In mid-March, when the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic commenced to turn into apparent, I talked to much more than forty of our retail prospects about their worries and questioned how Google could assistance. Months later, I’m continuing to listen to from these prospects about the problems they’re experiencing, primarily with the ongoing closures or limitations on their bodily retailers.
Consumers are experiencing uncertainty way too. Far more than 50% of U.S. purchasers searched for what is open up or closed close to them final week. So the pressure is now on retailers’ new major retailers — their e-commerce websites — to not only market stock and make revenue, but also to support, notify, and reassure prospects alongside the way. It is a sensitive balancing act, but not an extremely hard one, and I have worked with my team to discover eight methods that merchants can apply to supply their prospects with pertinent, frictionless, and handy browsing encounters correct now.
1. Prioritize business problems
Your team is very likely becoming inundated with requests and new ideas. But you cannot deal with them all at at the time. Prioritization is crucial. Appraise whether there are areas of your site’s messaging or design and style that are hurting the brand name or acquiring a destructive affect on customers’ practical experience. Modify that initially. Then dig into optimizations that can possibly enhance the practical experience or enhance functionality.
Things to take into consideration include internet site functionality and matching the messaging on your marketing channels to your internet site. You may also want to appear at methods to optimize purchaser support and promotions, as nicely as methods to handle volatility in internet site website traffic and transaction volume. Target on those people initiatives that will travel the most affect, then define how you will measure their good results.
2. Optimize internet site velocity
With ongoing store closures, much more and much more men and women are browsing on the web. And as on the web website traffic spikes, it’s vital that your retail website can tackle amplified volume. These strategies will assure you’re completely ready.
- Test your content delivery network (CDN) companies (for instance., Akamai, Cloudflare, Google Cloud CDN) for settings that can empower quicker requests.
- A lot of internet site assets do not involve updates on subsequent visits. Undertake uncomplicated HTTP-caching approaches that enhance load moments for returning customers and reduce server load with negligible code modifications.
- Make your internet site load quicker by compressing your photos and text, with out compromising visible top quality.
- Apply font-show swap so prospects can browse your site’s text, even if the major font doesn’t load speedy enough.
- Delete unused tags from your tag managers, clean up bloated CSS and JS code, and take out other deprecated capabilities.
- Regularly examine your site’s velocity utilizing resources like Test My Site and PageSpeed Insights. You are going to come across much more strategies on how to velocity up your website in this article.
three. Present a seamless checkout practical experience
Seventy-6 % of smartphone customers are much more very likely to buy from corporations whose cell websites or apps allow for them to make buys speedily.1 Be certain your payment processing technique is speedy and effortless. Also discover methods to integrate personalization enhancements, these types of as storing browsing data or recently explored objects. In short, your entrance- and back again-close framework and technological know-how want to supply the best practical experience possible. Operate with your tech teams to map the infrastructure and tech stack that support your internet site and make guaranteed they interact seamlessly.
4. Leverage technological know-how to ease purchaser support demand
Far more than 1 in 4 U.S. purchasers say makes could be most handy to them by education their purchaser company teams on how to best tackle their wants in the minute.2 With that in intellect, are you offering prospects the sort of support they want in today’s surroundings? Use your teams and chatbots to make clear purchaser company updates, be transparent about expectations, and signpost useful assets. Help and examine any purchaser messages on your Google My Business profile way too, so prospects get solutions speedily and easily.