“Anytime we’re evaluating a product or service, we think about it subconsciously as a consumer,” Long says. “As a marketer, we need to think about the human aspect of marketing.”

Dan recently wrapped up six years at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of the American South's most storied news organizations, where he served as Senior Manager of Conversions and Optimizations. In that time, AJC grew its digital subscriber base from 24,000 to over 101,000, a transformation driven by a mix of smart product strategy, rigorous testing, and a philosophy that puts the reader at the center of every decision.

We sat down with Dan for a conversation about how he thinks about the subscription funnel, what makes digital media conversion uniquely hard, and why the best optimization work always starts with the human on the other side of the screen.

A career at the intersection of journalism, technology, and revenue

Dan didn't start in conversion optimization. He started in marketing research, helping news organizations, regional papers, the Washington Post, and NPR understand what their readers actually wanted to read and how well they were delivering on it. That grounding in the reader experience never left him.

After moving to the publisher side, first at a regional paper in Dallas-Fort Worth, then at the larger competitor across town, he kept chasing the same question: how do you get people to pay for journalism? Not just tolerate a paywall, but actually recognize the value and subscribe.

"At one point, we thought the biggest challenge was time," he says. "People would say, 'I don't have time to read.' Then it became 'there are different news sources.' Now it's all of that plus: I can get my news from social media. I can use AI. There are a number of different reasons why people could say no."

That evolving challenge shaped how Dan thinks about conversion. It's not just a funnel problem; it's a relevance problem. And the solution isn't as simple as a better CTA button. It's understanding why someone might genuinely care about the product or content, in this moment, and meeting them there.

When he arrived at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2019, the organization had 24,000 paid digital subscribers. The only digital value proposition offered was an ePaper, essentially a digital replica of the print product. The paywall was still in its early days, and there was significant runway ahead.

Designing for the human, not the metric

The "What's in it for me?" question isn't just a gut check; Dan applies it as a lens that has helped shape his success. It reflects how he thinks about the entire reader relationship, from the first piece of content someone clicks on, to the paywall interaction that asks them to commit, to the checkout experience that either seals the deal or loses them.

In practice, designing for the human audience starts with the brief. Before any creative work happens, Dan works with his team to understand who the target audience is, what they already know about the brand, what they perceive about its value, and what would need to be true for them to hand over their credit card.

"What would be valuable to this person?" is the question that drives everything, and it doesn't stop being relevant once the work ships.

"As we're auditing the final conversion product, whether it’s a paywall or a subscription landing page, we think about it again with that perspective of: if I were an outsider looking at this page, if I were interacting with this site, does that answer the questions appropriately? What's in it for me, for all the consumers that we have?"

That last phrase matters. "All the consumers that we have." Dan is deliberate about not treating readers as a monolith.

Different people arrive at a subscription decision from completely different places. A loyal visitor who's been hitting the article limit for months needs a different conversation than someone who landed on an AJC story through a Google search and has never heard of the newspaper or news site. Segmenting those experiences and designing each one to answer that specific person's version of the WIIFM question is where the real gains live.

There's also a persistent tension Dan navigates that most conversion teams face but rarely talk about openly: the pull between designing for the human and designing for the machine. SEO scoring tools, algorithmic recommendations, and platform optimization all have their own logic, and it doesn't always line up with what actually feels right to a reader.

"There's always tension between designing for the human and designing for the machine that's giving you a score. By default, we think about the human aspect. Does this page have personality? Does it signal to the consumer: 'Hey, we get you. We understand you'? Does it support the brand in a way that really resonates?"

When the answer isn't obvious, his team treats it as a signal to test. Which is, in a way, the most human-centered move of all; instead of overriding the uncertainty with an opinion, you ask the reader.

Why "paywall" is the wrong word for most of what you're building

With a clear philosophy about who you're designing for, the next question becomes: what are you asking them to do? Here's where Dan says most teams are working with the wrong mental model from the start when discussing paywalls

People may not expect this, but “paywalls” don't always mean you have to pay for a recurring subscription.

"We use the term fairly generically," he explains. "People tend to throw it around, and you always assume it's a hard stop that causes you to subscribe to a recurring subscription. That's often the case. But a paywall could be a number of things."

In his framework, there are really three distinct conversion mechanisms, and treating paywalls universally like a single concept is one of the most common mistakes in digital media:

• Registration walls (regwalls) collect a reader's email address in exchange for access to a piece of content. It's a simple, low-friction value exchange. The reader gets the article. You get a first-party data point and the beginning of a relationship.
• Digital passes let a reader pay once for short-term access. For example, without the commitment of a recurring subscription, a digital pass may grant access for a day or two or during the course of a local event attracting out-of-town visitors seeking information. Dan sees these as underutilized tools, particularly useful for attracting readers who want access without a long-term relationship.
• Subscription paywalls are what most people picture when they hear the word. These convert high-intent readers into subscribers who generate recurring revenue and therefore unlock more consumer benefits. They require the most convincing and the most attention to friction.

"Using all three together helps you serve more types of readers, build relationships, and capture more value," Dan says. The goal isn't to push everyone to a subscription immediately. It's to match the mechanism to where the reader is in their journey and to answer that WIIFM question in a way that actually makes sense for that moment.

The three conversion surfaces require three different strategies

The paywall/regwall/digital pass distinction is one layer of complexity. There's another layer that Dan thinks about just as carefully: not just what kind of access point you're presenting, but where the reader is coming from when they are engaging with your subscription offer.

In his experience, there are three meaningfully different conversion surfaces, each with its own psychology and requirements:

• Paywall interactions happen in the middle of a reading experience. The reader is already engaged with specific content, which is a signal of relevance. But patience is low. They want access now. "Value must be obvious and friction minimal," as Dan puts it.
• Organic landing pages attract readers who clicked through from on-site CTAs (through a banner, a button in the navigation, or a prompt at the end of a free article). These visitors are in evaluation mode. They're asking that fundamental question: "What's in it for me?" And they need room to answer it. The page has to be more informative, more thorough, more value-forward than a paywall presentation.
• Paid campaign landing pages serve a visitor who saw a social post or ad, felt some connection, and clicked. That emotional connection is the asset, and the page needs to protect it. "We want to keep that emotional tie," Dan says. "We want to make it simple. We do want to make it informative, but that emotional connection is the thread you can't break."

At the AJC, this distinction had real tactical implications. Testing showed that different promotional offers resonated differently depending on where the reader encountered them. A 99¢-for-three-months introductory rate performed well on-site and on the paywall, while a $1-a-week rate performed better for paid social campaigns. Different audiences, different presentations, different context - each optimized for conversion efficiency.

Why cross-functional alignment is the real unlock

Successful subscriber growth initiatives at media companies require cross-functional alignment on shared goals. Conversion optimization at a media company isn't a product team problem or a marketing problem. It's an everything problem.

"Cross-functional work is absolutely important in our type of business," Dan says. "We have so many different small teams. We have to communicate well and work together to be effective."

While the News side and the business side operate independently by design, at the AJC, Dan would occasionally sit in on the newsroom's daily budget meetings, which were internal editorial planning sessions where reporters pitched stories and editors set priorities. He wasn't there to influence coverage. His presence meant he could spot content with subscription conversion potential early, so his team could prepare.

That might mean flagging a story about Georgia's swing-state status as something that could attract out-of-market readers, worth treating as a top-of-funnel engagement play rather than a conversion trigger. Or recognizing that a high-profile local investigation was exactly the kind of unique, irreplaceable content that could push a longtime reader over the edge into subscribing.

"Is it worth an organic social push, or is it something we can invest in with paid social to really amplify the message?" he explains. "And then we establish some business rules: if we're promoting it socially, should we allow people to access this without any barriers, or is this content so valuable that it's worth promoting and then attempting to get a registration or subscription out of it?"

Getting to that kind of coordination requires shared goals and shared metrics across teams. Without them, teams optimize for their own objectives, and the path-to-conversion or engagement journeys may end up being ineffective.

The case for bringing in an outside perspective

Even experienced teams get comfortable with their defaults. You know your product well, your mental models are well-worn, and sometimes that familiarity is the problem.

That's what drew Dan to bringing in The Good for a Digital Experience Optimization (DXO) Audit of AJC's subscription landing pages. The Good's CEO, Jon MacDonald, has a phrase that describes well the situation Dan was in: "You can't read the label from inside the jar."

"We all need an additional outside perspective from time to time," Dan says. "The value is that The Good works with a number of industries, not just media. So, having all of that experience and all of those additional perspectives, they may think of an enhancement we haven't thought of yet or use that expertise to reinforce the value of an approach we’re evaluating. It's like sharing some lessons and keeping us grounded, so that we are doing what we should be doing and we’re continuously improving upon things that we think we already know well."

For a DXO collaboration to work, Dan emphasizes the importance of building trust early, investing real time in scoping, and then getting out of the way. "Really sitting down and investing a lot of time and energy into setting the parameters, understanding the capabilities, understanding what's needed, and building that trust between the two so that both feel comfortable allowing the other to do what they do best."

The DXO Audit identified a pattern that showed up across user testing and analytics: the subscription landing page was creating cognitive overload rather than confidence. Too many competing offers. Pricing structures that required mental math. A mobile experience that buried the primary CTA below the fold.

When the work was done, he was pleased: "The team was super easy to work with — professional, organized, methodical, yet also very friendly and engaging. It was a worthwhile project with an enjoyable team." He was eager to implement recommendations and find out if they resonated with consumers and improved their subscription landing page conversion rates in a live environment.

AJC implemented the recommendations thoughtfully, adapting guidance to their technical constraints and layering in complementary changes, including a new annual subscription tier and channel-specific offer routing for paid campaigns. Collectively, Dan believed that these optimizations would better address “what’s in it for me” with a more intuitive design, a new offer with special savings for highly engaged readers, and a mobile-friendly design. In the end, the results demonstrated value with the DXO Audit.

Results: 56% overall lift, 157% mobile improvement

What 25 years at the intersection of journalism, data, and people actually teaches you

Ask Dan what makes conversion leadership in media different from conversion leadership anywhere else, and he doesn't hesitate.

"If I were to think of a company like Nike or Adidas, they're selling shoes — and they have so many different models to sell to different audiences. People think of the news as one thing. But the content changes every day. It's a new product every single day. And that product should have something to appeal to everyone. How do you communicate that to someone visiting the site?"

It's a genuinely hard problem. Unlike a shoe brand that can segment by style, price point, or sport, a news organization is selling one thing, access to journalism, to readers who want wildly different things from it. Sports fans. Business readers. Political junkies. Parents who want to know what's happening in their school district. The product and the access to journalism are the same. The job of the conversion experience is to make each of those people feel like it was made for them. Sports readers reacted favorably to “season pass” offers and the tone used with Varsity content; likewise, Atlanta foodies felt a connection with subscription presentations related to the AJC’s “Atlanta’s 50 Best Restaurants” content.

Compound that with the cultural challenge Dan has encountered in marketing research going back decades: the widespread belief that news and access to journalism should be free. It's a friction point baked into the category itself, and no amount of landing page optimization can eliminate it. What good conversion work does is reduce every other source of friction enough that the value becomes undeniable even for the skeptic.

The data rigor is one-half of how Dan gets there. The other half is something harder to systematize: staying genuinely curious about the humans on the other side.

"Maintain that balance between the human side and the rigor of analytics. Data is super important; we need it to understand things, to make decisions. But it's equally important to always understand the human side. Be observant. Watch people. Listen to people. See how they act, see how they react. Always stay curious."

That curiosity shows up in how he presents findings to leadership, too. When the data says something inconvenient, for example, a test fails, a beloved feature is hurting conversion, a long-held assumption is wrong, Dan's default isn't a slide deck of numbers. It's a story.

"Use the approach to really communicate what we learned, how we learned it, and what does it actually means. Do it in a way that really connects with a person. Make it personal. Make it feel accessible and like it's bringing value, new insights, or additional point of view into how you might want to proceed in future initiatives."

That instinct to translate data into something a person can feel is the same instinct that underlies the whole WIIFM framework. Numbers aren’t the only thing that persuade people. Relevance does. Whether you're trying to convert a first-time reader into a subscriber, or convince a skeptical executive that an inconvenient test result is worth acting on, the approach is the same: find the version of this information that makes it matter to the specific human in front of you.

It's also, Dan would say, what makes the work worth doing.

"Marketing should be fun. We think of it as really data-intensive, and it is, but it should always be fun. Think about the person on the other side. Think about how we can make a difference and connect with somebody. That comes through in your work. That comes through in how you communicate with your audience, and it makes it more relevant for them."

