Increase customer satisfaction in your online shop

Satisfied customers are the foundation for any long-term successful business – also and especially for online shops, because the competition is usually big and only a few clicks away. That’s why more and more online shops are focusing on increasing customer satisfaction. It is no coincidence that customer-centric models of the customer journey and the customer experience are increasingly being integrated into marketing and sales strategies.

After all, the focus is increasingly on the customer or user. If their expectations and wishes are not met, they will simply abandon the purchase and possibly switch to the competition. If, on the other hand, you exceed customer expectations and ensure satisfied customers, customer loyalty to your online shop will increase.

So give yourself a competitive edge by increasing customer satisfaction. There are many ways to do this, which we will explain to you in this article.

Why you should increase customer satisfaction

But first, let’s take a step back and look at the importance of customer satisfaction in e-commerce. It’s obvious that if you increase customer satisfaction, you’ll strengthen customer loyalty and generate more sales as a result. But what exactly does this look like in e-commerce? What concrete advantages do you gain when you focus on customer satisfaction?

1. Generate initial purchases and attract new customers

Customer satisfaction doesn’t start when the customer holds the product in his or her hands. Rather, the entire shopping experience is critical to ensuring a satisfied customer. If you increase customer satisfaction right at the beginning of the customer journey, you will record significantly more initial purchases and thus new customers in your online shop.

2. Increase existing customers

Acquiring new customers is one thing. Converting them into existing customers is quite another. If your customers are satisfied with both the product quality and the overall shopping experience in your online shop, the chances of converting new customers into existing customers increase. A comparison between the sales generated by existing customers and new customers makes clear why your existing customers are so important: Although existing customers account for an average of just under 8% of traffic, they generate 41% of sales in the entire online shop.

So ensure increased customer satisfaction along the entire customer journey to completely satisfy your customers and avoid dissatisfied customers. This also includes the post-purchase phase (retention) – e.g. shipping, packaging and clever email marketing.

3. Encourage word of mouth (recommendations)

Which brings us to another advantage you gain from satisfied customers: word of mouth or personal recommendations from your satisfied customers. The stronger the customer satisfaction, the more likely your customers will recommend individual products or even your entire online shop.

That’s exactly what your goal should be: To satisfy your customers so much that they recommend you online shop on their own initiative. Personal recommendations are the highest level of so-called social proof. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon in which people orient themselves on the actions and recommendations of other people. The more personal the recommendation, the stronger the effect of social proof.

Learn more about social proof and how to use it in your online shop.

Increasing customer satisfaction along the customer journey

The customer receives the order, holds the product in his hands and is happy and satisfied. This moment is indeed crucial for customer satisfaction. Nevertheless, it is neither the beginning nor the end of customer satisfaction. If you want to have satisfied customers, you need to look at all phases of the customer journey and make appropriate optimizations:

• Awareness: attract attention and create demand
• Consideration: convince potential customers to make a purchase
• Purchase: influence purchase decision and simplify purchase
• Retention: strengthen customer loyalty and increase existing customers

1. Customer satisfaction in the awareness phase: sending the right messages

In the first phase of the customer journey (awareness), you gain the attention of your target group and arouse or appeal to a need that you can meet with your products. Known measures are: Ads (Social Media & SEA), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Organic Social Media Marketing. But older and newer channels such as print and podcasts are also suitable for this purpose.

To lay the foundation for high customer satisfaction from the start, messages in the awareness phase should be tailored to the potential customer and not create false expectations. For example, if you sell high-quality and correspondingly high-priced shoes in your online shop, you should not allude to the supposedly low price, but rather to the quality. Otherwise, you will not be able to meet the expectations and a purchase will be a long way off.

2. Customer satisfaction in the consideration phase: optimized user experience design

Once you have gained the attention, the next step is to convince the potential customer to buy. This is usually the longest phase in the customer journey, and increasing customer satisfaction in this phase is correspondingly complex.

