Articles | December 3, 2020 | 3 min read

4 Keys to Building a Positive Customer Experience Online for Retailers

Retail moved online in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (even Black Friday was a largely digital experience). For retail brands, the transition has required restructuring everything from inventory management and order fulfillment, to marketing and advertising strategies (especially as those strategies pertain to mobile where screentime is up 13.9% this year). To help brands better adapt to the loss of large-scale brick-and-mortar retail heading into 2021, here are 4 keys to building a positive customer experience online.

#1 – Project a consistent brand identity online

The consistency of your brand online is critical to the delivery of a great customer experience. Everything from your logo, to your color palettes, to your email templates, to how and when you decide to deploy dark mode needs to be consistent. The more consistent your brand is online, the more recognizable it will be to consumers, and brands that are more recognizable can see a per customer lifetime value that’s 306% higher than the average.

Sephora's Instagram is Building a Positive Customer Experience Online — Sephora Instagram

#2 – Personalize your customer interactions

80% of consumers want personalized retail experiences. To deliver a personalized experience, your brand must be able to analyze a combination of first- and third-party customer data, and activate on the insights obtained in real time for custom product recommendations, uniquely tailored marketing emails, and more.

Prose Custom Haircare does a great job with personalization to enhance the digital customer experience. Using data from past purchases, Prose recommends new products that are relevant to individual shoppers, which makes those shoppers feel like the brand understands their personal wants and needs. The stronger that feeling, the more likely shoppers are to remain loyal to the Prose brand even when aggressively marketed to by competitors.

Building a Positive Customer Experience Online with personalization. — Personalized Prose email

#3 – Pay attention to the customer journey

Journey mapping is a crucial part of building a positive customer experience online. It’s the only way for retailers to understand details such as which channels attract the highest value customers, where customers drop off in the sales process, etc. The insights derived from journey mapping make it easier to create a holistic picture of individual customers (as well as audiences of customers) so you can improve the customer experience across every channel and touchpoint.

A map of how starbucks customer journey looks — Starbucks customer journey

Starbucks, for example, uses journey mapping to understand how their customers interact with the brand (the digital channels most frequently used, order histories, etc.) so their business can be more successful in the future building a positive customer experience online.

#4 – Implement an omnichannel strategy

Building a positive customer experience online requires an omnichannel approach (69% of U.S. consumers spend more with brands that offer a consistent experience across all offline and online channels). Therefore, retailers should implement a closed-loop measurement strategy using industry-leading marketing software to synchronize all customer activity be it online or offline. Doing so will ensure more timely and relevant engagement with customers (i.e. it will stop your brand from serving a product-specific ad to a customer who’s recently purchased that product).

Want more insights into build a positive customer experience online?

If you found the above tips valuable and would like more customer experience insights, read more about How to Enhance the Customer Experience During the Holidays.