Twenty-five years in, after watching the industry transform from print delivery to ePaper to live paywalls to dynamic segmentation, that's the throughline. Not the technology. Not the platform. It’s the person on the other side and the relentless curiosity about what they actually need.

The post Dan Long Built a Subscription Machine at the AJC by Designing for the Human First appeared first on The Good.

• “But doesn’t this Chia Pet require constant watering?”
• “Surely I’m going to have to sharpen this Ginsu knife again and again.”
• “Are you really saying that if I’ve fallen and I can’t get up, all I need to do is press a button? That seems too easy.”
• “I just need to clap to turn the lights on? Surely there’s a switch I need to flip.”

When it comes to selling anything, there will always be objections to overcome. Customers have reservations and questions that keep them from purchasing. It’s a normal part of any shopping experience.

This is nothing new. Before David Ogilvy became an advertising legend, he earned his stripes by selling pressure cookers. He wrote about the lessons he learned in a book titled “The Theory and Practice Of Selling The AGA Cooker.”

In the book, he taught prospective salesmen how to overcome objections such as “It’s too big for my kitchen” and “I’m only renting my present house,” both common objections in the 1930s.

And while Ogilvy’s book may not have been a bestseller, it gives us at least two valuable insights into overcoming objects.

1. You need to know the objections if you’re going to overcome them
2. Once you know the objections, you can meet them head-on

These two insights are even more critical for digital products since you’re not usually talking with customers face-to-face and hearing their objections. You need a proven strategy for unearthing potential objections and then overcoming them.

This article aims to help with that. We’ll cover:

• The primary types of customer objections
• How to identify the objections of your specific customers
• How to overcome those objections

What Are Customer Objections?

At the risk of stating the obvious, let’s ensure we’re all on the same page regarding customer objections.

Customer objections are concerns that cause them to hesitate (at best) and abandon (at worst) during the digital purchase experience.

People want to be sure they’re making the right choice. We’ve all been burned by products that seemed too good to be true—the “amazing” deal that turned out to be a dud or that trendy product made out of inferior materials.

With hundreds of years of snake oil and used car salesmen informing customer opinions, you need to be willing to meet customers where they are by addressing objections head-on.

Why You Need To Understand Your Customer’s Objections

Every customer objection is friction on the path to purchasing. Most customers are risk-averse; therefore, the more objections they have, the more risk they feel when purchasing, and the less likely they are to hit that “Buy” or “Subscribe” button.

And here’s the bottom line: overcoming objections isn’t an end in itself, but it is a way of ultimately improving the customer experience and increasing sales.

Let’s be clear though, it’s not enough to merely address generic objections. You need to address the specific objections of your customers. Some objections are unique to your customers and tied specifically to your products and company, so any “list of customer objections” won’t suffice. You must conduct your own research to understand your unique customers.

And make sure you do this early and often! As Leslie Ye at HubSpot notes:

“Nothing is more dangerous to a deal than letting sales objections go unaddressed until the final stages. The longer the buyer holds an opinion, the stronger that opinion usually is – and the harder you’ll have to fight to combat it.”

Identify objections and address them early on, and you’ll be on your way to optimizing your digital sales funnel.

How To Identify Your Unique Customer Objections

It’s easy to think that you know your customers and their objections, but unless you actively study your audience, there’s a good chance that there are dozens of objections you’re unaware of.

Consider a few of these strategies to uncover your customers’ unique concerns.

#1 – Research

There are several ways you can conduct audience research to help identify the specific objections they have. Some effective methods include surveys, customer interviews, and analyzing website data. For a deeper dive into customer research strategies, check out our e-book on the topic.

But when it comes to understanding customer objections, here are a few relevant considerations:

Conduct User Research
User research is a structured way to find out why users take certain actions. It uncovers user behaviors, motivations, and pain points as they interact with your website or digital product. Going beyond gut feelings or assumptions, it uses a variety of methods to glean actionable insights directly from users. This knowledge enables you to create a product or website that truly caters to customer needs and expectations.

User research is the umbrella term that user testing falls under. User research can also refer to other research methods, such as focus groups, interviews, and surveys.

Beyond understanding customer objections, the biggest benefits of user research include:

• Getting outside the jar
• Knowing what to improve (instead of guessing)
• Providing better customer-centric experiences

Collect User Behavior Data
Installing a tool like Hotjar on your site allows you to see visual reports of your top site pages, and see what content users interact with. Heatmaps can add context to site analytics like time on page, exit pages, and funnel dropoff data. This helps uncover what content on your site demands the attention of users and what might be overlooked.

Determine Your Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS is a management tool that allows you to determine how loyal your customers are. Scores range from -100 (everyone is a detractor) to +100 (everyone is a promoter). It’s essentially a metric that measures your overall relationship with your customers.

NPS is typically calculated based on how customers respond to a single question: How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?

Anything over a 9 is considered a promoter, those under 6 are considered detractors, and those between 7-8 are considered passives.

Net Promoter Score = % of Promoters – % of Detractors

After the customer responds, they are typically asked a series of open-ended survey questions to bring clarity to their answer.

These questions can include:

• How did you first hear about our company/product?
• What are the three biggest things you dislike about our products?
• How can we improve your experience?
• What features do you value the most?
• How would you describe our products to a friend?
• What are our products missing?
• What are three things that almost stopped you from using our products?

By asking these types of highly specific questions, you can get a good sense of the common objections your customers have.

#2 – Chat

If you have a chat function on your site, you’re sitting on a gold mine when it comes to determining customer objections. You can methodically go through the chat logs and highlight the specific questions, objections, and problems that come up repeatedly. Then, you can compile those objections and create a plan for answering them.

This is also a good opportunity to address whether your chat adds to or interrupts the customer experience. While it can offer great insights into your customers’ main concerns, it shouldn’t interrupt the shopping experience by popping up without being requested.

#3 – Feedback Form On Your Website

When do customers typically use feedback forms? When they encounter a problem. The information submitted through these forms can be incredibly helpful in identifying points of friction in the sale process and addressing follow-up questions. Are there common problems your customers are mentioning in feedback forms? Those are objections to overcome.

#4 – Customer Service Reps

Your customer service representatives are on the front lines of customer interactions and will have a good sense of the common problems customers encounter and typical sales objections. Tap into their experience to identify the consistent customer objections that occur. While some of what they say will certainly be anecdotal, it can give you a broad picture of what your customers feel.

#5 – Social Channels

People tend to share very positive and very negative experiences on social media platforms. Closely monitoring social media channels allows you to identify those who’ve had negative experiences and personally interact with them to discover their pain points. For those who share positive experiences, you have the opportunity to ask them specifically what made their experience so good and leverage their feedback as social proof.

#6 – Brand Feedback On Third-Party Sites

Third-party websites that house reviews, testimonials, recommendations, and other similar content can give you valuable insight into customers who have had negative experiences on your site. These sites also usually allow you to engage with the customer by replying to the review, asking for further clarification, and offering to fix any problems.

How To Overcome Customer Objections (Step-By-Step)

Once you’ve determined the specific objections your customers have, you can begin to address them systematically.

Typically, objections fall into one of three categories:

1. Risk – The customer is concerned that the cost of the product may not be worth the value it provides.
2. Quality – The customer is concerned that the product may be low quality, and thus not provide a satisfying experience.
3. Relationship – The customer is concerned that the company selling the product (in this case, you) is of questionable character and may provide poor service.

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How Do You Overcome Each of These Customer Objections?

#1 – Work To Reduce The Perceived Risk

Perceived risk is subjective and will vary from customer to customer, though there are numerous ways you can reduce the amount of risk they feel. Each of these strategies involves, in some fashion, reframing the conversation to demonstrate that the risks are minimal and the benefits significant.

In most cases, some or all of these strategies will be used in concert with each other.

• Prove that the value of the product exceeds the costs and potential risks. This should be your overarching strategy when it comes to reducing the perceived risk. You want the customer to understand that the value your product provides far exceeds the risks. Because value depends on several factors (quality, benefits, relation to competitor products, etc.), you need to understand the specific risks that concern them and then show how the value of your product speaks to each of their risks.
• Re-frame the cost. When a budget-conscious person looks at your product, they are primarily aware of one thing: cost. This one thing can overshadow almost everything else about your product. You can overcome this objection by reframing the cost in terms of the value it will bring to their life. The phrase, “You can’t put a price on your health,” is a common example of this. Yes, it may cost a lot for a medical procedure, but the value of feeling well far outweighs the cost. The same approach applies to your physical or digital product. Yes, your product costs a certain amount, but compared to the value it brings, it’s worth the price.
• Highlight the benefits. There’s a huge difference between highlighting your product’s features and benefits. Features are things like the materials it’s made from, the different things it can do, etc. It slices, it dices, it makes Julienne fries. Those are features. Benefits, on the other hand, are the way the features improve the person’s life. A customer can easily see the features of a product on your site. What they can’t necessarily do is connect the dots between those features and how they will bring value to them. Your mobile phone battery case offers a 40% overall increase in battery charge. That’s a feature. This extended battery life translates into 9 hours of not needing to worry whether your battery will die. That’s a benefit. Focus on benefits over features.
• Offer a guarantee. Few things do more to set customers at ease than a guarantee. If they know they can get their money back without any hassle, their sense of risk will be greatly reduced. Nordstrom has built their reputation on allowing returns for the entire life of their products. If you bought a backpack in 6th grade and want to return it 20 years later, they’ll let you do it. This greatly reduces the risk people feel when purchasing their products.
• Give sufficient product details. This should go without saying, but we’re going to say it nonetheless. At a minimum, you should give customers enough product details to make an informed decision. If customers have to do significant research just to determine product details, it’s unlikely you’ll make the sale.

#2: Make The Quality Of The Product Or Service More Apparent

One of the chief concerns of every customer is the quality of your product or service. They want to know they’re making a wise purchase that will provide value over the long run. There are several simple ways to highlight the quality of what you offer.

• Highlight your service and support. By drawing attention to your outstanding customer service, you demonstrate that you’re committed to the customer beyond the sale. You genuinely want them to get value from your product and are willing to dedicate time and resources to help them. Companies like Zappos and Trader Joe’s have built hugely loyal customer bases due to their passionate commitment to outstanding customer service. For the customer, this acts as a safety net of sorts. They know that if something goes wrong, they can easily get the problem fixed.
• Highlight abilities to customize or personalize. If your product can be customized in any way, that should be highlighted to potential customers. This gives them the assurance that the product will be exactly what they want, and to their specifications. Additionally, customization typically indicates more individual attention given to creating each product, as opposed to cranking them off an assembly line.
• Highlight values that will appeal to your customers. Depending on your product, your customers will have certain things they value. For example, if you’re selling handcrafted leather bags, your customers will probably value craftsmanship. If you’re selling electronics, speed will be a key value. Supplement buyers value the purity and organic nature of their purchases. Do whatever you can to highlight those particular values on your site and in conversations with customers. This can be instrumental in overcoming objections.
• Create high-quality supplemental content. One of the cheapest ways to overcome objections is to create high-quality, high-value supplemental content on your site that will help your customers. For example, if you sell coffee beans, an in-depth guide on creating the perfect cup of coffee with a French Press will serve your potential customers and demonstrate your commitment to your product.

#3 – Build Relationships and Care For Your Audience

Perhaps most importantly, you want to demonstrate that you truly care for your audience. Potential customers want to know that you’re not going to take their money and disappear. If you can build relationships with your customers, you’ll retain them for the long run and increase your Customer Lifetime Value.

Some simple ways to build relationships and care for your audience are:

• Show testimonials. Testimonials from satisfied customers demonstrate both the reliability of your product or service and just how much you care about your customers. This goes a long way toward establishing trust with and overcoming the objections of potential customers. Why does Amazon show the overall customer product rating immediately under the product title? Because they know that customers trust the opinions of other customers. Adding testimonials and reviews to your site can go a long way toward overcoming objections.
• Show case studies. By putting successful case studies on your site, you demonstrate that: 1) You have a history of helping customers succeed and 2) You are committed to building outstanding relationships with your clients. Case studies also help minimize the risk potential customers might feel. It shows them that numerous other customers have used your product or service successfully.
• Create loyalty programs. There’s a reason loyalty programs have long been a staple of brick-and-mortar stores: they work. When you reward people for being loyal customers, they keep coming back, which then allows you to build a relationship with them. The more you nurture that relationship, the fewer objections they have and the more likely they are to buy from you.

Common Sales Objections For SaaS & Ecommerce Companies

How do these specifically manifest for SaaS and ecommerce companies? Let’s take a look.

