Building a website for an online business is a crucial job to get right. Given the growing importance of a website as a brand’s shop window, creating a site that is sleek, professional and seamless to use is integral to the customer experience. A recent survey by Feefo of 2,000 adult shoppers further stresses this point.
Additionally, it also highlights some key notions to bear in mind for any website designers out there. For example, the survey found that a massive 80% of customers use FAQs at some point when shopping online.
The findings showed that clear and helpful FAQs could be the difference behind a customer making a purchase and a customer abandoning an online shopping cart. With 79% of online shoppers surveyed abandoning their cart before completing a purchase, there is evidently huge scope for online sites to up their conversion rates. Of course, this could be attributed to high shipping costs, with the survey finding that 63% of shoppers have abandoned their carts because of this.
Richard Tank, Feefo’s Head of Digital, explains that a crucial way to do this is ‘listening, learning and developing more personalised customer experiences’. He stresses that in order to be a successful business online, company leaders must recognise ‘technology as an enabler’.
Given that the majority of online shoppers never complete a purchase, utilising elements such as a website’s FAQs page is a huge opportunity. In fact, the survey’s findings further prove this point. 80% of those surveyed said that they regularly used FAQs when researching and buying products online, and 53% of online shoppers claim that not being able to find answers to questions as the single most common shopping frustration.
Other common customer frustrations were poor customer service – such as being put through to automated voice systems (21%) or being passed around call centres (30%). Again, these are issues that a company can improve on to ensure that customers do not resort to purchasing through eCommerce giant Amazon, or finding a suitable product elsewhere through Google.
30% of consumers will simply give their custom to another brand or competitor after one bad experience with a company. So, enhancing the online customer experience from the very start and making it as flawless and reliable as possible is crucial – this includes supplying adequate levels of product information and FAQs. The risk, if companies do not, is that they lose out on vital repeat business and brand loyalty.