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4 Tips to Bring the Physical Shop Experience Online

Guest writer Written by Guest writer - Jan 7, 2015

Do you know what is particularly good about the service in a physical shop – perhaps the best thing?

It’s not the fact that the products have been nicely laid out on shelves. It’s not that you can touch and browse through the products. It’s not even always that the salesperson can find the product that best suits your needs.

It’s something very simple: presence.

It’s that you are welcomed to the shop right when you walk in the door. That you know that you will get help immediately, when you need it. That there is a person present, creating a pleasant atmosphere, providing advice, and answering any questions you may have. Often you almost want to buy something just because the service is good.

The Physical Shop Experience in an Online Shop

Many online businesses face a challenge in this respect. You can’t follow your customers around when they are browsing on your website. The customer is wandering all alone in the aisles of your online shop.

In order to transfer the physical shop experience online, you should ask the following questions:

  • How do you welcome your customers to your website?
  • How do you create a connection with your customer online?
  • How do you serve and help your customer in real time?
  • How are you present, build trust and support the customer with the purchase decision?

Online shops that succeed in answering these questions, being present for the customer, distinguish themselves by providing better service than their competitor.

Here are 4 tips to create the physical shop feeling online:

1. Serve Customers in Real Time

With the help of a Live chat service, you can provide your customers with individual help immediately, in real time, just like in a physical shop. The visitor tracking provides a window to your online shop – make use of it by actively offer your help to your customer!

For example, you will see the content of the shopping carts and you can support the customer throughout the purchase process. With the chat you can personalize your service. This provides a pleasant customer experience online builds trust and ensures that your customers will enjoy themselves.

According to studies, as much as 90% of customers feel live chat improves the customer experience online. Every fourth customer prefers to make a purchase if the website has the possibility to talk with customer service in real time.

Sources Live Chat Effectiveness 2013 and ATG Global Consumer Trend.

2. Create High-Quality Content

Don’t detach the online jungle too much from reality, but make everything as human-centered as possible. When you are planning online sales, remember that there is a person sitting on the other side of the screen. So avoid treating your customers as a mass. Provide a touch of humanity and strive to create content from one person to another.

The content you produce yourself is also more valuable from the point of view of search engines than a mantra copied from a supplier’s product description. Create your product descriptions yourself and the search engine will put your product to the front of the queue.

3. Increase Interactivity

Engage customers visiting on your website using a variety of tools. Instead of endless text fields and pictures, try new kinds of solutions to convey your message in an interesting way. A person browsing the Internet is happier on your website when they can click, participate and have realizations.

Excellent tools for increasing interactivity are electronic product selectors and different tests, infographs, embedded applications, chats, videos and comment fields.

4. Make Delivery and Payment Easy

One of the biggest differences between a physical shop and an online shop is, naturally, delivery. In a web shop, the bicycle does not appear in front of the customer immediately after they click “buy”. In a physical shop, you don’t have to pay extra to have the product in your hand.

In ecommerce, the practice of free delivery is becoming more common. This will provide an easy and affordable shopping experience for the customer. In any case, you should offer a wide selection of delivery and payment methods

– and your conversion will be grateful!

 Tuomas Haapsaari, CMO, Zef

zef-livechat

Read also:

Pinterest: As Great of a Source to Direct Visitors to Your Website as Google

5 Tips to Reduce the Return Rate in Your Website

Omni-Channel Selling and Its 4 Essential Elements

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