Marketing
How modern e-commerce brands can build lifelong customer relationships
Three tips to take shoppers from browsers to buyers to customers.
June 15, 2023 by Shilpi Narang — SVP of Customer Experience, Bolt
All brands want lifetime customers — but how do you go about building those lasting relationships?
For answers, Bolt partnered up with YouGov, a global market research and data analytics firm. We ran a pair of 1,000-plus-person nationwide surveys: one to understand what consumers are looking for from digital retailers, and another about online fashion shopper trends.
We wanted to know what would make consumers stay through their shopping journeys, and what are they seeking in their purchasing experience? What worries them, and what frustrates them?
1. Fix the maze and haze of multiple logins and passwords
Exactly how annoying is it to manage numerous logins at various sites where consumers shop? Our survey revealed 49% of shoppers would rather wear a shirt with a coffee stain all day than have to reset their password for store accounts at retailer sites three times in a row.
Creating accounts on multiple sites is a visceral and visible annoyance, and it's costly to both shoppers and merchants. As our data showed, 78% of shoppers forgot a password while shopping in the last 90 days, and 32% of survey respondents cited remembering their account login as the biggest hurdle when shopping online. When consumers encounter a moment of friction or inconvenience — like having to fill in the same form they've filled in dozens of times before — they often end their shopping experience.
To get customers to complete transactions, merchants should think critically about how they encourage shoppers to create store accounts and look for products and services that remove the friction from the checkout process. By improving login and checkout and taking the burden off the consumer, you can eliminate drop-offs — and you could earn a lifetime customer.
2. Remember that all websites face the hurdle of distraction
As a merchant, it's tempting to think of e-commerce as a battle of the brands — one online store trying to win market share against another store, and so on. But that's not how consumers see it. In our survey, we asked about tab behavior — meaning, how many tabs are open on a given shopper's web browser. The results: More than half (51%) of shoppers have more than two tabs open when shopping online, and 19% of shoppers have more than six tabs open when shopping online.
As a retailer, that means your website is not only competing for attention against the websites of other retailers, but also against the sites of social networks, media portals, Zoom calls, YouTube videos, ChatGPT questions, and everything else that shoppers might be doing online. We've dubbed them "multi-tabsters," and understanding them can be key to improving conversion, capturing their attention, and building lifelong customer relationships.
One suggestion that emerges from this finding: Make it simple for consumers to shop where they are, regardless of device, and use more robust metrics to account for the multiple visits that may yield a sale.
Consider the chain of actions that lead up to a conversion: A multi-tabster might start browsing on a laptop, and return to your site later on their phone or tablet. While the burgeoning tabs may distract them on their laptop, they may be less tab-hungry on their phone. Does that mean the desktop browsing was inconsequential? No, because that may have been their first look at your product — the first point of connection. It may not have yielded a sale, but it may have planted a seed, one that grew into a mobile purchase later.
It's also important to focus on simple, speedy website layouts, with sticky navigation and an intuitive, seamless UX and checkout flow. Web analytics can help here, by pinpointing exactly what your shoppers are looking for and how they browse your site. Study those metrics, and use them to streamline and simplify, with the goal of ensuring that shoppers do not feel lost, distracted, or slowed down. A speedy website layout is one way to combat the multi-tabster problem — and it's what users both want and need in their shopping experience.
3. Keep customer anxiety in mind when designing the purchase funnel
Shopping has become more convenient, but that doesn't mean that all consumers feel confident. Half of fashion shoppers we surveyed worry about the item they purchased not living up to their product descriptions.
Brands need to take notice. In our era, it's easier than ever to customize and personalize the shopping experience. Using AI, for example, fashion brands have started to show consumers what a given item of clothing might look like on their body. By recreating models of the consumer, they can imbue the entire buying experience with confidence.
This also means having clear and credible processes for returns and exchanges. Retailers are fundamentally in the trust business, especially those focused on repeat customers. If half of shoppers come in with doubts, it's even more important to have systems in place to make returns as seamless as possible. That matters especially in our era of inflation and careful consumer spending. Consumers appear to be pulling back, and in the face of this trend, online retailers need to make sure their products match their descriptions and that consumers feel secure in sending things back that do not meet that standard.
Meet shoppers where they are
Our surveys offered a neutral look at today's digital consumer. Shoppers are bogged down by logins, tempted by all kinds of sites (not just e-commerce!), and are worried about getting items that actually reflect what they saw on their screen. Given the competitive nature of e-commerce, each one of these insights can help to shape your products, services, and shopper experience. If you are responsive to these insights, they can take your shoppers from browsers to buyers to lifelong customers.
About Shilpi Narang
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