IN THIS CHAPTER

Making sure your website is user-friendly

Giving your customers what they want

Personalizing the customer experience

The X factors — customer experience and user experience (which you may see referred to as CX and UX) are two of the most important things you need to focus on to succeed with your online business.

Customer experience involves every touchpoint a customer has with your business, from the time they first visit your online store to the moment they receive their order. In the early days of ecommerce, many physical (or ‘brick and mortar’) retailers used to say that online stores couldn’t compete with physical stores because they couldn’t match the overall customer experience provided when a customer enters a store. It’s up to you to prove them wrong by utilizing all the tools at your disposal to provide a great customer experience.

User experience refers to the on-site experience — in other words, how the customer uses your website. It’s true that a good user experience is just one part of the overall customer experience, but I focus on it here because nailing your site’s user experience can bring more sales through your virtual door.

In this chapter, I share a list of go-to customer and user experience checks you can regularly perform to ensure that your customers are having a pain-free shopping experience, which helps to keep conversion rates healthy. Part 3 goes in-depth on customer and user experience if you need to remind yourself of the essentials.

Check Your Page Load Speed

Also known as the average load time of a page on your website, your page load speed is the time it takes in seconds for a page to load on your website. A poor average load time often correlates to a low conversion rate, so if you see your conversion rate suddenly dip, it’s a good idea to check your page load speed. In addition, Google now ranks faster stores higher in its search engine results.

So what is a good average load time for a web page on an online store? You can find articles online that suggest aiming for less than two seconds is ideal, however I don’t remember the last time I saw a website load a page that fast. If your average page loads in less than four seconds, I think that’s okay.

Shopify ranks your site speed a little differently by providing a score out of 100, which is recalibrated each day using Google’s Lighthouse performance metrics. The higher the number the better, with the score system using other similar online stores as a benchmark.

To check your site speed ranking in Shopify, go to your Shopify admin → Reports → Analytics → Behavior → Online Store Speed, and you’ll see your store speed score at the top of the page.

As with anything technical, you can always hire a Shopify expert to help you out (experts.shopify.com), but you can also take action in your store to help improve your site speed:

• Remove any apps you aren’t using.
• Consider using a theme that’s optimized for performance, such as Shopify’s Dawn, which is free.
• Large image and video files can slow down your site, so try and keep the sizes and formats within reasonable limits.

Try and use system fonts on your theme (fonts that are already installed on most of your users’ computers), otherwise your users’ computers may need to download the fonts your sites uses — which can take time.

Optimize Your Site for Mobile

A website doesn’t just translate by itself from desktop to mobile — both versions require proper design consideration when you’re building your store, so pay equal time to both.

Make the effort to change things that aren’t looking great on a mobile device before launching — this is known as optimizing for mobile, or having a mobile-optimized site. Most online stores that I work with receive more than 50 per cent of their visits from mobile users, so it’s important to design your store with a friendly mobile user experience in mind.

Shopify allows you to preview your site in both desktop and mobile view while you’re building it, so be sure to check the mobile view from time to time.

To check and adjust your website design in mobile view, follow these steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.

2. Find the theme that you want to edit and click on Customize.

   Make any changes you require.

3. Click on the Mobile icon to see the changes from a mobile device perspective.

Fix Broken Links

Broken links are links or URLs that lead to a page that doesn’t exist, typically resulting in an ‘Error 404 Page Not Found’ message. Broken links can occur for a variety of reasons — maybe it links to a collection page or product that no longer exists (perhaps the product has sold out, so you removed it from view), or a URL has changed, and you forgot to redirect the old URL to the new one.

Google sees broken links as a sign of a website that has been neglected or is of lower quality, and so it punishes such websites with poor search engine rankings, which may damage the search engine optimization (SEO) work that you’ve done. A broken link also provides a poor user experience and can lead a customer to bounce (leave your online store) — it may even make them question whether your website is trustworthy.

Regularly check for broken links so you can redirect site visitors to a working link — or at least to a similar page, product or collection, or your homepage.