SaaS Common Sales Objections

Cost Concerns:

• Objection: Some customers may be hesitant to subscribe to a service once they see the price and perceive that the cost is too much. A lack of budget is one of the most common types of objections.
• Resolution: Your pricing page needs to communicate the value of your SaaS product effectively to address any price objections. The pricing page should have clear, customer-friendly language, simple layouts, and be free from any misleading marketing tactics. Provide flexible pricing plans, free trials, or discounts for longer commitments.

Integration Challenges:

• Objection: Another common cause for concern when it comes to SaaS products is the complexity of integrating the solution into existing systems. Prospects don’t want to disrupt their processes by worrying about the compatibility of the product with their system.
• Resolution: Address their concerns by highlighting integration processes and providing customer testimonials showcasing successful integrations. You can even take it one step further by offering dedicated customer support or integration assistance, showing that they don’t have to worry about anything because you’ll be there to help them along. Sharing case studies of similar businesses that have successfully integrated your solution can also show them the service in action.

Data Security Concerns:

• Objection: It’s perfectly understandable for potential customers to be cautious about storing sensitive data in the cloud. Security breaches happen all the time, and they have no guarantee that their data will be safe.
• Resolution: Assure your customers of your company’s robust security measures. Provide compliance certifications if necessary and highlight encryption protocols. Offer data privacy guarantees and share information on how your SaaS solution keeps customer data safe.

Limited Customization:

• Objection: Customers want a solution or service that fits their needs. If your SaaS solution appears too rigid and not customizable, they may hesitate to use your service.
• Resolution: Make sure to showcase the flexibility of your platform by detailing customization options and the ability to tailor the solution to meet specific business needs. Providing examples of how other businesses have successfully personalized the platform can encourage them further.

Ecommerce Companies Customer Objections

Shipping Costs and Times:

• Objection: Common objections in sales are high shipping costs or extended delivery times. Customers don’t like surprises. When you add a high shipping cost on top of the product they arepurchasing, chances are they will abandon their cart. 
• Resolution: Time is money, and your customers want to know when their purchases will arrive on their doorstep. Get as specific as possible with your delivery dates. Many ecommerce stores have also discovered that incorporating free shipping as part of their strategic plan enables them to sell more goods and earn more profits.

Product Quality Concerns:

• Objection: Shoppers want to know they’re getting their money’s worth, but it can be difficult to determine the quality of a product through a website.
• Resolution: You can convey a sense of quality and craftsmanship by provisioning detailed product descriptions. Describe the materials used, the care that went into its construction, and any unique characteristics that set it apart. Supplement this with high-resolution images and videos that allow customers to closely examine details. Customer reviews and social proof are incredibly powerful – highlight those that specifically mention the product’s quality and durability.

Product Fit and Sizing Concerns:

• Objection: Customers hesitate to buy clothes (and other size-sensitive items) online because they can’t try them on first. Nobody wants the hassle of returning something that doesn’t fit.
• Resolution: Eliminate their uncertainty by providing detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, and customer reviews. User-generated photos showing the product on different body types provide valuable visual context. Make exchanges and returns easy to build confidence. Consider offering a satisfaction guarantee or warranty to reassure customers about the quality of your products.

By understanding and effectively addressing these objections, SaaS and e-commerce companies can build trust, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately increase conversion rates.

See Things Through The Eyes Of Your Customers

Ultimately, overcoming objections is about seeing things through the eyes of your customers. It’s about understanding the reservations, hesitations, and questions they have, empathizing with those concerns, then seeking to overcome those objections. Overcoming the objections of your customers is key to improving your digital customer experience and increasing sales.

Remember, the best kind of customer relationship is based on trust. People who trust you are far more likely to buy from you. But as with any relationship, building trust takes time and action. By taking action to identify customer objections and then taking time to answer them, you put yourself in a position for success.

If you need help identifying and overcoming your customer objections, contact us.

The post How to Discover and Resolve Your Customer Objections appeared first on The Good.

During this era of augmented realities and machine automation, businesses are concerned with connectivity, data, analytics, intelligence, and so much more. This new digital transformation, ushered in by the fourth industrial revolution, sees companies gearing up to be digital-first.

In fact, according to a report by Foundry, 89% of companies have already implemented a digital-first strategy or are planning to do so. Gartner also shared that digitalization is a top priority for 87% of senior business leaders. But even companies that are keeping up with the trends of the digital age can find themselves failing.

Why?

Because most companies don’t understand that with this digital revolution, there was also a paradigm shift from the traditional product-centric approach to one that focuses on the customer.

Now, more than ever, brands need to be able to cater to customer needs and preferences. Taking this customer-centric approach creates a satisfying customer experience that becomes the key to crafting winning digital experiences that will, in turn, create loyal customers.

For years, brands have utilized personalization as a means of offering a customized experience for customers. While personalization is still relevant, the shift in the digital age calls for more tailored offerings.

Brands can harness data and leverage technology to create these tailored offerings, improve communications, and increase engagements, but only if they remember to focus on the needs and preferences of their customers.

In this article, we discuss the shift from product-centricity to customer-centricity. We’ll also explore the role of customer orchestration in customer-centric digital experiences, practical ways to make your brand more customer-centric, and winning examples that can inspire you.

The Digital Era: The Need to Shift from Product-Centricity to Customer-Centricity

Gone are the days when brands could differentiate themselves from their competitors solely through their products.

According to a Forbes article, approximately 1.1 million new small businesses open in a year. With saturated markets across different industries and the addition of new players, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out simply through the superiority of your products or services – especially if other brands are also claiming to do it better, faster, or cheaper than you. However, there are still companies who prefer this product-centric approach regardless of the demand and the customers.

While product-centric companies focus on selling the best new products, customer-centric companies make the effort to analyze customer needs through data, tools, and feedback to create the best solutions for them.

Companies also measure success very differently depending on which approach they use. When the focus is on the product, success is mostly measured through sales and how well the product sells. On the other hand, the customer-centric approach views success through customer satisfaction and customer relationships. When the focus is on the customer, success is based on customer loyalty, retention, average order value, and similar indicators.

The two strategies are very different because they are defined by different goals. The product-centric approach helps companies achieve goals relating to product quality. Meanwhile, the customer-centric approach allows brands to create the best customer experience by satisfying customer expectations.

It’s crazy to think that customer-centricity has been talked about since 1954.

The concept was born when Peter Drucker said, “It is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.”

Still, the approach only became earnestly mentioned in marketing literature around the late 1990’s. Even then, production efficiencies held the highest priorities for companies. When the digital transformation took place, companies saw an opportunity to leverage information technology to increase interactions with customers by creating various touchpoints that would allow them to create personalized treatments for loyal customers. Now, companies are still struggling to apply the customer-centric approach despite claiming that they are, in fact, focused on their customers.

However, with the recent emergence of customer orchestration, there is a bigger opportunity to implement seamless touchpoints throughout the customer journey that elevate the experience and support personalization.

The Role of Customer Orchestration in Creating a Customer-Centric Digital Experience

When brands successfully find a balance between their use of technology and their understanding of their customer’s behavior, there is no stopping them. This all begins by looking at the customer journey from the perspective of the customer.

Let’s start with the basics.

A customer journey map is a visualization of the steps or actions that a company believes a customer will take when they engage with the brand. A customer journey map is neither linear nor simple. The flow can branch out in different ways and in different directions depending on the options and possible outcomes that are available to the customer.

Now, where does customer orchestration fit into this?

The equation is simple: you can’t implement a customer-centric approach without a customer journey map, and you can’t create a customer journey map without customer orchestration.

Customer orchestration takes the data you have available and applies that data to map out personalized experiences that will engage your customers. It’s like the interactive film that Netflix released, where viewers decide what the main character will do, and the narrative changes based on the decision.

All of this hinges on a company’s ability to connect with customers at certain touchpoints and gather data accordingly. The problem is not all companies may be knowledgeable, aware, or even motivated to do research or utilize tools and validation techniques to know what to do with their data. As we discussed in a previous article, there is a distinction between being data-backed and data-driven.

However, brands that are willing to invest in optimizing their digital experience and working on customer journey orchestration will be able to see the benefits. These benefits include:

• High Customer Engagement.

  Through customer orchestration, you’ll be able to segment your audience better, which then leads to better personalization and customization. Customers who come across relevant content are more likely to stay engaged with your brand and move further along the journey map.

• Increased Average Order Value

  With the data from customer journey orchestration, you will be able to create a personalized journey for your customers. Knowing what’s relevant to your customers gives you more opportunities to cross-sell and upsell products. In the long run, this can improve the average order value for your business.

• Enhanced Customer Service Delivery

  The customer research involved in journey orchestration doesn’t just tell you what your customers like but also what they don’t like. You’ll be able to identify customer service complaints and familiarize yourself with the struggles that customers encounter throughout their buying journey. This allows you to train your customer service representative accordingly and solve the root pains that your customers experience.

Now that we’ve established the role of customer orchestration in implementing a customer-centric approach, let’s dive into what that actually looks like.

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Five Practical Ways to Make Your Brand More Customer-Centric

1. Research Your Audience and Audit Your Website

The first step in creating a customer-centric online experience is through extensive user research. Collecting insights from every platform your customers use to interact with your brand will help identify friction points and uncover latent needs.

You won’t be able to meet the specific needs of your customers until you know what those needs are.

User research has a variety of different inputs to consider. Typical user research will include customer surveys, focus groups, and user testing. To get a fuller picture of how your customers feel about your brand, we recommend you analyze every outlet your customers use to talk about you.

Start broad by conducting surveys with your users, then narrow your focus with in-depth user testing sessions. The more data you gather from your customers, the better experience you’ll be able to provide for them.

If you want a more holistic approach, you can also do a website audit. This way, you can gather data about your users and find out what to improve on your website. A website audit will give you data and a roadmap that makes use of the data.

2. Utilize a multichannel marketing strategy

The more places your customers can reach you and engage with your brand, the better. Multichannel marketing focuses on engaging with the user through every outlet they use, whether that be through social media, print, email, etc. This approach puts the decision of how to connect with your brand in the consumer’s hands.

• Reach your customers on social media

  Social media has become one of the most effective methods for reaching your customers and is a relatively versatile tool that allows you to respond to customer service issues, conduct customer research, and promote your brand.With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has quickly grown to be one of the best sources of user-generated content for brands. It ranks as the most effective and impactful social media platform to develop your brand or promote a product. Many brands have started to utilize customer-created Instagram content for their product detail pages and even on homepages.

• Continue utilizing email

  Despite more dynamic and personal methods of marketing emerging in recent years, email is yet to be beaten in terms of visibility and efficiency. In fact, post-purchase emails are more powerful than your typical promotional emails, yet very few brands are taking advantage of them. You have a unique opportunity to convert a new customer into a recurring customer, and once that opportunity passes, you have to work doubly hard to get it again.

3. Provide a personalized experience

Personalization is one of the most effective and simple ways to improve your business’s retention rate and become more customer-centric. If your customers can’t develop a connection with your brand, it’s very unlikely that they’ll be motivated to continue purchasing from you. Here are a few tactics we recommend you try on your site to improve customer personalization:

• Use cookies to remember website visitors

  Being able to cookie visitors on your site opens up various opportunities for personalization. If you can store basic information about a user (product preferences, time on site, page views), it’ll help you cater to each individual user’s needs.

• Create Product Recommendation Quizzes for Your Customers

  Product recommendation quizzes work towards building a better personalized and 1:1 customer experience. Think of it as a guidebook for customers on what to buy from your site.Product recommendation quizzes show customers how your product will solve their specific problems and make the purchasing journey an efficient and pleasant experience.

4. Tell a Story through Your Brand

Despite “storytelling” becoming a marketing buzzword over the last several years, there’s an undeniable value in telling a compelling story to your customers to build a personal connection. Many successful ecommerce brands that emerged in the last few years have had a compelling story associated with them that consumers have latched onto.

You can leverage the StoryBrand framework in developing your marketing message. StoryBrand has an incredibly simple and wildly effective seven-step framework for developing your marketing plan or marketing message. Humans are innately drawn to stories over a list of accolades, testimonials, and facts.

5. Define your customer experience strategy

Improving your business’s customer experience can seem like a daunting task if you don’t have a clear strategy outlining your approach. Developing a customer experience (CX) strategy will help you take the insight you gained from user research and turn it into an actionable plan for improving your site experience. Your CX strategy should be constructed with a variety of factors in mind, including:

• Market research
• User research
• Mission and vision statement
• User testing

There’s no “right way” to develop a CX strategy, but not creating one for your business would be a serious mistake. Defining a clear strategy early on will help align your team around a singular vision and goal and will inform how you continue to develop and improve your website.

