What Is A Successful Online Shopping Experience?

Online Shopping Experience : To convert more and increase revenue, the most effective solution is still to offer an unforgettable shopping experience to its customers. But how do you deliver a successful shopping experience? I propose to give you my point of view through my purchase of the video game civilization.

First Step: Teasing

The first step of the act of purchase does not happen most of the time on your site. The first contact of the user can be a teasing video, an article extolling the merits of a new vacuum cleaner, an advertisement for 3D TVs etc. but this usually happens outside your site, hence the interest of establishing a network of partners to:

• Follow the news and novelties
• Study how products are presented
• Analyze the popularity of new products to predict your supply
• Offer your product content (whether you are a distributor or manufacturer)
• Create links to your products in exchange for content (comparison, video, article etc.)

Of course the development of a “blog / content site” in parallel with your E-commerce site will allow you to capture some of the discoveries of Internet users but will be very time consuming.

Here is the presentation video that made me want to know more about civilization.

Second Step: Searching For Information

After the teasing comes the search for information which is usually a search on google to answer certain questions:

• Is the product available or for pre-order?
• At what price?
• Are there any other photos/videos available?
• What are the differences from the previous version?
• etc.

Of course the questions vary from one type of product to another but overall it remains centered around the availability / features / and the gain (social, financial, time, pleasure) that the user will get if he gets this product.

Regarding my purchase I came across the official website of the product where I was able to find a lot of information correctly prioritized and encouraged me to go to the purchase (you can read in addition: The product pitch, a highway to conversion) with a big plus: direct links to take action!

Paradoxically the pre-order page was better designed because it displayed the prices of the stores as well as the bonus granted in case of purchase in the store (in this case a dematerialized product). By direct links I mean links to the sellers’ product sheets and not their homepage!

Step Three: Conversion

So I was able to choose on the official website the most interesting seller for me, in this case Fnac which offered the cheapest price and the highest confidence rate. The conversion was therefore only a formality with my Fnac account, the ordering process being relatively well done at home.

I received a few minutes after a small email to confirm my pre-order, three days before the official release date, as well as the delivery date: 24 hours after the official release, 4 days after my order.

Fourth Step: Receipt Of The Product

On the day of the official release I receive a whole bunch of emails / news to inform me of the official release of civilization 5 this day. Yes, I am impatient and I have done a lot of forums / sites to receive information while waiting for my product. I also received an email to inform me of the shipment of my package.

And what a surprise, a few hours later I received my package delivered in my mailbox, the same day of the exit.

Synthesis Of A Successful Shopping Experience

To summarize, it is necessary to generate a desire to go to the act of purchase outside your site, so think about making presentation content of your products and distributing them to partners, most of the Internet audience is not at home, go get it!

In your product pitch remember to explain the benefits of the product to your customers, even if they already know it they want confirmation and, psychology requires, which is marked 10 times and truer than what is marked only once.

As a third tip: keep your promises: a delivery date commits you (legally) but especially emotionally with your customer, not keeping your commitments is taking the risk of provoking a non-rational reaction: anxiety, panic, sourness, violence, according to the psychology of the customer and the importance (for him!) of his order. You easily understand the risks of such a reaction: loyalty equal to 0, creation of a bad brand image, unnecessary burden of customer service etc .

On the other hand, keeping your promises, or better exceeding them, will allow you to generate sympathy credit and increase loyalty and interest of Internet users for your site.