There’s an app I use for checking and redirecting broken links — Broken Link 404/301 Redirect by Giraffly (available in the Shopify App Store). It has a free plan and you can have a broken link report sent to your email each day. You can even use the app to bulk edit or redirect broken links!

Include a Search Function

One of your key objectives as an online retailer is to bring your customer to a product they’re likely to buy, in as few clicks as possible. Website visitors who use the search feature on a website have a higher conversion rate than those who don’t, so it’s important to ensure that you have a reliable and helpful search feature.

An effective search function is an important part of a good user experience, especially if you have lots of products and variants on your store. Online shoppers can be impatient and will rarely scroll past the first page of a collection.

Try and use a Shopify theme that has the search feature inbuilt. If your desired theme doesn’t show it in the demo, reach out to the theme’s support team to ask if it can be added.

Failing that, you can also use an app to insert a search bar into a theme, such as the Smart Search Bar and Filters app by Rapid Search (available in the Shopify App Store). I like this app as it is compatible with every Shopify theme. It also has some nice features, such as ‘typo tolerance’, and a predictive search function than auto-completes when a customer starts to type. If a customer doesn’t know what to type, they’ll be shown a drop-down list of your store’s most popular products. It has a free plan, and it’s an app I recommend you check out as part of your overall user experience strategy.

When it comes to search:

• Speed is key.
• Allow for typos.
• Ensure it’s easy to use on a mobile device.

Test your search function as a customer would — if you don’t get the results you’re looking for, you need to fix your search function.

Use AB Testing as Your Business Grows

AB testing (also known as split testing) is when you show different groups or segments of visitors (usually two) two different designs or functionalities on your website, with the intention of determining which one drives more clicks, revenue or results.

The purpose of AB testing is to constantly work on your website’s user experience by putting data behind any ideas that you have to increase key metrics, such as conversion rate. You can also use AB testing in your email marketing or on marketing platforms, such as Facebook Ads.

Look at AB testing when your business starts to get bigger, because it can be a little technical and costly to get started, and you’re not likely to see useful results in your early days of trading. When you are ready to AB test, you may find a good solution in the Shopify App Store, although I tend to use VWO or Google Optimize (which are not available in the Shopify App Store, but they both work well with Shopify websites).

Give Little Unexpected Extras

Also known by its acronym, GLUE, surprising and delighting customers is a nice way to build a great customer experience. It’s cheap, easy and impactful to adopt a GLUE strategy, so it’s a winning approach for ecommerce beginners.

The belief behind adopting a GLUE strategy is that going above and beyond for your customer, over-delivering, or exceeding their expectations is likely to result in a favorable response, whether that be a repeat visit, a referral to a friend or general brand goodwill.

A good GLUE strategy that has people talking is Australian company Adore Beauty’s tradition of giving away a Tim Tam (an Australian chocolate biscuit) with every order. People know Adore Beauty as the Tim Tam company now!

Something you could try is sending a handwritten note with every order, from you the founder, because little things go a long way and can help you stand out from the crowd. Chapter 10 provides more suggestions of ways you can give little unexpected extras to wow your customers.

Offer a Personalized Experience

Personalization is a buzzword in ecommerce, and it’s helpful for online retailers get to know their customers as well as they can.

Getting personal with a customer comes in two forms in ecommerce:

1. The onsite experience, which impacts the user experience
2. The offsite experience, which impacts the customer experience

Examples of how you can personalize the customer experience are everywhere in ecommerce, from adding first names into your email marketing to using Smart Shopping in your Google Ads to show customers the products they’ve already been browsing. You can even use your customer service software to recognize when your most valuable customers (your ‘VIPs’) call or email, so you can talk to them like they’re a regular.

The way you treat your customers is entirely within your control and forms part of your customer service (refer to Chapter 7); however, if you’d like to enter into some form of onsite personalization, you can use artificial intelligence (AI) to show customers the products they’re most interested in.

Chapter 10 dives deeper into personalizing your online store using apps, many of which are available in the Shopify App Store.