Five Brands that Leverage Customer-Centric Strategies to Create Satisfying Digital Experiences

Shifting to a customer-centric approach is not easy, but it’s possible. We’ve reviewed the top 100 customer-centric brands from Forbes and picked out five brands with winning digital experiences.

1. Depop

Depop has quickly climbed in popularity, and it’s no surprise why. The social shopping platform, which targets Gen Z and Millennials, recently received $62 million dollars in funding and is on top of the Forbes list for its masterful use of social networking and omnichannel commerce.

There has been an evolution in how people consume fashion. Talented individuals create beautiful pieces that they can sell from anywhere. You don’t have to be a well-known fashion brand or have a store at the mall. Depop simply gave them a platform because they understood that, “social apps are not a choice, but simply the basis and source of all their online engagement.” 

Part of its popularity is that it allows for instant feedback when shopping and has improved interactions between sellers and buyers. 

2. Starbucks

Starbucks is on the list for many reasons.

Firstly, they have an unparalleled understanding of customer perspective, which allowed them to create one of the best customer journey experiences. They were willing to reinvent themselves by modifying their inter-departmental workflows.

Starbucks also has a superb customer loyalty program that keeps people coming back. They’ve built a brand outside of the coffee that they serve. People come to the store for the ambiance and the experience more than just the drinks.

But what really changed things for them was when they pivoted away from in-store purchases by creating a great digital experience with their delivery and pick-up options. Customers can skip long lines and wait times by ordering online. They still have full customization options, and they don’t even have to leave the house for their favorite cup of coffee.

3. Amazon

Amazon is another favorite that makes its way onto many of the lists online, and for good reason.

It’s no secret that Jeff Bezos aims to make Amazon the “most customer-centric company on Earth,” and they’ve certainly taken huge strides to accomplish this. The company is constantly innovating and finding ways to improve the customer experience and provide better service. They’re a huge fan of using personalized product recommendations and made one-click ordering a possibility.

4. Ikea

Ikea offers a winning customer experience both on and offline.

Customers are free to shop, relax, and eat at their brick-and-mortar stores. However, it’s their online experience that they’ve leveled up. Imagine being able to use your camera to place detailed, life-sized 3D Holograms of furniture in your house. That’s what Ikea offers.

Because of its wide range of product offerings, Ikea also knows that the right website navigation is essential for customers shopping online. Their use of different categories in the navigation is something we’ve seen in winning tests for our clients countless times.

5. Ulta Beauty

Similar to Ikea, Ulta Beauty prioritized the needs of their customers. When the pandemic hit and people couldn’t try out products by going to the store, Ulta launched their GLAMlab experience. It gave customers a way to try on products virtually, and Ulta kept improving the tool. They later added a skin analysis tool and updated the products that customers could try on. It’s like a product recommendation quiz, but better!

Put Customers at the Center of Your Digital Experience

These winning examples are proof that the best way to optimize your digital experience is to put your customers at the center of everything. From doing research and mapping the customer journey, to designing your website and creating marketing strategies, you have to keep your customers in mind.

You will always hear me saying, “You can’t read the label from inside the jar.” You have to change your perspective and put yourself in your customers’ shoes. With this new wave of digital revolution, you can do so much more to elevate and personalize the experience of your customers.

Things might be constantly changing in the digital landscape, but one thing remains constant: it’s always crucial to listen to your customers.

Start creating a customer-centric digital experience with The Good. Contact us.

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And yet, like the magical boy with the scarred forehead, post-purchase emails are incredibly powerful.

You might not be worried about post-purchase emails because you’re getting new customers at lightning speed. Great! You have a good customer acquisition strategy. But what’s the point if those customers don’t come back? There is only a 5-20% chance of a new consumer buying from you, whereas loyal customers are five times more likely to repurchase.

The good news is that post-purchase emails and follow-ups have a significantly higher open rate than standard promotional emails. Post-purchase emails have a 40.5% open rate. Meanwhile, common marketing emails only reach half this number, with an average open rate of 20.94%.

Despite these statistics and the fact that it is seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain customer relationships, many companies send a receipt and little else. This is unbelievable, and misses out on a huge opportunity to increase customer retention rates and convert new buyers into recurring customers.

In this article, we’re going to outline the 6 post-purchase emails that will boost your conversions, nurture customers, and result in repeat sales.

1. Order confirmation is the first post-purchase email

The first email should always be the confirmation of purchase. When people click “Buy”, they want to know that everything worked. That they didn’t just send money into the ether of the internet, never to hear from it again. Confirm that their order was received and that someone on the other end is doing something about it.

At the risk of stating the obvious, ecommerce involves significantly more trust than face-to-face transactions. A customer is handing you their credit card number with the assumption that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain. They want assurance that you’re not operating a scam out of an internet cafe in Nigeria.

An order confirmation should be sent as soon as the payment clears, letting the customer know:

1. That their order went through.
2. When it will ship and how to track their shipment.
3. How they can access their receipt.
4. Who to contact if there’s a problem.
5. What they should expect next.

As soon as you order from Crocs, you get something like this:

Crocs makes it clear that your order was successful and gives you a way to double-check the information. They also provide the customer the option to cancel their order early on in the post-purchase process. Further down the email, there is a link leading to FAQ’s and customer support. They leave little room for questions or doubts and prepare the customer for other follow-up emails.

You can use the order confirmation email for upselling or cross-selling, but you need to be careful about this. If you launch into product pitches too quickly, you can sacrifice trust and come across as only caring about revenue. Tact is the name of the game in the confirmation email.

Whether you cross-sell or not, your primary goal in the confirmation email is assurance. You want your customers to have assurance that everything is working as it should. Setting the expectations of the customer, as ProFlowers does, can be an outstanding way of building trust.

2. Follow up with a shipping confirmation

The shipping confirmation email allows you to update the customer on the status of their order, continue to build trust with them and nurture your relationship with them.

When Fitbit sends a shipping confirmation email, they use it as an opportunity to insert humor and personality:

They also use the email to remind the customer of how they can continue to track the progress of the order, ensuring they don’t become worried about the order being lost.

This confirmation email from Adidas is extensive and provides excellent information for the customers:

The shipping confirmation order is also an opportunity to provide advice before the product arrives.

The email also includes the following:

• A way to contact the customer service team
• Links to important information such as returns & refunds, FAQs, delivery time, and payment
• A recommended section to promote other items
• A CTA to download the app

Similar to the order confirmation email, the shipment email is intended to nurture customers to the point where they implicitly trust you. You want them to know that you’ve got their back and that if there are problems, you will handle them.

3. Check in on the shipment in your third post-purchase email

Approximately one week after their shipment should have arrived, you want to check in to make sure everything arrived when it should and how it should. Ask questions like:

• Did it arrive on time?
• Did it arrive in good shape?
• Did you have any issues after it got there?

Take this example from Laird Superfood’s post-purchase flow. They inform the customer when their order has been successfully delivered and confirm if the customer did receive the package. They insert a bit of humor in the message, but ultimately, they provide a way to contact customer support so that customers can share their concerns if there are any real problems.

We’ve all had packages arrive late, banged up, and even containing the wrong item. We’ve also experienced the annoyance of trying to get an unresponsive company to fix the problem. It’s incredibly frustrating and almost guarantees that we’ll never do business with them again.

This email doesn’t need to be particularly complex. It should simply say, “We really value you and wanted to make sure everything was okay.” If there was a problem, you want to be proactive in resolving it.

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4. Request a review in the fourth email

When you are researching an item online, what’s the first thing you do? You look at the reviews. You want to know whether the product is good or will fall apart two months after your purchase.

Positive reviews can lead to more sales, while negative reviews can kill a product.

Reviews can also give insight into ways you can better serve your customers. If a customer leaves a poor review, it gives you the opportunity to fix the problem and keep the customer from becoming angry.

A review request email asks the customer to leave a review of the product or to rate the experience they had with you. To show your appreciation, you can offer them a gift or store credit. This will not only strengthen the trust and positive relationship, but it will also encourage them to come back for future transactions.

This email from Hollister is a perfect example of a request review. They offer customers a chance to win $100 in store credit in exchange for the review and already included a CTA button that the customer has to click, making the process very enticing, straightforward, and clear for the customer.

Ideally, this email should be sent after enough time has elapsed for them to try the product for a few weeks.

The review email can also include:

1. A reminder to customers about the great product or experience you provided, usually using an image.
2. Honest and upfront information about how long the survey will take.
3. A description of how the review or results of the survey will benefit the customer.

When asking for a review, do everything possible to minimize the number of clicks necessary. As Chris Hexton says:

“Clicks-to-wow” is a way of describing the number of clicks a customer takes from their first interaction with your email to the moment they achieve the goal or hit the “wow” moment. In most cases, reducing the “clicks-to-wow” will increase conversions.

Link to the exact page where the review is entered to minimize the number of clicks.

User-generated content is a great way to attract new customers and build more trust with existing ones.

Don’t be shy to ask your customers to show you some love on social media if they are happy with their purchase. Gathering customer reviews in a feedback request email can help you glean insights about customer behavior and preferences, but having customers promoting your marketing campaigns.

Think of this as yet another check-in email. If a customer didn’t like your product, you want to know why so you can fix the problem. If you don’t fix the problem, you’ll lose the customer and potentially lose more customers over the same problem.

5. Make a post-purchase offer or replenish reminder in your fifth email

Your fifth email should be a post-purchase offer to promote items that complement or upgrade the item that the customer ordered. If the items are food, health supplements, or necessities, you can even send a reminder to the customer to replenish their stock after a certain period of time.

Think about it. They already purchased the product, and assuming the review results were positive, you know they liked it. This is the perfect opportunity to get them to re-order the product or purchase a similar product.

The conversion opportunities here are huge. A 5% increase in customer retention can also increase the profits of your company by 25-95%. Additionally, existing customers are more likely to test new products and spend 31% more than new customers.

You’ve already spent the money to acquire a new customer. You could spend the same time and effort to acquire another new customer or much less time and money to keep the same one.

This fifth email is crucial for customer retention. When a customer re-orders, they become that goldmine that is the repeat customer.

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6. Encourage customers to join a loyalty program

To further convince your customers to buy from you again, you can include relevant content, such as a loyalty or rewards program, that will entice them to make future purchases.

By including information about the rewards you offer in your post-purchase flow, you can encourage customer loyalty, boost sales and improve customer satisfaction. Loyalty programs are key in building long-term relationships with your customers.

In fact, according to Forbes, adding a loyalty program to an ecommerce platform can increase average order value by 319%!

Starbucks has a very effective rewards program that encourages people to buy more drinks in exchange for stars, eventually allowing them to redeem free coffee or food – and who doesn’t want that? They make sure to include a comprehensive list of benefits in their email to further encourage frequent customers to take part in the loyalty program.

Don’t Waste Post-Purchase Emails

A post-purchase email sequence is a terrible thing to waste. You have a unique opportunity to convert a new customer into a recurring customer, and once that opportunity passes, you have to work doubly hard to get it again.

These email sequences aren’t particularly difficult to create. Most email marketing services, such as Klaviyo or MailChimp, can accommodate them. It simply takes a little bit of time and creativity.

Post-purchase emails are hugely underrated and can become one of the most powerful tools in your digital marketing toolbox. They can increase your revenue, boost your customer engagement, and actually reduce overall marketing expenses.

Isn’t it time to stop giving them the Harry Potter treatment?

The post 6 Post-Purchase Emails That Convert And Retain appeared first on The Good.

Why is that?

Marketing teams tend to measure success in terms of sales revenue. That’s as it should be. You’re in business to turn a profit. When you focus on total sales, though, you value your new customers just as much as repeat customers. That picture of customer value entirely misses one huge point: Customer acquisition costs far outweigh customer retention costs.

Every dollar you invest in getting one new customer to place an order could contribute to delivering ten or more repeat sales – if that same dollar was invested in tactics aimed at improving customer retention and brand loyalty.

Any top-notch salesperson will tell you the real job starts after the first order is placed. The sales path is more accurately described as a circle leading from hearing about you to listening to and believing you, to placing an order – then on to helping get the word out to others and purchasing again and again.

What is customer retention?

Customer retention refers to the rate at which customers stick with your brand over a certain period of time. The higher your customer retention rate is, the more existing customers you have coming back for more.

Customer retention rate is a particularly crucial metric for ecommerce brands today since shoppers have so many choices. It’s easy to jump ship to a competitor when they’re a dime a dozen. But, if your retention rates are high, it shows you have a loyal customer base and in-demand products.

How do you measure customer retention rate?

