Shopping experiences will help you captivate your potential clients
What is a memorable shopping experience?
The memorable shopping experience is a combination of sensory stimuli that impact and generate certain emotions to people.
We have seen the tendency to buy shopping experiences instead of shopping products because now we have developed a new need for things that generate unique experiences.
Nowadays consumers: Get informed, search, compare and get inspired with every buy they require to make. Their memorable shopping experience ends when they share it through their social media and if you did a good job they will continue recommending you through “Word of mouth”.
Memorable shopping experience characteristics
The main characteristics that the consumer values in an experience and company are: authenticity, differentiation and innovation. There´s some key points in which you have to concentrate to cover nowadays consumer expectations:
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Ambience
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Service
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Transparency
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Options flexibility
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Brand interaction
Ambience
This key point is the first one that your clients will look at and it refers to every decoratie element that is in your physical and online shop. In physical stores can go from the walls colors, decorations, posters, music and even smells. In online shops they consider the website color, the buttons, the photographs and the design. It can also include the mailing box and all the elements you put in it as an extended ambience of your online shop.
This works because everything that stimulates the clients senses with more strength will increase the probability of staying in their memory.
Service
Your objective must be to form a long term trusting relationship between the seller and the client that way you will be able to make more sales to the same client. You should train your online and physical store staff so they have pre established responses for certain protocols so that you can assure a consistent experience.
You have to consider variables related to the user experience design (UX Design) as well:
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Mobile experience (responsive design, quick website loading, compressed elements, etc.)
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Payment mechanisms operation (quick, safe, different options, etc.)
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Find products easily
Transparency
One of the consequences of having conscious potential customers is that they will expect that the companies deliver everything they promise word for word and always fulfill their value proposition because that makes them authentic and quality brands that respect their clients time. The new clients love to know every company processes and philosophies. It's also very important for them that their opinions and suggestions about products/ services are heard. Thanks to social media, we can hear our clients' critics and reviews faster and easier.
Options flexibility
It's important to have a big product catalog and even include customizable options in your products. Also add different payment options that can adapt to different clients needs, for example: Paypal, credit cards, etc.
Another useful tool is to recommend similar products because it gives the sense that you know the client and know what they like.
Brand interaction
Interactivity has become a priority for every business, especially in online stores because the client can't interact with the object physically. That made us think of new alternatives for virtual interaction, and that's how virtual testers use photographs with instant montages and Instagram filters.
Metrics to evaluate your client's shopping experience
These are some metrics that can help you identify opportunities in your shopping experience strategy. This way you will gain and maintain clients consistently.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This measures your clients' percentage of satisfaction, and it consists in asking directly how probable it is for them to promote you with their friends and family on a 1 to 10 scale. You will be able to classify them according to their answers as: promoters, passive and detractors.
The promoters are the ones that give you a score between 9 and 10 and these can recommend you without asking them to. The passives are the ones that give you a score between 7 and 8 and these are more susceptible to the competitors' sales, and they won't talk about their experience with your company. The detractors are the ones that give you a score between 0 and 6, and they've had a negative experience with your company, which is why they will probably talk negatively about you with other people.
This poll is used because it's easy, practical and focused on growth as it will allow you to get a general idea of your client's experience and loyalty.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
This will allow you to measure your clients' effort as they interact with your company and use your product/ service. It consists of the client responding to a series of questions, classifying them on a scale between 1 and 10 (1 represented low effort and 5 represented high effort). The lowest average score is the CES average.
This method can be useful but you have to ask these questions again to be able to follow-up and make an effective improvement in the product/ service.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
This metric is very popular because it allows you to personalize the questions and apply it to different situations. These questions can be classified on a scale between 1 and 10, 1 and 7 or even a smiley face scale. All the questions have to start with “How satisfied are you with…?” You can refer to any part of the experience.
The customer satisfaction score is equal to the percentage of clients that gave you the two highest scores. This percentage will indicate how much people are willing to repair or stay with your service/ product.
Check the feedback
The new consumers use their social media to talk about products very positively or very negatively. It's very important to check the comments that your clients are generating and find a way to help them so that we regain the client and improve the service for every client.
Simple is ideal. We recommend you to find the metric that adapts to your clients and business needs and maintain just one metric to evaluate your clients experience. The ideal is to make simple questions and chort polls (1 to 5 questions max) to obtain a higher response from your clients.
Shopping experiences have become essential for today's shoppers. Remember business owners have to keep learning to generate better experiences based on technology advances and macro tendency changes that show us the new market's needs and thoughts.
