eCommerce is probably the field with the most key performance indicators (KPIs) to track. Though you can optimize your online business as much as you want, none of that will matter if you’re not keeping track of your goal posts and data.
Ideally, you should choose and monitor your KPIs based on your niche and business goals. Certain KPIs might be relevant for you while others may not, depending on what you’re trying to measure and accomplish.
It’s important to note, however, that your KPIs are just as important as your long-term strategy and goals.
Without keeping track of your performance, you won’t get far – you need the data to back up your decisions otherwise, it’s nothing more than a shot in the dark. Measuring the right KPIs gives you the right information about your business ventures and your customer. Ultimately, this allows you to make the right call.
As mentioned, there are a lot of different things you can be keeping track of when running an eCommerce business and a lot of different ways you can get ahead.
And if you do want to get ahead, you might want to consider tracking customer experience (CX) as part of your bigger KPI strategy.
Here we’ll talk about how to measure customer experience and why its important.
What’s CX and why should I be tracking it?
Your customer experience starts with the first step of your buyer’s journey – that is, when your customers discover your site and onward from there; when they explore your site and decide to make their first purchase.
Whether you’re selling products, services, digital downloads, or something else entirely, your customer experience can bring your business more sales and even more customers (along with many other benefits). Through selling online, everything is measurable. There is no better way to improve your customer experience than through tracking data.
To start tracking your CX, you might want to look at factors such as:
- Abandoned carts.
- Repeat customer and conversion rate.
- Customer support.
- Product experience itself.
Essentially, you want to see if they gave up halfway through a purchase and if so, what stopped them from completing that purchase?
According to HubSpot, 80% of consumers would stop doing business with a company because of poor customer experience. Providing excellent CX isn’t just helpful for the business – it is essential if you want to get far.
When approaching customer experience, it’s important to note that CX is more than just sales figures and KPIs. At the end of the day, it’s about using data to analyze your business and measure the impact of how you treat your customers.
Here are some key reasons as to why you should be tracking CX as part of your eCommerce strategy.
1. It starts with branding
Your customer experience is part of your bigger branding picture and your brand is what makes you stand out in the marketplace.
Ideally, that branding should include your interaction with your customer. If your brand focuses on simplicity and being helpful, your business should reflect that in every step of the way. That’s what customers expect on each of their touchpoints with your business.
Your brand, in turn, sets the precedent for your future customer expectations and experience. Customer experience, then, is how well you deliver on those expectations.
It is imperative to live up to your values or you might start to see more and more customers losing interest.
This is why brand strategy and customer experience are so important for any company that has hopes of being customer driven. If you show your customers that you care about their needs, you create customer loyalty which leads to retention and referrals.
To summarize, if you align your brand with your customer experience, – you’re on the right track.
If you’re not sure how to do this, start with:
- Perfecting the buyer’s journey experience.
- Making sure everything is smooth in execution when making a purchase.
- Making sure your employees reflect your brand values.
2. CX is omnichannel
Like with branding, your customer experience doesn’t start or end with just your website.
Offering omnichannel support across all your channels means interacting with your customers wherever they may be.
By focusing on an omnichannel approach, you’re essentially combining the buying experience of your customers across various channels. Each interaction within a channel impacts a customer’s likelihood to make a purchase and return to the platform across different devices.
To roll out an effective omnichannel CX eCommerce strategy and manage your customer relationship effectively, you can start with gathering data on customer preferences, interactions and behavior.
Some customers prefer shopping online exclusively, some in-store, and some travel back and forth between the different mediums.
However, more and more customers prefer a mixed platform experience. To leverage this, you can segment your customer experience and engage them based on the channel – personalizing their experience in each place.
3. Combine with a UX strategy
Finally, if you truly want to track and improve your customer experience, be sure to include it in your bigger user experience strategy.
What’s the difference?
While UX deals with all aspects of your consumer’s interactions with a company and its products, CX is broader in scope and deals with interactions a person has with a brand.
CX goes beyond UX and covers aspects such as marketing, customer service, sales, support, while UX focuses more on usability, design and interface.
Good CX is built on top of good UX.
A smart UX design can complement customer support, sales and marketing to deliver an exceptional overall customer experience.
To achieve maximum conversions, combine UX with CX to add value based on understanding the customer.
This is what it boils down to:
Both UX and CX are customer-oriented and focus on the experience your business creates for a user. Understanding that a good UX can help users get to where they need to be sooner and more effectively is the first step to kicking off a positive CX. Everything that follows is also in your hands. The experience you choose to deliver once you’ve got the customer to where they want to be is ultimately up to you. The CX you provide is, after all, a product of the interactions your business has with your customer.
At the end of it all, it is safe to say that the road to success is paved with many a happy customer- take measures to understand your customers effectively and the rewards you reap will be tenfold.