Time is the most limited resource in your customers’ lives, and they don’t want to waste it. If your site doesn’t load quickly when a customer clicks or isn’t easy and intuitive to find products on, you’re going to miss that sale. Simply being online isn’t enough anymore, you need to deliver a top-notch customer experience across all your digital channels.
In this article, we explore the key features you’ll need in an enterprise digital commerce platform to meet and exceed your customers’ expectations.
Responsive/Mobile
We’ll start with the first and most foundational item:
- Is your site responsive?
- Does it adjust to screen sizes on tablets, laptops, and desktops? Adapt to being viewed on a mobile device?
Most purchases are happening on the go and if a customer is required to use their fingers to zoom and blindly click around a website, make no mistake, they will find another supplier. According to CIODive, over 70% of online traffic is from a mobile device. By creating a site that is responsive and optimized for mobile, customers will be able to view the words and easily get through the website.
Global, Multi-Language, and Multi-Market Support
In our ever-evolving world, the next thing to think about is how global the market has become.
- Does your site show consideration for these markets and customers?
- Are there multiple language versions available to simplify the experience for global clients?
- Does your platform have multi-market support?
Many companies often have different sites depending on the market or language. This makes it difficult to deliver a uniform customer experience. It also increases the cost of maintaining and updating your sites.
Loading Speed
- Do you have to wait for your site to load?
- Does your product list pop up immediately in the shop, or do you sit and watch a loading symbol?
The speed a site loads at is imperative to your business success. Remember not all your customers will have the best connectivity – especially if you serve multiple different countries. Make sure your platform is built with the latest technology and optimized for speed.
B2B and B2C Support and Analytics
- Do you know how customers utilize your site?
- Do you recognize any patterns in the places they exit your site from?
The final part of the basics on your site, support, and analytics can be the key to optimizing and growing with your customers. Having the analytics to demonstrate how visitors move through and use your site can provide incredible insight and give you the advantage in the marketplace.
Smart Promotions Management
Once you have the foundation of your site set to attract and retain customers, you have to consider the true promotional capabilities.
- Can you run special promotions to get customers?
- Can these be targeted promotions, or can they be managed to attract specific sets of customers?
- Do you utilize things like shopping cart abandonment to your advantage?
Utilizing targeted and smart promotions can increase sales drastically by appealing to a specific set of customers at a specific point in their purchasing journey. This is particularly important in a B2B setting where you may offer different options to different accounts. Make sure your system can support customer-specific pricing.
Advanced Search Options
- Do you have a search bar on your site?
- Does it offer a selection of advanced search options?
- Do you support voice search?
Moving toward the user experience side of your site, if you don’t have a search bar, this is a must-have for viewers. If they need to find a product quickly, a search bar is often the first place they look. If you have a variety of products or a large quantity, it is also helpful to customers if you make it easy on them. Add advanced search options to the mix. For example, if you sell parts, make sure people can search and sort by compatible models.
Inventory and Shipping Management
- Can customers tell if an item is in stock?
- Can you provide accurate delivery estimates?
Customers want to know when they can expect their product. If the customer is depending on a part to keep their machines or vehicles up and running, they’ll likely make the purchase decision based on which vendor can deliver the product the fastest. Managing shipping and inventory isn’t complicated when you only ship from one warehouse. But many companies ship from multiple locations or sell products from different suppliers. You need a system than can check inventory and shipping from multiple locations or systems in real-time.
These features are just a few of the problems we built PhaseZero CxCommerce to solve. CxCommerce is an Enterprise Cloud 2.0 B2B and B2C digital commerce platform powering multi-channel customer experiences. Check out our full lsit of features and schedule a demo today to see how we can transform your digital business.