The holiday season is in full swing. And while most ecommerce businesses have been preparing for this for months already, we can’t help but notice that many of these same businesses are missing one important element in their strategies. Sure, they’ve optimised their mobile apps, set up various discounts and promotions to reel customers in, and updated their merchandising strategies…But what about the customers? How are they experiencing the holiday rush? Are there certain funnels in which they’re struggling?
These are critical pieces of information businesses must have in order to maintain a high level of conversions and customer satisfaction. And one of the best ways to obtain this customer insight is by collecting and analysing customer feedback consistently throughout the holiday season!
Customarily, traffic levels are at an all-time high around the holidays. However, depending on the performance of your website and/or mobile app, this boost in traffic can bring about both positive and negative results. On one hand it offers up the chance to shine and be there for all of your customers’ holiday needs. However, should something go wrong, then that’s also a large audience of holiday shoppers who may get irritated and decide to do their shopping somewhere else.
Source: Own the Room
Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s mid December and too late to start collecting feedback and making any meaningful changes. But this couldn’t be more untrue…In fact, during the month of December levels are typically at their peak the day after Christmas.
Last minute shoppers make up nearly 30% of online holiday sales
BigCommerce
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That being said, here are some reasons why you should adopt a customer feedback strategy this holiday season.
1. Guarantees high quality content & product information
In the initial stages of the journey when visitors are orienting and familiarising themselves with the products and services offered on your website as well as making comparisons, there is a lot to be observed. It is important to understand the quality of your product content so that you can offer clear and relevant product information to your visitors.
For example, try putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Imagine it’s two weeks before Christmas and you are in a brick and mortar store. You see a beautiful winter jacket but (just go with me on this) it’s locked up in a glass case. You can see it through the case but you have no way of knowing how the fabric feels or how many pockets it has. This is what online shopping would be like without good quality product descriptions or detailed content.
Source: Business Insider UK
Feedback will help you gauge how your visitors experience these aspects of your website. You can collect this feedback in a number of different ways. Either by adding an embedded feedback form on the page, using a passive feedback form or enable a proactive trigger when a visitor has scrolled down to the bottom of the page.
2. Keeps web & mobile design in good shape
Customer feedback is the key indicator of user experience. In fact, customer feedback can – among others – reveal existing bugs and page errors and bring attention to design faults (e.g. if a certain button is clickable or visible in the checkout process, or a certain page is difficult to navigate).
Source: Retail Gazette
Bugs and page errors can be a major source of irritation for your users, meaning the moment you’ve removed (or minimised) these from the equation, the better off you’ll be. With visual feedback, your users can submit screenshots or highlight the location of a bug alongside critical metadata such as browser type, OS, window size, or screen size.
This input will give you the resources you need to determine the origin of the bug or error and rectify it on the spot. The same goes for other design faults. In fact, visual feedback is a great solution for identifying almost all design issues.
3. Provides insight into the purchasing process
Collecting feedback in purchasing funnels will help you gain more insights into how visitors are experiencing the purchase process and why they aren’t successful in converting within these funnels.
Many digital retail marketers are all too familiar with the term, ‘shopping cart abandonment’ as it contributes greatly to low conversion rates. And that is precisely why catching these customers on their way out is so important.
Source: Magento
Beyond the sheer financial loss, cart abandonment is problematic because a high cart abandonment rate often reflects a poor customer experience. While there may be a handful of users that get distracted and save their orders for later, the users that were so dissatisfied with the checkout process and decided to take their business elsewhere are a miss that could be completely avoided.
Using exit feedback, marketers can gather ‘exit insights’ from visitors who decide not to purchase and understand why they made that decision. In terms of metrics, it is advisable to use metrics such as Customer Effort Score (CES) and Goal Completion Rate (GCR).
4. And lastly, keeps your customers merry
Some businesses are so focused on bringing in new customers that they often forget the importance of nurturing customer relationships, much less instilling a sense of loyalty in their customer base. Luckily, customer feedback can help with this too! By regularly analysing feedback, it’s much easier to stay in tune with your customers’ needs and subsequently boost their loyalty.
Source: NewsLocker
There are so also several different types of feedback forms you can use to collect this type of feedback, including Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys and Customer Effort Score (CES) Surveys.
CSAT surveys are great for collecting insights into the satisfaction of your customers with your product or service. Not to mention a major strength of CSAT lies in its simplicity. In other words, it’s a very easy way to gather feedback on brand loyalty and satisfaction.
Alternatively, there’s NPS. NPS is one of the most widely used metrics among businesses and for a reason. Knowing exactly who your detractors are and why they are detractors puts you in a great position to turn them into promoters. The three main groupings in tracking loyalty collectively include promoters (likely to recommend), passives (neutral) and detractors (not likely to recommend). It’s also a great metric for measuring customer loyalty over time.
Lastly, you have CES. It’s important to know when the levels of effort among customers (to achieve their goals) are high because more often than not, high effort results in lower customer loyalty. This is mainly attributed to the fact that if poor CX or usability pushes your customer to expend more effort achieving their goal than expected, they’re much more likely to leave the website or mobile app.
Have a merry little website this holiday season!!
A lot can happen amidst the holiday chaos, especially as traffic levels increase and customer expectations rise. That is why it’s important to consistently monitor and measure customer experiences and make sure they’re in tip-top shape. Do that and you’ll be set this holiday season!
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
