relate to motivation and strategy level, the organizational units and the IT infrastructure. What measures will be implemented in any form, ultimately, depends strongly on the company and of course the change in the market environment strategy. But the ever-growing interest of major online player, refocus the system on the topic of customer loyalty shows that the change has already begun in this direction.

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[1] The article assumes that the customer can be recognized over a runtime cookie from the shop or is logged in the region „My Store“.