At this point, the potential customer not only finds out whether there are matching products, but also how trustworthy and professional your online shop is. Optimizing the user experience design also belongs to this phase:

• Set up an intelligent search function as well as user-friendly navigation to make it easier for visitors to search and browse. This way, the visitor knows right away where to find the desired products. An additional breadcrumb navigation gives the visitors a better orientation in your online shop.
• Ensure optimized product descriptions that give visitors a good impression of the product. Good product descriptions convince people to buy the product, while at the same time being realistic, thus preventing unpleasant surprises and dissatisfied customers. Pay attention to detailed information that differs depending on the product category.
• With a mobile-optimized online shop, you’ll not only pick up first-time visitors with mobile devices, but also regular customers who previously shopped in your online shop using desktop devices. Read the blog post Successful Mobile Commerce: 7 Tips for Online Shops to learn how to increase customer satisfaction among your mobile users.
• In case some shop visitors experience problems, place service contact information in the footer as well as prominently in the header. This inspires trust and binds potential customers to your online shop.

3. Customer satisfaction in the purchase phase: make the purchase easier

You have gained the attention and guided the potential customers through your online shop in a user-friendly way by an optimized user experience design. The visitor has thus recognized his need, is convinced by your online shop and has ideally already added products to the shopping cart.

If the potential buyer has already come this far, there is a high level of interest in buying and at least a certain degree of customer satisfaction. Nevertheless, the visitor is now at perhaps the most critical point of the customer journey: the final purchase decision. For you as an online merchant, there are two important touchpoints to consider from now on: the shopping cart and the checkout.

With the appropriate optimizations, you not only increase customer satisfaction, but also reduce shopping cart abandonment in your online shop:

Shopping cart optimization: The shopping cart is the bridge between product selection and checkout. To increase customer satisfaction in the shopping cart as well, you need to know visitors’ expectations regarding the cart. If the checkout starts with the shopping cart, your customers expect an overview of products, prices and other important information concerning the purchase, payment and shipping. If you succeed in providing this overview, you can look forward to significantly more orders and satisfied customers. Learn more about shopping cart optimization.

Checkout optimization: The checkout is the last step before a successful purchase and should be clearly arranged. A good and clear checkout has no more than 5 steps, depending on the industry and product category. However, please note: for complex products with a high need for explanation, there may be more steps. The shorter the checkout process and the less data is requested, the more likely you are to achieve the desired customer satisfaction. Learn more about checkout optimization.

4. Customer satisfaction in the retention phase: after the purchase is before the purchase

The customer has placed the order and the payment has been received. So far, the customer seems to be more or less satisfied, because otherwise it would not come to the purchase.

Now the deciding factor is the product quality. Did you communicate the quality adequately – or did you conceal or even misrepresent something? How you communicate product quality in the consideration phase and whether it matches the actual product has a big impact on customer satisfaction. For this reason, pay particular attention to the product descriptions.

The retention phase also includes customer communication after the purchase – because after the purchase is ideally before the next purchase. The channel of choice here is email marketing with its many possibilities:

• Order confirmation
• Shipping confirmation
• Shipping status & package notification
• Customer feedback & product reviews
• Newsletter

Take advantage of email marketing and ensure strong customer loyalty by interacting with your customers. Newsletter marketing, in particular, can significantly boost your customers’ loyalty, as it offers clear added value to recipients when used well. Learn more about the possibilities of email marketing in the blog post Email Marketing for Online Shops.

uptain increases customer satisfaction

With uptain, you use an intelligent tool for recovering shopping cart abandoners that is focused on the needs of your customers and thus increases customer satisfaction. The tool comes into play in the purchase phase, reaching out to your cart abandoners at this critical stage of the buying process and offering them automated proactive customer service.

With uptain, you use two channels to address both new and existing customers: Your online shop (Exit-Intent Popups) and email (Abandoned Cart Emails).

Exit-Intent Popups appear as soon as the visitor wants to cancel a purchase. The software detects both the time and the reason for the abandonment, as well as the customer needs. Subsequently, it plays out the appropriate message and convinces the visitor to complete the purchase.

Abandoned Cart Emails, on the other hand, are aimed at existing customers who have already abandoned the shopping cart. After a predefined period of time, the email lands in the inbox and plays out a customized incentive that brings the shopping cart abandoner back into the purchase process.

Want to learn more about your shopping cart abandoners? Read our shopping cart abandoners guide!

Long-term satisfied customers in your online shop

To avoid dissatisfied customers and gain satisfied customers in the long term, every single touchpoint in the customer journey must be considered. Not only product quality and customer service are crucial for customer satisfaction, but the entire shopping experience taken together – from awareness to retention. Tools like uptain support your customers in the shopping process and thus contribute to their satisfaction.