Digital transformation has forever changed the way consumers view and interact with businesses, particularly with e-commerce websites. They have come to expect seamless dialogue across multiple channels and devices and an extremely personalized customer experience. For companies, that means shifting from a sales-driven strategy to one that focuses on building customer relationships, fostering loyalty and encouraging sales from engaged, satisfied and returning customers.
What consumers want: positive experiences
Experience-driven commerce is the next step in the evolution of e-commerce, through which customers are engaged with via dynamic, relevant content, superior, on-demand customer service and the integration of various digital channels. This means that the modern-day prospective customer has swapped out traditional browsing and buying for a holistic, consumer-centric brand experience.
And that’s exactly what today’s consumers want. In fact, around 50 percent of consumers cite a lack of information and personalization for their decision against completing a purchase. It’s no wonder that businesses that unceasingly provide positive, experience-driven customer experiences enjoy higher sales and customer loyalty, outperforming their less forward-thinking competitors by as much as 25 percent.
Leveraging experience-driven commerce
To ride the “experience business” wave, brand awareness must be exchanged for brand purpose. Or, in other words, shifting from telling consumers what to buy to listening to what consumers want and fulfilling these demands in the most optimal way.
Here’s how:
Use data to learn about your market
Brands must adopt technological tools, platforms and methods to gather and analyze relevant data about the markets they cater to. The data should be used to anticipate what consumers want, when they want it and what might inhibit them from accessing what they demand. Understanding this data makes it far simpler and more straightforward to develop focused marketing strategies that act on evolving consumer needs and market forces, in real-time.
Align marketing efforts around customer personas
In many businesses, each department operates on its own, in silos, even though they are all working towards a similar, or even the same end-goal: driving sales and profits. Yet, when aligned, sales, marketing, IT, customer service and other departments can provide their client base with a far more vibrant, informed and complete customer experience. Creating customer personas around which your entire company can align its efforts ensures a more efficient and productive experience for customers and company employees, for smiles all around.
Increase customer touchpoints
Today’s consumers are short on time, always on the go and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of retail options available to them. They are also highly agile and hyper-connected. They are able to shift between desktop, mobile and other devices with ease. To provide a dependable, experience-driven commerce service, businesses need to engage with their customers via multiple touchpoints, reaching them and delivering a consistent brand message time and again, whenever they are interested and wherever they are.
Is your e-commerce solution experience-driven? Navonline can help you create your engaged online community – today.