Think about the last time you bought something based on the advice of a trusted friend. Chances are that your friend listened, asked clarifying questions, and chimed in when needed. You probably asked her about the differences between some choices and, having narrowed it down to just one or two, made your purchase when the time was right. That’s how it works in real life.
But it’s not how a lot of businesses operate. Despite phenomenal growth in B2C eCommerce — expected to surpass a trillion dollars this year — shopping cart abandonment is as high as 88%, web form abandonment is around 75%, and bounce rates of 90% are not uncommon. Several things tend to go wrong in the cycle of ‘find, decide, and buy’. Most companies that struggle with improving web sales are plagued with siloed systems and an approach that treats online customer interactions as isolated individual events. In contrast, effective web sales efforts are connected across touch points, and capitalise on the fact that at each stage of the buying process, customers engage with a business in different ways.
Consider the ‘find’ stage. Websites are rife with SKU clutter. No one likes to wade through thousands of options. Most people want guidance on where to look, assistance in narrowing down choices, and contextual help. Targeted offers anticipate what the customer needs. Informational widgets quietly provide contextual help. Smart searches show only relevant results, federating them from wherever they exist. Chatbots tease out subtleties and provide conversational assistance. Guided help lets customers narrow down choices. The result: less chaos, moving customers rapidly to ‘decide’.
At the ‘decide’ stage, customers are better educated, but still navigating a minefield of product choices. It’s here that many companies make the mistake of pushing the sale with jack-in-the-box offers that load with the page. Contrast this with proactive assistance based on actual customer behavior, and you can almost see the face of your friend smiling from the other side of the chat or cobrowse session.
During the ‘buy’ stage, many companies ironically don’t offer in-purchase help or offers. At this stage, tools like cobrowse, click-to-call, chat, shipping FAQs, and free-shipping offers can make all the difference. Businesses must do their best to help customers navigate complicated forms and processes, getting them done quickly, while removing all doubts about the purchase.
The emergence of new channels like social and mobile doesn’t change the fact that customers still want a trusted advisor who listens, informs, and guides. If anything, new channels reinforce that model, providing more ways in which customers engage your brand, and more opportunities for businesses to sell or be outsold.
To make the most of each opportunity, it pays to implement a strategy and solution that integrates and tracks all engagement channels and touch points. Then you can begin to design customer journeys that will not only help you sell more on the web, but get customers to tweet, post, and otherwise brag about their purchases.
Just like you would to your best friend.
By Anand Subramaniam, VP of Marketing at eGain Corporation.
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