Like most ecommerce metrics, there’s a handy formula to work out your customer retention rate:

(Number of customers at end of the period – number of new customers acquired during the same period) / number of customers at the start of the period x 100

If you had 300 customers at the end of your chosen period, acquired 150 new customers during that time, and had 400 customers at the start of the period, the formula would look like this:

(300 – 150) / 400 x 100 = 37.5%

This is a pretty standard percentage since the average customer retention rate for ecommerce brands hovers around 30%.

Why customer retention is important in ecommerce

Customer retention rates track both new and existing customers to determine how likely a shopper is to stick around. It highlights how good you are at acquiring new customers, but also how many existing shoppers come back–which indicates high customer satisfaction levels and an enjoyable customer experience.

There are several reasons why customer retention is important for ecommerce brands:

• Increase ROI: Acquiring new customers is great, but it’s cheaper to convert existing customers (and they’re likely to spend more with you), which increases your ROI on ad spend and other marketing efforts.
• Boost customer loyalty: Returning customers are likely satisfied with the service you’re offering, otherwise they wouldn’t come back. Increasing customer retention rates means giving shoppers a reason to come back time and time again.
• Acquire new customers: When shoppers come across a brand that has a devoted fan base, they’re going to want a slice of the action. High retention rates show potential buyers you care about them and the experience they have with you.
• Reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC): When you have high retention rates, you don’t need to spend as much on getting new customers because your existing customers purchase from you on a regular basis.
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV): Higher customer retention rates indicate a high number of returning customers, which means the amount you make from a single customer over their lifetime with your brand significantly increases.
• Promote word-of-mouth marketing: Returning customers are more likely to recommend your brand to their friends and family. This is one of the most powerful and effective marketing strategies you can put in place.
• Focus on growth: It’s extremely difficult to grow and scale your business if the majority of your efforts are focused on constantly acquiring new customers. If you consistently need a large volume of new customers to keep revenue coming in, you’ll never be able to dedicate the necessary time and resources to growing your business.

Increasing customer retention rates ensures that revenue continues to flow even when you’re not actively seeking out new customers. This, in turn, allows you to focus on expanding into new markets or increasing your product offerings while maintaining a high ROI and satisfied customers.

Customer retention also relies on really understanding your customers so you can provide them with excellent, personalized experiences. The better you know your shoppers, the easier it is to market to them, communicate with them, and, ultimately, sell to them. Plus, high retention rates are a sign you’re doing things right. No one’s going to keep coming back if you sell subpar products that are a constant disappointment.

Customer retention strategies in action: 9 ecommerce examples

1. Implement a customer loyalty program

Loyalty programs reward your most loyal customers–simple. By offering incentives to shoppers that come back, you’re encouraging them to continue purchasing from you.

Sephora’s loyalty program is revered in the beauty industry. Shoppers can get different types of incentives on different occasions, but the program is also tiered so the more loyal a customer is, the more they can get.

2. Send SMS and email marketing win-back campaigns

Getting customer email addresses and sending them follow-up campaigns post-purchase can win back existing customers. Use insights from their past purchases and interactions with your brand to send personalized product recommendations and offers.

Brooklinen sends a personalized product recommendation to existing customers with the chance to claim free shipping.

3. Identify high-converting customers

Pinpointing who your best customers are will show you who exactly you need to treat like VIP. Find out through your sales metrics who’s bought the most from you and who continues to purchase on a regular basis. You can create a unique audience segment of your best customers and share exclusive content and offers with them.

4. Tailor user experience

Customer expectations are high. Shoppers expect brands to understand their unique wants and needs and serve personalized experiences based on that.

Drunk Elephant offers specific audience segments the chance to claim free shipping.

5. Get customer support involved

Your support team has deep insights into the frustrations and challenges your customers face. Speak to them to get useful customer feedback that you can implement to make the shopping experience more enjoyable.

6. Follow up immediately with new customers

First impressions are crucial. Show new customers you value them by hopping straight into their inbox when they make a purchase. This is a critical moment in cementing the brand-customer relationship.

Elf Cosmetics follows up with new shoppers as soon as they place an order. The email includes an incentive if they refer a friend.

7. Create a referral program

Talking of referral programs… encourage shoppers to recommend your brand to their friends and family in exchange for a special offer.

Shaving brand Harry’s asks new customers to tell their friends in exchange for a free product.

8. Stay in touch and go the extra mile

Standing out today means going the extra mile. Stay in touch with customers, maintain a connection, and don’t forget the little things. Dog food brand Chewy is a pro at this. It’s renowned for sending heartfelt cards and paintings to its most valued customers.

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9. Constantly learn more about your customers

Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to customer retention. Collect data from analytics, dig into heat maps, and carry out user testing to identify where there’s friction in the customer journey and how you can improve it. Use advanced tools yourself or engage an optimization partner to help.

How to improve your customer retention rate with DXO

The beauty of Digital Experience Optimization (DXO) is that it enables you to increase your overall retention rate without resorting to techniques such as discounting (which cuts into your bottom line and hinders growth).

By helping to create a seamless, pleasant shopping experience, DXO does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to boosting repeat conversions and maximizing your ROI. Specifically, DXO enables you to:

• Identify your most profitable customers: DXO starts with a deep dive into your website data. Using specific tools like analytics and heatmaps, you are able to identify which segments of your customers are generating the most revenue. Once this is done, you can then double down on those segments, seeking to raise conversion rates by improving the user experience.
• Identify your most profitable channels: In addition to identifying your most profitable customers, DXO also helps you determine which channels are driving the most revenue. Which is performing better: email or PPC? How effective is your social media strategy? What’s the conversion rate for Facebook ads versus PPC? DXO enables you to determine which channels are generating the most revenue and then double down on those channels.
• Adapt to the preferences of your customers: Ecommerce is constantly changing, and what worked last year probably won’t work as well this year.

Essentially, DXO allows you to see where the preferences of your customers are changing and then adapt appropriately.

For example, you may see that the conversion rate on a particular page has dropped 20 percent in the past year. Using proven DXO techniques, you can dissect the data to determine why the conversion rate is dropping and what you might do to fix it.

• Determine why customers aren’t converting in the first place: To state the obvious, if someone doesn’t initially convert on a page, there’s no chance of repeat conversions. Hence, a low initial conversion rate translates into an even lower repeat conversion rate. Using DXO, you can determine what is keeping people from making an initial purchase. Analytics may reveal that your navigation menu is too confusing, causing people to become lost as they try to navigate your site. Or user testing may show that your checkout process is too cumbersome, leading to an abundance of abandoned carts. Once you’ve identified these issues, you can then take steps to increase your first-touch conversion rate.
• Maximize your existing retention efforts: DXO is like steroids for your existing customer retention efforts, creating a virtuous cycle. Customers come to your site and, due to your DXO efforts, convert at a relatively high rate. When they come back to your site, due to email marketing or retargeting, the repeat conversion rate is also relatively high because of the DXO techniques you’ve employed.

In a sense, it’s like compound interest that keeps building on previous investments. DXO boosts both your initial conversion rate and the conversion rate of repeat customers.

Now is the time to focus on customer retention

Take a close look at your current sales and marketing strategy. How much of your budget and marketing activities are specifically devoted to current customers? How much do you know about your most loyal customers? How often are you calculating customer retention, and what are you doing to cultivate better retention?

The process begins with awareness.

Once you’re convinced that the way you treat current customers will govern growth and you’ve found the holes in your present approach to customer experience optimization, the next steps will become evident.

We’ve found the best answers to the retention challenge are best described by the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Give your customers the same world-class attention you want to receive when you order something online. That starts by looking at your business from the buyers’ perspective to improve customer engagement and dramatically reduce customer churn.

The post 9 Strategies To Improve Customer Retention (The Key To Ecommerce Growth) appeared first on The Good.

How customer care responds, and how quickly they do so, will have long-term consequences on your customer relationships and their lifetime value.

Some companies see customer care as a cost center; a necessary price to pay for operating a business. This is an unfortunate point of view because customer care is anything but.

As the first point of contact for your prospects and customers they wield enormous influence over your revenue. If they’re friendly and helpful they’ll build and sustain your customer base. They’ll convert prospects into first-time buyers, and build loyalty over the long haul.

But a deep product knowledge and a sunny disposition aren’t enough to make a customer care rep succeed. With thousands of prospects visiting your ecommerce site, social media pages and affiliate networks daily, you need to empower the customer care team with the tools and workflows that will allow them to step up to the task. Yes, it will require investment on your part, but they’ll pay dividends long into the future.

Here are some tips to help your customer care team become rock stars.

Recognize Customer Care as the Revenue Generator it Truly Is

Think of your customer care reps as your “just-in-time heroes” who swoop in to rescue sales when prospects are at their wits’ end. You lose sales when a customer doesn’t know if a product comes in pink or will be delivered in time for someone’s birthday. These sales heroes are the secret sauce behind numerous conversions.

If this surprises you, take the time to quantify the benefit your customer care team delivers to your bottom line. You can do that by tracking:

• Chat-to-sales conversion rates
• Number of sales generated by an agent through various interactions
• Average order value generated by an agent

Conversely, research has shown that 79% of consumers will take their business to a competitor within a week due to poor customer service — and this competitor is too often Amazon.

Once you see how critical customer care is to your revenue, consider offering incentives in the form of performance-based bonuses to their compensation packages of your agents. But take care not to overdo it. Customer care succeeds when the customer feels the team member is on their side.

Checkout: It’s Where You Need to Be

Checkout is a make-or-break moment for conversions. Are there hidden costs I don’t know about? Do I need to pay extra to receive the package on time? Can I change the delivery address if I need to after the package has shipped? These are the types of questions that give shoppers pause, and stifle conversions.

Your customer care team can win the sale (and nervous shopper’s long-term loyalty) by coming to their aid. For instance, present the opportunity to chat live with a customer care rep to people who sit on the checkout page for a set period of time. Inaction is a sure sign a shopper has questions, so offer the assistance they want and need.

Follow-up with automated messages that explain delivery time, and your return and exchange policies for added assurance.

Respond to Inquiries at Lightning Speed

Responsiveness has always been a key criteria to customers, but it’s even more so as of late. According to an Accenture survey of more than 25,000 consumers across 22 countries, the pandemic has changed the consumer in fundamental ways.

50% say companies “disappointed them by not providing enough support and understanding of their needs during challenging times.” That’s up from 14% in the days before the pandemic hit. 75% say they expect companies to address their changing needs during difficult times. They’re also less likely to prioritize price and quality than they once were, elevating service and personal care.

The way to win the loyalty of the post-pandemic consumer is to respond to messages at lightning speed. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you do just that.

For instance, macros (aka pre-written texts) make quick work out of answering routine questions such as, “my product arrived damaged, how do I get a replacement?” or “do these tees run in the wash?”

Moreover, you can automate the responses customer care team members send, but still deliver a highly personalized experience to the recipient by using a combination of pre-written answers and integrations with other data sources.

Let’s say a customer purchases a pair of jeans and emails a standard question (“when will my order be shipped?”) to your customer care department. With a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can leverage macros to insert their first name and order number into your standard response that explains your fulfillment process and set your helpdesk to automatically reply to her.

In fact, you can integrate virtually any data source with your helpdesk platform to personalize the experience. Just take care to ensure that all pre-written messages are in your brand voice so she knows that the message is coming from a person, and not a machine.

By the way, this workflow of pre-written messages, populated with personalized data (AKA macros) is suitable for all channels, including chat, social media, email, as well as for all types of questions.

Embrace Omnichannel Support

Today’s consumers shop from multiple devices and channels, and naturally expect the ability to request and receive customer care from all of them, including social media, email, SMS, live chat, and phone. Don’t disappoint them; if you do you may lose the sale. Worse, you’ll lose the ability to earn their long-term loyalty.

If a customer asks about your returns policy on Instagram, answer in that channel. Ditto for direct messages on Facebook, SMS, email and so on. Which leads us to the next tip.

See Your Customers For Who They Are: Multifaceted Shoppers with a Question They Want Answered 

A shopper can begin a conversation on Instagram, and continue it on live chat from a brand’s website the following day. To make your customers feel as though you’re truly listening, link all of their interactions into a central location that the customer care team can easily access. 

This integration will enable you to deliver personalized messages across every touchpoint, including automated ones. To get a holistic view of the customer, adopt a helpdesk platform that can centralize all of a customer’s interactions, regardless of how they contact you. This will allow your customer care rep to see the big picture — and spare the customer from “starting all over from the beginning” with a description of their issue.

Get Personal (It’ll Prompt More Sales)

We can’t state this frequently or forcefully enough: Customer care is an underutilized driver of revenue. That’s a shame, because when loyal customers have a question, their first point of contact is customer care. 

