More and more businesses have moved their operations online in the past 12 months, with decreased high street footfall seeing their finances taking a considerable hit. This has seen a drastic change in people’s shopping habits as they have been forced to adapt and join an ever-expanding online world. Keeping customers informed and interested has grown in importance as businesses are trying to adapt to their new environments.

What’s changed? 

In the last year alone, the online marketplace has grown to a staggering $4trillion worldwide

 as companies were forced to adjust their business plans, while in the USA alone, it is expected that at least 300 million people will be online shoppers by 2023. Essentially, this is almost 91% of the current population, which is simply staggering, especially as the current figure only sits at 59%. As food for thought, the US saw an increase of $1804 being spent per person, whilst the UK wasn’t far behind, sitting at $1629 per person, both of which are just incredible figures.

With this increase in online spending, customers have returned to the forefront of every company’s mind, with a particular focus on an improved customer experience to encourage loyalty and customer retention. It stands to reason that if someone has a pleasant experience shopping on your site, whether that is through site navigation, webchat, or even just through the UI. 

One key way to develop trust and provide a good customer experience is through focussed and well-thought-out correspondence. Having a strong brand identity can be crucial as it can help people to understand what company they are dealing with and lets them get a firm idea of some of the staff behind the product. Rocketseed.com can help with this as they specialize in email signatures which can help to establish and maintain brand identity across all platforms, which can only be beneficial in the long run.

How do we focus on customers?

In order to get the most out of business, it is important to understand what consumers would like from a product or website, Customer feedback can help to improve a service as they can pick out areas of weakness that can be worked on, while it is always good to see if there is anything that you are particularly excelling at. By giving them this opportunity to offer feedback, you can allow your consumer base to have some sense of being involved, especially if some of their changes are implemented. Just making the user interface easier to interact with can make a big weekly shop less stressful, and if people can see the site is working as it should, then logically, they might be far more inclined to come back and use the site again. If it is hard to use and there seems to be little contact or help from anyone, you run the risk of losing that customer forever. It is believed that 13% of customers will speak to at least 15 other people if they are dissatisfied with a particular service, and with the rise of social media, there is a chance for this information to go far further than it ever would have done before. Customer satisfaction has never been so important.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].