Online shopping is set to take over the retail space, like how mobility has replaced desktops. According to Statista, e-commerce will account for 22% of retail sales globally, doubling within the next five years. But the actual prospect of online retail is more significant than this, but some customer pain points are checking the galloping growth horse of e-commerce to summit retail Everest.
What are the e-Commerce Customer Pain Points?
In the context of e-commerce stores, customer pain points refer to all the problems and unaddressed queries that prevent a seamless and satisfactory shopping experience.
Some of the most notable pain points customers point out include slow-loading time, time-consuming checkout process, absence of preferred payment options, limited product and buying options, security and privacy concerns, and several others.
Here we have picked the five most commonly mentioned pain points and the technology solutions to address them.
Time-Consuming Checkout
Most online shoppers have a low attention span and very little patience to stay tuned beyond a few seconds, and naturally, a sluggish checkout pushes them out of the store. The more time the checkout process consumes, the bigger it makes the cart abandonment rate.
Fortunately, e-commerce stores can address this issue with some time-tested measures that leading stores like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Alibaba, and many others follow. Here below, we mention some of these measures.
- Make customers type less by using autocomplete function and shorter form size.
- Ensure faster load time on mobile devices.
- Make sure your e-commerce app can allow customers to save their preferred options for the future.
- Ensure offering guest checkout and social login to finish formalities quickly.
- Add a wishlist option for customers to save time from browsing next time.
Inability to up-sell & cross-sell
A significant pain point for most e-commerce stores is the inability to up-sell and cross-sell. Although up-selling and cross-selling opportunities arrive several times in a buyer’s journey, catching them at the right time matters most. If you think customers hate up-sales and cross-sales, you are wrong. By offering them options they are more likely to engage with, you push business conversion and increase customer happiness.
- You can use quality ad agency software to detect up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
- You can use an automated cross-selling pop-up. An intelligent recommendation engine can do a good job here.
- Make sure to adhere to the buyer’s context to recommend products. For example, you can recommend a smartphone cover, screen, and accessories after a smartphone purchase.
- Incentivize up-selling and cross-selling with loyalty points, discounts, and special offers to convert more businesses.
Lack of Personalized Shopping Experience
In most of the points mentioned above, we have explained how to address customer pain points in a personalized manner. A personalized shopping experience offers more than just smart product recommendations and customized support communication.
Just as digital storytelling helps brands establish personalized connections with their target customers, you should not leave any options untested to ensure a personalized shopping experience. Here are some tech-driven ways to offer personalized shopping experiences to customers.
- Use a smart product recommendation engine powered by machine learning to ensure customers receive suggestions they are more likely to prefer.
- Make use of customer data across multiple online footprints for the right product recommendations.
- Use a personalized shopping assistant to help customers enjoy a smooth shopping experience.
Under-optimized product search
As we have mentioned, customers these days have a minimal attention span; hence, the faster you make them find out what they need, the better you can convert business. Customers expect e-commerce stores to know their preferences and offer buying options accordingly. Many e-commerce stores make searching for products and navigating around difficult, losing customers and business.
There are effective ways to address this pain point convincingly. Here are some technology-driven ways to address this pain point.
- Make use of voice search to help customers speak and find their items with enhanced precision and accuracy.
- Make proper product categories and sub-categories following established conventions to prevent confusion.
- Use keyword research and meta-tags to help customers find your products through search engines and social search results.
- Use an extensive range of filters covering various parameters and popular choices.
- Provide them with a search function; when something is not found, show them some choices close to the users’ search terms.
- Make them know which products are available for unavailable items, and allow them to set reminders or notifications.
Bad customer support experience
According to most credible studies and reports, most customers leave a store and only return because of poor customer support. Customers often praise one brand and give negative feedback on another because of the poor customer support experience. On the other hand, quality customer support ensures more trustworthiness of the e-commerce store, resulting in increased footfall, customer loyalty, and sales.
You can revamp your customer support experience with some tech-driven measures. Here below, we mention a few of them.
- Using conversational AI chatbots for intelligent support with natural language conversation capabilities can be a great option.
- Using a query engine instead of a FAQ can be a great way to provide customers with know-how and knowledge in an interactive manner.
- Using a smart shopping assistant with the ability to remember customer preferences and suggest products accordingly can be another way to enhance the support experience.
- Last but not least, flagging specific customer issues for human support is essential to represent the caring approach to customer issues.
Summing It Up
For e-commerce stores addressing customer pain points is a necessity they cannot ignore. While e-commerce offers even small businesses a level-playing field to stay in the competition, offering a painless, seamless, and smart shopping experience has also become the gold standard for online stores. E-commerce stores have several technology solutions at their disposal to do away with these pain points. We only described above a few of these tech-driven solutions.
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