Deep integrations between your ecommerce store and helpdesk can help you personalize your responses based on a customers order history to drive revenue and delight customers. Let’s say a particular customer favors a specific designer or line of products that you carry on your site. Alerting them that “New Arrivals Are In,” is a great way to personalize the message, and prompt more sales.

Consider adopting a helpdesk platform that can detect the intent of a customer correspondence and automate your response. Machine learning goes a long way in assessing the intent of customer inquiries, and can cover a lot of ground, including:

• Product questions (e.g. requests help choosing a product or finding a replacement budget hat)
• Product or experience feedback (e.g. “I love the new site redesign, but where did you put the cheese I’ve been buying for the past five years?”)
• Shipping and status questions
• Requests for refunds, or product exchanges
• Product exchange Requests
• Reports that an order was received damaged
• Request to cancel an order

And many others. When combined with macros, your team can respond to a query however it’s sent (email, customer care form, SMS, social media) and in your brand’s voice. Be sure to follow through by enabling the customer care rep to deliver on the promise made (e.g. issue a promised refund; send a replacement) without ever leaving the helpdesk platform. 

Your brand can also track intent for the express purpose of creating personalized experiences. Let’s say customer comments that he loves your new earbuds, you can auto filter that comment into social leads, and have your customer team reply with a code “just for you.” 

Technology has obliterated the silos that separated sales from telesales from customer care. Brands had little say in the matter; those changes were brought on by consumers who bring their own expectations to the purchasing experience. Today’s consumers want expedited answers, and if they don’t get them they’ll take their business elsewhere. Don’t think of this as a challenge; consider it as an opportunity to demonstrate that your brand cares about your customers and their level of satisfaction with each and every interaction. 

The post How to Turn Your Customer Care Team into a Veritable Revenue Generator appeared first on The Good.

There are a few things that all ecommerce businesses have in common. One of them is the need to ship physical goods through the fulfillment process. 

How effectively you accomplish this depends on your investment and commitment to creating an excellent customer experience. 

We spoke to fulfillment expert, Casey Armstrong, about his top advice for mastering your fulfillment process. So, if you’re struggling for efficiency in how you pick, pack, and post your orders to customers, this article is for you.

We’ll be covering:

• Why invest in the order fulfillment process?
• The three stages of the fulfillment process
• When to DIY and when to outsource
• 10 ways to optimize your fulfillment process

Why invest in the order fulfillment process?

Why should you be emotionally or intellectually invested in improving your shipping experience?

Because there’s a 100% open rate on the goods that you ship out. 

Every customer will be experiencing your fulfillment services, so it is an opportunity to nail the experience and create a positive interaction with your brand. It will influence whether or not people become repeat customers and it will impact the recommendations they make to their peers. 

Nielsen research shows that 92% of people trust recommendations from family and friends over any other type of advertising. There’s no better marketing than word of mouth. And one of the key ways to build positive buzz around your brand is to create an excellent start to finish experience for your customers.

When done properly, the order fulfillment process improves the customer experience. It then increases customer lifetime value. It increases loyalty. It raises your Average Order Value. 

You need to have the right approach, the right strategy, the right tools, resources, possibly the right partner. 

Many businesses consider fulfillment as a cost center where they sink profits. Instead, you should be looking at how you can leverage this process as an asset for your business and understand how it can be a revenue driver.

Once you shift your mindset from thinking of it only as a cost and seeing it as an opportunity to create value for your business and for your customers, that’s when you begin to make real gains and see returns. 

The three stages of your fulfillment process

Let’s explore the three stages of the ecommerce order fulfillment process that Casey Armstrong outlined in our Ecommerce Insights Show episode.

For each order you receive, there are three distinct periods of the process: point of sale, managing the order, and post-receipt. Using these phases, you can build an order fulfillment strategy. 

Each of these periods gives you an opportunity to connect with your client, add value, and build a relationship that results in future sales. 

Stage #1 Point of sale 

This is the point when your customer is choosing whether or not to purchase your goods. 

Shipping options can play a huge part in the decision-making process and can even be the difference between an abandoned shopping cart or an order. 

The two factors that impact a decision are cost and speed, both of which you can use as levers to convert browsers into customers and increase revenue. 

Offering free shipping or speedy delivery can be used to improve conversions. 

Free shipping

This has become a standard lever, typically offered when spending above a certain dollar amount. Here you can see an example from outdoor gear retailer, Patagonia. They offer free shipping on orders over $49.

To offer free shipping as an incentive to customers, you must understand the economics of your business. 

• What are your unit economics?
• What does it cost for you to ship standard?
• What does it cost for you to ship and get that two-day guarantee? 

Casey suggests first figuring out your AOV over a certain period, say the last 6 months or 12 months, and then adding a percentage on top of that to make the threshold for free shipping. 

So for example, if your AOV is $50 then you add 10% on top of that so your threshold for free shipping is $55-60. 

But, don’t forget to also consider your fulfillment costs. Your AOV may be $50 increasing to $55, but if your cost of fulfillment is $8 and you are now absorbing that cost, then you could be facing a loss.

Once you know these costs, include fulfillment in your markup with an additional percentage increase on your free shipping threshold.

This promotion could see your AOV jump by $5-10, which week over week becomes a big margin increase.

Speedy delivery

Thanks in large part to Amazon and the introduction of their Prime delivery, speed is now expected. Best practice has become a 2-3 day turnaround time from order to receipt. 

Offering delivery within this window may or may not be possible for your business, based on your size, location, and a myriad of other considerations. Regardless, you should always set the right customer expectations about when they can expect to receive your product.

When considering the delivery timeline that you can offer, you should analyze two steps in your fulfillment process:

• How long does it take you to pick and pack and hand the good off to the carrier? 
• How long will it take the carrier to deliver it? 

Stage #2 Order management

Congratulations, a customer has made a purchase (perhaps thanks to your free or speedy shipping offer)!

Now it’s your responsibility to communicate with that customer real-time on the status of the online order and when are they will receive their goods. 

You can enhance your customer service and improve transparency by additionally communicating information like: 

• Where is the item being stored or stowed?
• When was it picked up? 
• When was it handed off to the carrier?
• What is the specific delivery timeframe?

This is already going above and beyond what many companies are doing. Yet these are still transactional emails, simply giving facts like the tracking information and shipping method. 

Confirmation emails offer the opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and increase average order value.

For example, in between confirming order and pre-shipping, you could email your customer with the option to update their order, suggesting complementary products, other items removed from the cart before purchase:

From his experience, Casey suggests messaging like: “Your order is about to ship, there’s still time if you wanted to add that last item you forgot!”

Further emails could be adding value around the product, providing education on how to get the most out of the item, and building up expectations for when it arrives. For example: “Did you know that your product has won awards for sustainability?”

Ultimately, over-communicating is better for you and your customer. It will reduce customer queries on the status of their order, and improve customer satisfaction and association with your brand. 

Stage #3 Post-receipt

The fulfillment process isn’t complete once the product has been delivered. 

Returns processing, refunds and exchanges, and items lost or broken all need to be dealt with by your team in a timely and professional manner. 

You’ll want a customer support process that is easy and resolves issues efficiently, to keep your reputation intact. In a survey by Microsoft, 95% of respondents said that customer service was important to brand loyalty, so this is a step you don’t want to miss.

Make the process human, with a human voice.

This phase also is the time for analytics and reporting. 

Track how often are you hitting your targets for fulfillment times and costs. How many broken products, delays, or lost items are you seeing? This will all feed into your process revisions to ensure you provide the best service for your customers to keep them returning to your brand. 

When to DIY and when to outsource your fulfillment process?

This is the classic story you see on YouTube or Instagram. The Steve Jobs “it all started in my garage” reference.

Casey says “You see ecommerce founders in their garage, packing packages in their apartment, and there are these big stacks of manila envelopes or boxes. They’re printing off the labels and they’re putting them out and they’re putting handwritten notes in it. They’re doing this in the wee hours of the morning because they’ve been running their business all day.” 

Fulfilling in-house will get you by for a while, especially at the beginning. 

At the start, it’s good to be close to the product, understand the fulfillment process, and have a grasp on the unboxing experience. This proximity allows you to connect with your customers and their experience. 

Eventually, though, self-fulfillment is going to lead to burnout. And if it doesn’t lead to burnout, your process will break down as demand grows and prompt negative customer reviews or late packages. All of your effort to create positive word-of-mouth referrals will be finished. 

So, when do you know it’s time to outsource or transition to third-party fulfillment?

The best question to ask yourself is: “do you think that fulfillment is getting in the way of you growing your business?”

Casey shared a great example during our conversation from Rainbow OPTX. 

Just a few years ago, the founder was staying up until 2:00 AM, especially during the holiday season, every day picking up and packing boxes. That’s all he was doing. He wasn’t doing product development. He wasn’t running tests on sales and marketing. Just picking up and packing boxes. 

So one employee after another, he hired support staff. Next thing you know, his team was spending a combined 20 hours every day picking up and packing boxes. 

It’s a good problem to have because it meant the brand was making sales, but their entire focus was on fulfilling and order processing rather than growing the business.

Eventually, the founder handed off the fulfillment process. After doing so, he doubled his sales in 12 months. With the time he gained from outsourcing the fulfillment process, he was able to actually focus on growing and expanding his business.

So the answer to “when should I outsource” can be met with another question. Are you pouring your time or money into doing something that could be delegated?

As an ecommerce founder, is your participation in the fulfillment process preventing you from growing your business or investing in sales and marketing? If the answer is yes, you should consider outsourcing order fulfillment to a fulfillment company or fulfillment provider. 

10 ways to optimize your fulfillment process

1. Consider your product type

The type of goods you’re selling will hugely impact your fulfillment process and costs. So, the first step to optimizing your fulfillment process is understanding the unique guidelines on your specific product. Potential considerations include: 

• Timeliness: Perishable goods will have a short transit time and possibly special requirements like temperature control. This will increase costs and restrict the type of delivery method you can consider. 
• State-based restrictions: There are a number of products that are regulated or restricted across state lines, for example, alcohol and prescription drugs. 
• Battery-powered products: Different types of batteries can be classified as dangerous goods, so if you have a battery-powered product, these restrictions could impact you. If powered by removable batteries, will you include these with your product? 
• Product size: If your product is oversized or heavy, like large furniture items, then that adds another layer of complexity as well. 
• International shipping: International laws also vary, for example, Canada has certain restrictions on cosmetics and beauty products. If you’re looking to ship internationally, research the different laws for each country you are shipping to, as well as bodies like the European Union who may have additional restrictions. You will also need to factor in different international taxes to your fulfillment costing. 

Once you have analyzed your product type, and an accompanying considerations, you can better optimize your fulfillment process.

2. “Unboxing” customer experience

These days, brands try to create Instagramable unboxing experiences. 

It’s a great tool for improving the customer experience and increasing the chances of that customer returning and referring you to others. 

However, the detail you put into your unboxing is something you need to think through, especially if you hand it off to a third party. 

The more intricate the packing materials and details are, the more it will cost you from a time perspective whether that’s your team packing or a third-party partner.

You need to understand the economics, build your business case, and weigh up what is costing you money versus what will really differentiate your brand.

Here’s an example from Fab Fit Fun, one of the major plays in “unboxing.”

3. Product dimensions

Your fulfillment costs are often based on what is called dimensional way. This is the combined size and weight of the package. There could be a lot of efficiency gains by making your package smaller or lighter. 

With an intricate package often comes an extra couple of ounces or inches. That means every single time you ship a product out it costs you that much more. So it will directly eat into your margins. 

Let’s compare a laptop versus a lamp. For argument’s sake, both weigh roughly the same amount. 

Your laptop is packaged in one reasonably sized box, with some cardboard padding for protection. Your lamp, on the other hand, is shipping in three pieces to be constructed at home. 

The laptop clearly has a higher value (unless it’s a very nice lamp or a very cheap laptop) however the intricacy of the packaging means the lamp will have higher shipping costs. It could be just 10 cents, which may not seem like a lot. But if that’s every single package and you multiply that times 12 months a year, that can eat into your margins pretty quickly.

4. Locating your fulfillment process distribution centers

Finding the ideal distribution center is key to mastering your fulfillment process. 

In the past brands had a central location, usually in the Midwest somewhere, that was convenient to fulfilling on both coasts.

Now, many companies are distributing inventory across maybe half a dozen or even a dozen locations, with smaller numbers of products at each one. This means that the proximity between the product and the customer is much closer which helps with the reliability of a two day or three day shipping window. 

Being closer to your customers also means reduced cost of delivery.

To optimize, you need to conduct time in transit analysis. Simply put, you need to understand where customers are, how long will it take to deliver to them from different locations, and how much will that cost. 