Create Surveys to Help You Understand Your Customers

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — online businesses often think they know who their customers are, but the truth is they rarely know them at all. However, one sure-fire way to get to know your customers is to find out more about them — and surveys are a great tool for that.

Tools like SurveyMonkey and Typeform are great for surveying customers to find out what drives them and what they think of your business.

When surveying your customers, here are some good questions to ask (aside from the obvious ones, such as age and gender):

• When buying from us, what other brands did you consider?

  This identifies your competitors.

• Do you consider your purchases from us to be:

  • Very expensive
  • Expensive
  • About right
  • Cheap
  • Very cheap

  This identifies whether your pricing is too expensive, too cheap or just right.

• When you think of our brand, what is one word that comes to mind?

  You can leave the space for the answer open-ended and see what customers say, or provide a multiple choice selection, such as ‘classy’, ‘cheap’, ‘quality’, ‘casual’ and so on.

• Who is your number one follow on Instagram?

  This helps to identify the type of marketing you should engage in, plus it highlights potential influencer partnerships.

Surveying your customers is about gathering actionable insights — you need to be able to sit down and review the responses, and take away meaningful actions. Surveys are not for raising your eyebrows at — if you can’t action the results in a meaningful way, they’re not very useful. Chapter 9 offers more advice about understanding your customers through surveys.

Get to Know How Your Customers Behave

Understanding your customers’ behavior is something that every good UX specialist tries to do. If you know how your customers behave when they’re on your site, you can look to improve the user experience to match their behaviors. For example, if 70 per cent of visitors to your homepage are bouncing, you can know that the homepage is not appealing for some reason.

It’s a good idea to get familiar with some of the tools you can utilize within and outside of Shopify to examine your customers’ behaviors. Your go-to reports in Shopify are your Behavior reports, which you can access via your Shopify admin → Analytics → Reports → Behavior.

Try using my two favorite Shopify reports on customer behavior to improve your customer experience:

1. Top Online Searches: This report shows you the most commonly searched phrases or keywords on your store. You can use this to make sure your product offering matches your top search results. For example, if your number-one search term is ‘black sneakers’ and you only have one style of black sneaker and six styles of white sneaker, you may need to think about buying more black sneakers.
2. Online Store Conversion Over Time: This report charts your conversion rate on a line chart, with the ability to change the dates and group results by Hour, Day, Week, Month, Hour of Day and Day of Week. You can use this to see if there is a particular moment in time when your conversion rate increased or decreased, and think about what happened on that hour, day, week or month that may have caused this outcome. For example, if your conversion rate began to drop on a certain day, maybe you launched a new app on your site that is having a detrimental impact on your conversion rate. Conversion rate is a key indicator as to whether users are enjoying their experience on your site.

Use Logistics as a Point of Difference

Logistics is more than just a means to an end when it comes to sending out your customer orders; it’s one of the key parts of a customer’s overall experience. Amazon has been the industry leader for years, using fast delivery as a way to grow its business. In my experience, when an online store offers fast delivery, conversion rates increase in comparison to stores with slower delivery times.

To ensure your Shopify store is optimizing the logistics experience for your customers, consider:

• Speed: Ensure you’re using reputable shipping carriers that deliver quickly to your target regions. I suggest using Shopify Shipping if it’s available in your country, as the shipping partners are world class.
• Price: If your margins allow it, consider offering free shipping on orders above a certain value. One strategy is to offer free shipping just above your average order value (AOV), or just above the average selling price (ASP) of one of your products, in the hopes of encouraging customers to order a second unit.
• Tracking: One of the most common reasons for a customer to email an online store after they’ve placed an order is to ask where their order is, so don’t forget to add tracking to your orders when you’re fulfilling them so that your customers are updated. As you grow, platforms like Starshipit are great for automating tracking for your orders.

Customers care about how quickly they can receive their orders, and how clearly tracking and order updates are communicated to them, so it’s important that your store offers a competitive logistics solution. Chapters 6 and 13 talk more about shipping and logistics.