With the wide variety of options available for consumers to purchase online, an ecommerce store’s success is just as much about the experience your customer has whilst trying to purchase from your site, as it is about the products you sell. The latest Brisbane #ShopifyMeetup focused on ‘Creating a Customer-Centric Experience for Ecommerce’, featuring guest speakers Beatrice Ellefsen of dotdigital, Fabienne Costa of YCL Jewels and Scott Dixon of Shopify Plus. The speakers discussed what a customer-centric experience means to them, how they’ve created this in their own stores and what they’ve seen from some of the market leaders in this space. These are our key takeouts from the event.
Connect and Engage With Your Customers Through Email Best Practice – Beatrice Ellefsen, dotdigital
First up we heard from dotdigital’s Head of Customer Success, Beatrice Ellefsen, who walked through some fantastic examples of retailers who are hitting the mark in the email automation space and making an impact through their customer journey.
When it comes to email automation, it’s important to keep your customers engaged and interested in your brand. Dotdigital analysed 30 online retailers across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to find out who was performing well in key fields. Their research found that while 97% of brands triggered a welcome email, only 2 out of 3 sent an abandoned cart email. That’s a huge chunk of brands letting their visitors walk away from a potential purchase. Other areas where brands are falling short include basic email segmentation and product review request emails.
The high-performing brands offered a prominent newsletter sign-up incentive, followed through with an abandoned cart email clearly outlining the benefits of making a purchase, and displayed consistent branding and creative throughout every email sent. You can access dotdigital’s full report HERE or browse through the slide deck from the evening below to see all of Beatrice’s highlights.
[slideshare id=148708238&doc=masterdeck-shopifymeetupmay30th-190602224316]
Exceptional Customer Service at all Touch Points is the Most Vital Facet of Your Brand – Fabienne Costa, YCL Jewels
Next we heard from the founder of the award-winning, globally recognised jewellery brand, YCL Jewels. Fabienne’s most valuable piece of advice was simply to know your customer, interact with them, and make every interaction they have with your brand as personal and unique as you can. To achieve this, you first need to identify who your customer is, where they’re located and how they like to be communicated with. Then make all your interactions tailored to them.
YCL Jewels tailors their service and content to ensure they’re always adding value to the customer. Her key tips for achieving this include:
- Ensure your brand’s mission statement, FAQs and policies are reflected in everything you do. Be consistent across your site copy, EDMs and digital ads. Your mission statement should be something that aligns with your customer and showcases your brand voice.
- Show up for your customer and show empathy. Be present when they’ve got questions, talk to them via your social channels, open the lines of communication and put yourself in their shoes when responding to their problems.
- Utilise Shopify’s features to enhance your customer experience. Try things like Instant Facebook Live Chat, easy return policies, Gift Cards, and ensure your website is easy to navigate.
Increase Conversions by Enhancing Accessibility and Trust – Scott Dixon, Shopify Plus
With a wealth of knowledge on improving UX and conversion rates for merchants, Shopify Plus Front End Developer Scott Dixon gave a refreshing take on how to make your store accessible to each of your customers.
Accessibility is an important element of the customer experience and should be at the forefront of designing and developing your ecommerce store. Knowing how your customers interact and flow through your site is a priority in establishing and growing your conversion rates.
Your site needs to be easy to navigate and the user’s journey to purchase should be as intuitive as possible. Whether your customer is colour blind, vision impaired or a few wine glasses down, the path to purchase should be straightforward and seamless.
Scott highlighted a few of his favourite tools to help assess and identify areas of improvement for your site’s accessibility, including:
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – A helpful in-depth guide for developers on accessibility and best practice guidelines.
- Browser Stack – Allows merchants to test their sites and mobile apps through on-demand browsers for manual, visual and automated tests.
- Dr Scott Hollier (hollier.info) – An online resource hosting a range of workshops, auditing assessments and research for sites and apps.
- TheUserisdrunk.com – A platform to recruit intoxicated customers to test the accessibility of your site.
Another way brands are increasing conversions through their site is by leveraging social proof. Have you ever tried to book accommodation online and seen a pop-up saying “10 people are currently looking at this property”. This is an example of social proof. It can increase trust with your customers and creates a sense of urgency to push them towards making a purchase. Many brands have increased their conversions and cart size using one of the many social proof apps available in the Shopify App Store – just search ‘social proof’ to find out if this tactic could work for your brand.
Another great meet-up tonight in Brisbane #ShopifyMeetup pic.twitter.com/GqgkszOtXH
— Emily Forrest (@forrest_effect) May 30, 2019
And that’s a wrap on another successful Brisbane #ShopifyMeetup! As always, this evening would not have been possible without our sponsors – Andzen, Okendo, Stead Lane and dotdigital.
The next Brisbane Shopify Meetup will take place on August 8th and we’ve already got some exciting speakers lined up! Make sure you join our group on Meetup.com and follow @Reload_Media on Twitter to stay up to date with all the details.
