Did you know that customer-focused companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers?

Focusing on creating a positive online customer experience is critical to your business’s online growth. If customers aren’t happy with your company, they’ll go somewhere else to get what they need.

On this page, we’ll cover:

1. What is the customer experience?
2. Why does the online customer experience matter?
3. How can I improve my customer experience strategy?

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What is customer experience?

Customer experience encompasses interactions that your customers have with your business. It’s a culmination of your audience’s experience with your brand and their journey from the first contact to becoming a customer.

What’s the difference between customer experience and customer service?

When you hear customer experience and customer service, you may think they’re the same thing. In reality, customer service is just a small portion of the customer experience.

The customer experience includes direct and indirect interactions with your business. It includes customer service, but it also encompasses things like loyalty programs, perks, and high-quality products. All these elements add up to the customer experience.

So, as you can see, customer service is just a small portion of the customer experience.

Why does the online customer experience matter?

So, why is the online customer experience so important? Here are three reasons you need to develop a customer experience strategy for your business.

1. Your customers have the power of choice

You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “the customer is always right,” but why does that phrase exist in the first place? Well, it’s because customers have the power of choice.

Customers have the power to choose where they shop and spend their money. If your company provides them with a poor experience, they can leave and find another business. There are other options available to them, and they don’t have to purchase from your company.

So, if you don’t enhance your audience’s customer experience, you run the risk of those leads choosing another company instead of yours.

2. Happy customers are loyal customers

Online customer experience management helps you keep customers happy. When you have happy customers, they’re more likely to buy from you — and they buy more. Customers typically spend 140% more after a positive experience than customers with a negative experience.

When customers are happy with your business, they’re more loyal to it. They’re more likely to come back to your business to purchase again. Additionally, they’ll be more likely to recommend your brand to others and help your business grow.

3. Bad customer experience can have lasting impacts

This reason may be one of the most important reasons to provide a positive online customer experience. If people have a bad customer experience on your site, it can have numerous impacts on your company.

First, a negative customer experience causes people to leave your business. At least 91% of people will leave and never return to your company if they’re unhappy with their experience.

So, if you’re not optimizing your customer experience strategy, you’re losing those customers for good.

Second, dissatisfied customers don’t keep their experiences to themselves. An unhappy customer will complain to 9 to 15 people about their poor experience. On top of that, 13% of dissatisfied customers will tell over 20 people.

If people are dissatisfied with your customer experience, they can influence people to negatively perceive your business before they even have the chance to buy from you. That means more missed leads and sales for your business.

So, if you don’t have a customer experience strategy in place that works effectively to keep your customers happy, you’re risking losing future revenue and growth for your company.

If you don’t have the time to manage your customer’s experience, you can always invest in reputation management services to have someone manage your online brand image. These services can help ensure you’re delivering a positive experience for your customers, so they keep coming back.

4 tips for improving online customer experience

Now that you know the impact of your customers’ experience with your company, you may want to know how to enhance the customer experience. Here are four tips for improving customer experience.

1. Understand your audience

If you want to improve customer experiences, you need to know who’s in your audience, first. Establish your target audience so you can ensure you’re targeting the right people for your business.

Look at your typical customer. You want to establish crucial information like:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Location
4. Occupation
5. Hobbies
6. Interests
7. Income

When you have this information documented, you can create buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional representations of your real customers. These personas help you segment your audience to deliver a better and more personalized experience.

2. Use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool

If you want to improve customer experiences, start by using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. A CRM tool enables you to see how customers interact with your business, buy products, and go through the process of converting.

CRM tools help you understand how different customers go through your buying process. Not everyone goes through the buying process in the same way. A CRM enables you to identify these different experiences and adapt your marketing strategy accordingly.

Using a CRM, like CRMROI, will help you see where you can improve the customer experience to earn more conversions for your company.

3. Capture feedback and put it to work

If you want to do online customer experience management right, you need to obtain feedback. Feedback is critical for helping you see what you’re doing right and where you can improve. When you know what your customers are thinking, you can take steps to improve.

Not to mention, 77% of customers view brands more favorably if they look for and apply customer feedback.

One of the best ways to ask for feedback is through email marketing, since you can use emails to ask your subscribers for feedback. Some great times to ask for feedback include after a user just purchased from you or if a user hasn’t engaged with your business in a while.

Besides sending an email, you can create a post on your social media profiles and invite people to share their feedback about your company. You can also create a pop-up on your site that invites visitors to leave their feedback about their experience.

Once you set up options for feedback, encourage your audience to share their experience. Encourage them to be honest, too, so you can actively improve your company and make it better for them.

After you obtain feedback, put it to work!

Figure out the common problems amongst your audience and develop a solution for how you solve their issues. Taking this feedback will help you improve the customer experience for your current and future customers.

4. Test different marketing elements

The last tip for improving your online customer experience involves testing different elements throughout your marketing campaigns. Whether you’re running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign or using video marketing to promote your business, it’s paramount that you test these different elements.

The first version you put out won’t always be the best. By testing different marketing elements, you can help optimize the customer’s experience and make it better for them.

You can test numerous things for your different marketing campaigns. Here are some examples:

1. Test different elements on your landing page design for your PPC ad
2. Test your ad extensions for your PPC ad
3. Testing your social media ad visuals
4. Test elements like your navigation and call to action (CTA) buttons on your site

Whatever type of campaign you’re running, make sure you’re testing different components to ensure you’re delivering a positive experience on your site.

Improve your online customer experience strategy today

The online customer experience is vital to your business’s growth. Positive online customer experience will help your business retain more people and keep them engaged with your business.

If you aren’t sure how to start with improving your customer experience, WebFX is here to help.

We have a team of over 250 marketers that can help you improve your online customer experience. With over 20 years of experience, you can feel confident that we’ll help you optimize your online customer experience to drive more leads and sales.

Considering we’ve driven over $2.4 billion in sales and over 6.3 million leads for our clients in the past five years, you can feel confident that we’ll drive results for your business, too.

Ready to improve your customer’s experience? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our CRM software!