From that analysis, optimize your distribution center by choosing a location close to the largest base of your customers. This analysis can help you decide if one central location or several distributed fulfillment centers suit your business best. 

5. Managing your inventory 

As well as considering customer location, you need to consider your inventory storage. What is your plan for warehouse management? 

If you choose to use multiple locations for distribution, this will mean splitting inventory.

Consider what your catalog complexity and sku count look like. What does it cost higher up in the funnel with your supply chain to purchase these goods and have stock across different locations?

Consider your best sellers and order volume. You might have 10 products or a hundred products or a hundred thousand products, but you know that really 5-10% of those are driving a vast majority of sales. 

Manufacturing and storing your full range will cost money upfront.

This all adds complexity to your business from an inventory management perspective, so consider whether you could consolidate more to save money.

6. Product storage

As mentioned above, storing goods will cost you. 

When considering your fulfillment process, look at lead times for product manufacturing, understand your storage costs and limitations of distribution centers you choose.

During the peak of the pandemic, there were anecdotes of fulfillment centers turning away trucks of goods because they did not have the warehousing storage.

To avoid this, be clear on timeframes and capacity with your manufacturers and distribution centers.

7. Choosing the right carrier for your fulfillment process

For delivery, you can go with national behemoths like FedEx and UPS, or opt for small local carriers.  

Large tried and tested organizations will stick to their timeframes. With all the tracking and systems in place, have an established carrier can be helpful for when things go wrong. 

On the other hand, these companies are under huge demand, especially during peak season. This could lead to delays, more lost packages, and so on. Also, if you’re looking for that specific personal touch, this may not be the best choice for your brand. 

Local carriers provide that more personalized feel, have better margins as they are local to your customer base, and will be less in demand during peak seasons. However, their systems can’t compete with larger carriers’ tracking systems. 

Weight the pros and cons of your carrier option, and pick the partner that will deliver the best customer experience. 

8. Delivery Method

Should you ship via air or ground transportation? The short answer: for speed and reliability, go air. To be cost-effective, stay on the ground. 

9. Factor in annual cost variants 

You have your fulfillment process set up and costs accounted for. Then January hits. Each year during Q4, following the peak Holiday season, there’s an increase in fulfillment costs (storage and delivery).

Factor this into your planning, especially for any post-holiday promotions, as this is sure to impact your margins. 

10. Find someone to manage and streamline the process

With so many steps to the fulfillment process, from production to distribution to storage, your business may benefit from a dedicated supply chain manager.

These fulfillment experts analyze and identify improvements at each step of the process. This includes the size of goods, the product catalog, complexity, and skus. They can find areas to automate and build that automation into the order process.

Hiring the right person could lead to shaving off margin points in multiple parts of the supply chain. Eventually, you will run a much better business and provide an Amazon-level shipping experience for consumers.

As Casey says: If you can nail down your fulfillment process, there’s so much money to be made in the efficiencies in your business and a better customer experience. 

Optimize your ecommerce business beyond the fulfillment process

After you establish and optimize your fulfillment process you should explore other ways to build a better customer experience. The same way you want to create a seamless shipping and distribution process, you’ll want to craft a user-friendly shopping experience in your online store.

We can help with that. 

At The Good, we specialize in removing friction points for ecommerce websites so the customer journey is effortless and nurtures customers along the path to conversion. We’re committed to working with brands of all sizes to help achieve the revenue goals they have for their business. 

The post How To Master Your Ecommerce Fulfillment Process appeared first on The Good.

So, what’s the right way to conduct a win-back campaign?

In this article, I’ll give you five essential principles behind what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to win-back campaigns. Then, I’ll describe the field-tested steps you can take to feel a whole lot better about pressing the Delete button to remove inactive subscribers.

What Is a Win-Back Email Campaign?

A win-back email campaign is meant to re-engage subscribers who have stopped engaging with your messages. The aim is to get their attention and convince them to respond so you’ll know they’re still receiving your mail and are still interested in your products or services.

Why Are Win-Back Email Campaigns Important?

Email is one of the most effective marketing mediums at your disposal, yet the average open rate for ecommerce email currently sits below 16 percent (per Mailchimp’s monthly report on email campaign stats by industry).

Your engagement may be higher than that, but it’s probable that fewer than 20 of every 100 emails you send will ever get opened.

Many of the subscribers on your list have probably been dormant and disengaged from your email campaigns for months. They haven’t unsubscribed, but they’re either choosing to ignore your messages or are simply not seeing them.

The problem isn’t only that those subscribers are missing out on the benefits you’re offering them, but that their presence is driving your open and click-through rates down. That tells spam filters and other components of the email delivery system that your mail may not be desirable—thereby potentially causing your email delivery rate to sink even further.

It’s an ugly spiral you want to avoid.

Email open rates can vary significantly depending on the industry, as shown in this study from 2016 by Mailer Mailer

How Can I Boost Email Subscriber Engagement?

Everyone wants to know how to build a huge email list, but size doesn’t matter nearly as much as quality. An engaged list is a list that converts. You want subscribers to open your email, click your links, and ultimately buy your products or services—the more the better.

So what do you do when you’re paying enterprise-level rates to an email service provider (ESP) to host a large list of people, yet your open rate is hovering just above 10 percent?

The obvious and most-suggested solution is to clean the list. Set parameters for who stays and who goes, and then filter out the zombies and remove them. Pruning a 50,000-member mailing list down to 10,000 members can save you several thousand dollars per year in unnecessary expenses and help convince the spam traps that you’re only mailing to people who want to hear what you say.

But, by launching a win-back campaign before you perform list hygiene, you can reactivate a percentage of the prospects or customers you would have lost in the cleaning process. It’s a “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” approach to list management.

The best time for a win-back #email campaigns is just before cleaning the list

Are Email Win-Back Campaigns Cost-Effective?

Let’s say you send a series of win-back emails to the 50,000 subscribers on your list who haven’t responded to anything you’ve sent them in months, and let’s say that win-back effort generates a 6 percent response rate.
That means you’ve just resurrected 3,000 people who now want to hear more about your business. If 10 percent of those buy something from you in the next 30 days, and your average order value (AOV) is $100, then you just claimed $30,000 in sales.

But hold it. What if your average customer lifetime value is $6,500? That means your win-back campaign saved 3,000 customers who could potentially deliver millions of dollars in sales revenue.

Was it worth it?

You bet! And the best part is you can use your win-back strategy over and over again.

How Do I Create and Manage Win-Back Email Campaigns?

You now know why win-back email campaigns are important and understand the importance of launching win-back efforts prior to list cleaning operations. Next, let’s turn to the nuts and bolts of email win-back campaigns.

What are the factors influencing success?

Here are five win-back email principles you can take to the bank:

1. Your case really is different.

You’ll find articles galore giving you the exact sequence you should use for a win-back email campaign. The examples you’ll find in those articles can certainly be helpful, but I’ve found that what works for one seller’s audience doesn’t work for another’s.

Like anything else in conversion rate optimization, you should be testing constantly to see what your particular audience responds to best. Never assume your results will be the same as the case study you read.

2. You need more than a catchy subject line.

Email marketers often fall victim to the idea that provocative subject lines and titles are the most important part of writing. While it’s true that getting the reader’s attention is the first necessary step in sales conversions, there’s a whole lot more to the process.

Strong subject lines will pull better open rates, but content that doesn’t live up to the promise made in the subject line will lead to dismal click-through rates and leave the prospect with a poor impression of your brand. Every part of your email must work together to convince subscribers to take the next step on the path to sales.

Your win-back campaign emails need the strongest subject lines you can muster, but make sure the content inside delivers on the promise you make on the outside. Don’t try to clickbait your audience in; just be helpful and honest, and your subscribers will appreciate you for it.

3. It’s not an incentive unless they really want it.

This can be a tough truth to grasp, but your best prospects don’t necessarily want the same things you want. One of the most formidable roadblocks in marketing is the false-consensus effect. We believe that everyone thinks and feels the same way we think and feel and that we know what’s best for them (if they would only listen).

False consensus is a cognitive bias that can lead us to ignore the data and make marketing decisions based on what we think rather than on what our prospects think. Win-back campaigns love to use freebies and discounts as a means of getting dormant subscribers to click a link and rejoin the family. Incentives work, that’s for sure—but make sure your offers appeal directly to your best prospects.

4. Everyone loves to be helpful and heard.

Subscribers who fail to respond to your freebie offers can sometimes be persuaded to respond to a call for help. Are you perplexed about whether to change your logo, add or remove a product from your store, or anything else your best prospects might have a strong opinion about?

Ask them.

When you show genuine interest in what people think and feel, they’ll return the favor. One of the best ways to show your respect for a person is by asking one simple question: “What do you think about this?”

5. Don’t stop testing.

At The Good, testing is central to everything we do. We know what we think, and our clients tell us what they think, but we can’t tell for sure what the customers think until we put something in front of them.

Mix it up with your email win-back campaigns. Experiment with a series of three emails versus a series of nine. Play around with the timing between sends, the time of day (or night) you send emails, and variations of the subject line.

Test everything—whether via A/B tests or multivariate testing—and then study the results to make your next email win-back campaign even more effective.

You Can’t Lose with Email Win-Back Campaigns

Win-back email campaigns can save subscribers who would otherwise be deleted from your mailing list. If you are successful with 10 percent of your inactive subscribers, then you’ve got plenty to celebrate. If nobody responds, at least it gives you the opportunity to clear out some of the contacts that are taking up space on your mailing list.

For those who want steps to follow, try this process:

1. Tag or otherwise segment all subscribers on your mailing list who haven’t opened at least one email from you in the past 120 days.

2. Create an autoresponder series for those subscribers only, and remove them from your regular sending schedule. The win-back campaign is all they should see until they either prove they’re still listening, unsubscribe themselves, or are eventually removed from the list as inactive and unresponsive.

3. Set up a series of five win-back emails spaced one day apart.

• Day one: Notify them they’re in danger of being removed from the list and that you need their response.
• Day two: Restate the situation, provide a special offer (incentive) for responding, and tell them how to unsubscribe.
• Day three: Repeat the offer and emphasize how critical the situation is.
• Day four: Ask subscribers for their opinion about something important to them.
• Day five: Give them one more chance at the special offer, and tell them there will be no more emails if they don’t respond.

4. Assess and improve your strategy. Closely monitor your open rates and click-throughs. If your emails aren’t performing the way you’d hoped, it’s time to reassess your approach and try something different.

That’s it. Wait at least three days after the final email is sent, and then remove the dead weight from your list. I know that can be a tough thing to do, but your subscriber base will be much healthier because of it. Every tree needs to be pruned from time to time.

If the results of your win-back efforts are dismal (3 percent or under), dig deeper to see if you’re experiencing a deliverability problem. They can’t open your mail if they don’t get it in the first place.

Here at The Good, we focus on optimizing conversion rates for ecommerce stores. If you’re searching for effective ways to increase conversions on your site, complete a free landing page assessment that’s designed to help you pinpoint specific problem areas on your site that need improvement.

Resources:

• What Others Fail to Teach About A/B and Multivariate Testing
• Email Win-Back Programs: Do They Work?
• How to Build a More Valuable Email List

The post 5 Principles for a Successful Win-Back Email Campaign appeared first on The Good.

Your website, store pages, social channels, and ads are only going to reach a certain number of people with what you do.

The trick to growing beyond that boundary and increasing conversions is turning to another source of photos, kind words, and shared posts. A source of user-generated content.

For ecommerce brands, one of the best sources for user-generated content is an unforgettable unboxing experience.

One of the best sources for user-generated content is an unforgettable unboxing experience.
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If you’re not familiar, unboxing is the act of opening a package and showing the world what’s inside through photos and (more commonly) video of the entire process. Properly packaging your product is like giving someone a birthday present every time they order from you.

When there is an element of surprise or it feels like the box was packaged and prepared with love, users tend to respond in kind.

We’re looking at unboxing because it can help you gain significant attention, whether that’s customers talking nicely about you to their friends or even them showing off the entire experience to the world. This good impression is strong for both word-of-mouth advertising and creating a bit of envy — getting a lead to think “I want that too!”

You increase your chance of getting a repeat purchase thanks to the delightful experience and increase chances of additional conversions when an existing customer shares that same delight.

In many cases, this experience is filmed and uploaded to popular YouTube accounts or shared on Twitter and Facebook. These videos put as much emphasis on exploring the box and wrapping as they do the products — sometimes the creator will even split the two and have videos that just focus on the box.

The trend has been around for years, but that doesn’t mean interest is waning. In the fourth quarter of last year, Tubular Insights notes unboxing videos generated more than 500 million views. That’s higher than the year-end norm.

