How much does it cost to deliver an exceptional online shopping experience? No two retailers will have the same answer – or the same budget.
Whatever resources are available to you, there are always opportunities to optimize ecommerce spend and streamline the buyer journey. The key is to invest in tools and tactics that improve efficiency and achieve more with less.
The Value of Shopper Experience
Today’s customer demands speed, convenience, and personalization from their shopping experiences. Retailers that fail to deliver these fundamentals suffer the consequences at checkout:
- 73% of consumers say experience is an important factor in their purchasing decisions, behind the price and product quality.
- 65% of U.S. customers say a positive experience with a brand is more influential than great advertising.
- 32% of consumers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience.
- 71% of consumers expect personalized experiences, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
- Businesses that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue.
5 Ways to Optimize Your Shopper Experience on a Budget
Tight budgets don’t have to mean subpar shopping experiences. Follow these five steps to optimize your spend.
1. Assess Your Tech Stack
Your tech stack makes or breaks the online shopping experience. Does it take hours to add new products to a page? Is your site slow to load? Does your search bar fail to deliver accurate results? Don’t neglect critical components of the shopper experience in an effort to cut costs – the short-term savings inevitably lead to long-term losses. Technology upgrades may seem costly upfront, but the right tools pay dividends in the form of easier conversions.
2. Make Products Easy to Find
Expensive advertising campaigns and sleek web design won’t generate sales if customers can’t find what they’re looking for. Limited budgets force us to refocus on the tactics that reliably drive revenue. Eliminate the UX issues that lead to high bounce rates and cart abandonment, and optimize site search, personalized recommendations, and merchandising to improve product discovery.
3. Automate and Optimize
The right tech stack equips your team to automate repetitive tasks and streamline site management. Use boost rules to make site-wide updates to product arrangement. Leverage artificial intelligence to take the guesswork out of product recommendations. Personalize search and merchandising for a more individualized experience. By aligning technology with business goals, you can extract maximum value from your budget and work smarter, not harder.
4. Empower Your Ecommerce Team
With manual updates taken care of, you immediately unlock precious hours in your calendar. Use this time to focus on strategic work that doubles down on ROI. Take advantage of reduced workloads to assign more advanced responsibilities to your team. The site merchandiser who used to spend 10 hours a week on product display? They’re now positioned to take on robust testing and ongoing optimizations to the shopper experience.
5. Know Your Audience
Customer acquisition is much more expensive than retention, so focus on your shoppers’ needs to drive repeat purchases. Address their core values in your site merchandising and email communications. Offer loyalty programs to build community and create lasting relationships. Lastly, don’t overlook the value of user-generated content and product reviews to boost engagement in a cost effective way.
Do More With Less to Maximize Your Ecommerce Budget
User experience is a core driver of high-converting shopper journeys. Don’t skimp on the tools and technology that make shopping effortless. Invest in resources that boost efficiency and streamline site management for a better customer experience and a healthy ROI on your ecommerce budget.