Creating a unique, compelling experience around opening your products is a perfect way for ecommerce brands to find new followers and build interest. It also allows you to tap into the “celebrities” who unbox.

You’ve Probably Loved An Unboxing Experience Since You Were a Kid

Unboxing builds on our desire and enjoyment around the unknown. It plays up how something is lurking just beneath the surface and is likely a big payoff. Even when you know what you’re getting, there’s still an excitement when it comes to the reveal if time and care have been taken to make the reveal part of what we already liked.

Unboxing builds on our desire and enjoyment around the unknown.
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This aspect of the experience holds true, even if the unboxing method is unconventional.

Think about it this way. In the early 90s, one of the many “mystery” toys that came in a package you had to dissolve to reveal was the “Trash Bag Bunch.” The concept of unboxing them was a key part of its appeal to kids and of its early marketing. Take the 30 seconds to enjoy some pure nostalgia and see how a goopy, almost gross dissolving of slime excites even before the toy is revealed.

The best way to show you the impact and popularity of this particular unboxing option is to stick with YouTube and look at recent videos of adults doing the exact same thing.

Head down to your local toy store and you’ll still be able to find tons of mystery toys for almost any leading toy brand.

Spend a little time on YouTube, and you’ll discover a myriad of children and adults ripping open boxes to discover what’s inside and loving every minute of it. It bleeds over into other common YouTube categories around makeup and clothes hauls, as well as some of the sub-culture realms like ASMR unboxing. You can even see some people spend up to $20,000 for a mystery box and wrack up more than 7 million views while they do it.

Adrienne Appell, the Director of Strategic Communications for the Toy Association, recently told
Newsweek to expect the trend to continue.

Getting Started with Your Unboxing Experience

The great news about all that hype is you can easily tap into it to help boost conversions without having to make significant changes to your operations, and it works just as well when people expect specific products instead of a mystery box.

You’ll want some marketing knowledge about your target customer and a little design experience or help, but building a better experience is something most companies can do themselves — or can hire a partner to do for at a nominal cost.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and start thinking about the things that they’d enjoy. It’s okay to be a little cliché here and focus on glitter and sparkles for that princess feeling or leather and rough-woven materials for the burly touch. Brainstorm what they’ll love.

It’s also the perfect time to think about what they’ll hate. Here’s the number one answer to that: packing peanuts. No one likes those, so get rid of them right now. Those peanuts raise a larger point as well. You want to create an experience that customers will enjoy repeating. So, minimize the mess and cleanup associated with opening your package.

Once you’ve got those ideas and thoughts ruminating, it’s time to apply them to the anatomy of your box and unboxing experience.

The Box Itself

Those plain old cardboard boxes are great for shipping goodies and protecting them. But, they’re no longer your only option. You can add your logo to a standard box, design a completely custom box inside and out, or choose any spot in between.

There are a few big considerations here. First, you want to stick to brand colors and logos. Design your box’s exterior in complex or simple ways, and you’ll really stand out. This is especially true if you’re targeting younger folks in the city.

More apartments have mailrooms and package rooms, with front desks collecting packages for residents to pick up. If that’s true for your market, then not only does your customer get a cool box but everyone in line behind them waiting to get their box sees it too.

Exteriors are the perfect place for large designs and bold colors. Do some testing to make sure things are easy to see even if they get a little dirty because things happen in the mail. Finish off the exterior with some branded tape, which gets your name and logo out there a little extra.

You can also decorate the inside of the box. It’s printed in much the same way as the exterior, and it signifies class and style. This may cost you a little extra so that it might be a better option for more expensive shipments.

The ROI Conversation For The Unboxing Experience

Custom boxes can cost from a few cents to a few dollars extra, based on how fancy your box gets and the volume that you order. So, figuring out if this is a good option for you requires understanding that cost and your potential (or achieved) conversion increase.

Your aim is to create a compelling experience that users will decide on their own to share, or something that’s good enough for you to partner with an influencer on YouTube or social to have them share to their audience. Remember, many of these YouTube unboxers are professionals, so you’ll have to trade free products or pay a small fee in most cases, and you’ve got to have a great box for them to open or it damages the influencer’s brand.

If you’re focused on conversions, you know that it can be hard to attribute secondary marketing to any particular sale. That said, unboxing videos can quickly generate tens to hundreds of thousands of views when done right. Retailers see about a 9% higher conversion rate with video on their own site, so even if we half get just one-hundredth of that, you’re looking at about 90 people interested in a purchase for every 100,000 video viewers.

If a customer likes the experience of opening your product, they’re more likely to order from you again
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While the overall gains depend on your margins, it’s likely that an increase of a few cents per box will be offset by an additional 90 customers. A compelling experience has the chance to generate multiple videos and shares, expanding its reach. Plus, if a customer likes the experience of opening your product, they’re more likely to order from you again, increasing their customer lifetime value.

Packing for Presenting

Your filler material can be a lame and boring part of the unboxing experience, but it doesn’t have to be.

Again, no one wants packing peanuts. What they will like is nice tissue paper or crinkle paper and any efforts you take to minimize packing materials. When a box is snug and products are lightly filled-in around, then you’re doing great.

These materials also give you a terrific way to share your brand again. You can stick with brand colors or get paper with your specific logo and slogans. It reinforces who you are and gives your sale a premium feel. Don’t take this for granted. A positive experience here can aid in client retention.

Crinkle paper is also a nice touch that has some added benefits you might not think about. It protects materials and keeps things from mixing, plus it can absorb moisture if you’re shipping something with ice or if your warehouse is in a location that gets a bit humid sometimes.

There’s no shortage of color options either.

You can tout your green street cred too because many jurisdictions will allow you to recycle crinkle paper if it uses post-consumer recycled material

Hide and Seek

Things shouldn’t hide in a way that makes them hard to find. You don’t want a part or package or element sitting in tissue paper and getting thrown out, only to be needed next week. A company that’s great at this — and a bit promoter of the whole unboxing trend — is Loot Crate.

A lot of their boxes include small trinkets. So, they put these items in the center of the box, surrounded by other products. In most cases, everything is wrapped together with large tissue paper, so there aren’t any crumples or spaces for small items to hide.

Loot Crate also provides photos and magazines to show what’s in each box, making it easy to see if you’ve pulled out everything that is included.

All in one box and easy to find, means enjoying each item as you pull it out.

There’s another side of this coin that you’ve seen the last time you bought a phone from companies like Apple or Samsung. When you open the box, everything emphasizes the phone itself. You experience the device right away from the moment the lid is removed.

All the extra accessories, documentation, stickers, goodies, and everything else is located underneath, usually packed in a separate section of the same box. The excess is hidden, so you get an amazing eyeful of what you want. It highlights the main product, and the proud display is designed to make the audience excited.

Personalization Is Possible

If you’re using a warehouse management system or order process system — or if you’ve got an ecommerce fulfillment partner — you have a tool that’ll automatically create orders for your team. In many cases, these include customer details and printed materials.

One easy and effective way to give the unboxing experience a big “Wow!” is to add a custom note on top, right when the customer opens their box. You can use your online order form to capture a name or a gift message and put it right there.

At the end of the day, most products are sold on the concept that they’ll improve someone’s day.
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Show off your brand’s personality and have a little fun or share a story. Even if you’re something a bit more serious, express the values you have. At the end of the day, most products are sold on the concept that they’ll improve someone’s day (for any myriad of reasons). Highlight that, and you’re working to create a connection with the customer, which can help increase repeat sales and how they feel about you.

The Extras They’ll Love

The bottom of the box doesn’t have to be boring. Even if your product sits atop cords and accessories, you’ve got a little extra room down there. Use it with a bonus to help encourage an additional sale.

This can be as simple as you want: from a “thank you” note to a return label, free trial, or a postcard that asks them to share their experience on social media with a certain hashtag.

You can give things away or just take a moment to have something that says you care. This is like the personalized note we mentioned above but doesn’t necessarily have to include a name. The good news is that you can test out multiple options across different packages and see which resonates most with your customers.

Inserts and marketing material are a great chance to brand.

A Couple Things to Avoid In Your Unboxing Experience

Quick question: why did Amazon have to create Certified Frustration-Free Packaging?

Quick answer: because struggling to open something is a giant pain and makes us never want to order from that seller again.

Don’t annoy your customers. Packaging can do just that if the box is way too large for the item inside if there’s no easy seam or way to open a box, if the whole thing is wrapped up tight in tape, or if you used those foam peanuts.

One negative experience can sink multiple sales, and that includes negative experiences with boxes. Some 95% of people will share a bad experience with others.

Here’s the thousand-dollar recap for you. Boxes can be fun and colorful, and people like that. Personal touches and a “thank you” as well as coupons improve how people perceive your company. Everyone hates excessive tape and foam peanuts, so avoid these like the plague. Imagine you’re the one getting the box and build from there.

You’ll be in great shape to provide a great customer experience and grow repeat conversions.

The post How to Design the Perfect Unboxing Experience [Step-By-Step] appeared first on The Good.

Unfortunately, the customer service department is usually overlooked when it comes to discovering areas to improve on the website or in a company’s online content.

Customer service is usually overlooked when it comes to discovering areas to improve on the website.
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So where do you start? It begins with asking the right questions of your customer service staff in order to pinpoint the most problematic areas.

We’ve developed nine simple interview questions that you can ask your customer service team to learn more about your customer experience.

From customer service to customer experience

The goal in interviewing customer service staff is to understand the most common issues, complaints, problems, hassles, and struggles that they have listened to customers talk about with your brand and website. Their insights into customer pain points can direct your focus toward improvements that can produce immediate positive results.

[x_icon type=”external-link” icon_color=”hsl(203, 97%, 38%)” bg_color=”” icon_size=”” bg_size=”” bg_border_radius=””] Resource: Score your site to discover growth opportunities.

Start your interview by simply asking your customer service staff to describe a typical day for them, including the most common issues they help resolve for customers. In almost every interview of a customer service team we have conducted, new and unexpected areas of pain have been exposed and old issues that continue to plague customers have resurfaced.

Here is a foundational interview script of questions for your customer service staff:

1. Can you [customer service staff] walk me [interviewer] through a typical day for you?
2. What are the most common requests or issues that you get?
   • Can you break down the requests by volume?
   • Per product?
   • Per content type?
   • What are the main categories you would put customer service requests into?
   • What are the most common questions or complaints you get about the website?
   • Can you think of a time when individuals had trouble using the site or could not find what they were looking for?
3. What are the biggest challenges customers face when buying online?
4. If you could change the website to help make your job easier, what would you change?
5. Have people called after visiting the site being unable to find answers to their questions?
6. Do people ever say “I wish you guys / the website would ___”?
7. Do you have a customer-service-specific “guiding star” that you follow?
8. What are some of the ways that you explain product features to customers?
9. What does _____ as a brand mean to you? What is your company all about?

Customer service interviews, which can be very informal, should become a regular part of the ongoing maintenance of your site. We call this opening the customer service feedback loop.

Opening the customer service feedback loop to improve customer experience

To open the customer service feedback loop, initiate a dialogue between your brand’s customer service and sales and marketing departments with a call log. Set up a Google Form or some other simple data capture tool so your customer service team can log a portion of their call data.

The call log should be very simple to complete (radio buttons, dropdowns with preconfigured options, etc.), capturing the following information from each caller to customer service:

• Customer segment
• Product categories of interest
• Key issues prompting customer to call for help (purchasing, product info, sizing, warranty, return, shipment tracking, account log in, team purchase, etc.)
• Open text box to summarize key issues and any related notes

We have found that this simple tool is responsible for some of the most dramatic improvements in customer experience and the content of brand sites.

Some of the most common digital failures reported on call logs include:

• Technical jargon disguised as marketing copy
• Confusion caused by email failures
• Lack of useful sizing and fitting tools
• Complicated account registration or login requirements
• Poor warranty, replacement parts, and shipment tracking information

Applying the customer service feedback loop

The list of customer experience issues you and your customer service team uncover may look daunting, but do not panic. It’s important to organize the issues you find into natural groups so you can handle related issues together. Prioritize your roadmap for making site changes based on your data and start with the top 20% of your commonly reported issues list. There will always be outliers that may require a large investment but the majority of changes that you will find will be relatively simple user interface matters and site content updates.

Once you’ve initially used these nine questions to discover where your customer experience is today, don’t stop. If you allow these questions to become part of a regular check-in with your customer service team, it will allow you to continually be improving your customer experience. This will not only help your customer service team and your customers, but your brand as well.

To discover other ways to improve your customer experience, score your site. It can help you quickly find out where your consumers are getting stuck along the customer journey for your website.

The post 9 Great Questions that Will Improve Your Customer Experience appeared first on The Good.