As an eCommerce marketer, your job is only half done once a visitor makes a purchase on your online store. The post checkout experience is equally important in defining whether or not a first-time buyer returns to your Shopify store. The post checkout experience is what decides whether your customers are likely to refer you to their friends and family or whether they are likely to leave a good review.
Therefore, acing your post checkout experience should be as much a priority for you as is driving sales. In this post, we take you through some proven best practices that will leave your customers impressed with the post checkout experience they have with your online store.
Today’s customer expects to have multiple options for everything, including how they can avail support on your Shopify store. They don’t want to be restricted to a helpline number that works from 9 am to 6 pm or an email that gets them a response in 48 hours. Every customer has their own preferred communication channel and you need to offer support in all of them to thrive today. These include email, phone, chatbot, social media channels, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and even self service resources. Miss out on any of those, and you might not be catering to a particular segment of your audience.
Therefore, to ensure that your customers have a smooth post checkout experience wherein they can get query resolution, updates regarding their order, information regarding a product, or details on shipping or return policy, offer multiple avenues through which they can connect with your agents. This will ensure that wait times are less which directly translates to an increase in customer happiness.
In today’s world of instant gratification, your store visitors don’t have the patience for you to respond to their email queries. Live chat humanizes your Shopify store by offering real time support to your customers via your representatives. Online shoppers expect to be assisted in real time and by a support agent who understands their question and offers a personalized resolution. Also, whether it is a query regarding an order placed or about a product, live chat helps you save your time as well as the buyer’s, while enhancing their overall shopping experience.
If you are looking for a robust live chat app to integrate with your Shopify eCommerce store, try TextChat. A revolutionary live chat tool, TextChat allows you to resolve customer queries while on the go via SMS.
This means that whenever a visitor on your Shopify store starts a live chat, your designated support team members receive a text on their phone. Whichever support agent is available to respond to the customer can click on the link in the text and take the conversation ahead from their phone itself. TextChat ensures you never lose out on a sale or answering a customers’ query by making it extremely convenient for your team to chat with them.
The best part about TextChat is that you can integrate the app and go live in less than 10 minutes. With TextChat’s agile, easy-to-use, on-the-go live chat solution, you can close more sales, drastically improve your CSAT, and enhance the overall shopping experience on your online store. If you are looking to assess TextChat for your store, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial to first experience the product.
Once a shopper has purchased from your Shopify store, they have already placed their trust in your brand and products. You want to leverage that to encourage them to try out your other similar products too as their purchase intent is high at this point. Customers are also likely to appreciate being shown a collection of personalized recommendations based on their recent purchase history.
Upsell and cross-sell opportunities in the form of tailored recommendations can be showcased on thank you pages, confirmation emails, via remarketing ads, and through all updates related emails. Don’t forget to add appealing images of the product in use and a CTA that leads directly to the relevant product pages. Make sure the products suggested to each customer are valuable to them so it’s hard for them to refuse.
Very often, shoppers realize they have placed the wrong order immediately after clicking on “Place Order”. Now, you should have some provision for them to change their order details after placing one. To ensure it doesn’t cause a lot of hassles, you can allow this provision for a certain period, say before it is shipped. Or, you could even charge them the extra shipping cost if the order is placed and then requested to be changed.
The bottom line, however, is that offering some sort of flexibility in terms of being able to change their order details will be highly appreciated by your customers and will make for a delightful post checkout experience. It gives the impression that your brand cares and is understanding about the little nuances of online shopping.
As soon as they place an order, customers immediately start anticipating and speculating when it is going to arrive, how will they receive updates, what’s the return policy in case the product doesn’t meet their expectations, and so much more. Therefore, be explicitly clear about shipping and delivery timelines in all your communication.
Not just that, don’t forget to mention all the next steps that customers need to follow to receive the order. These could be - confirming the order details and address, making payment via an online link, sharing an OTP with the delivery agent, and so on. Don’t leave anything open ended or for your customers to figure out. Also, make sure these updates are sent via multiple channels so they aren’t missed out, such as email, SMS and WhatsApp.
Here's an example:
This isn’t limited to just product reviews and ratings. Sure, those are important too. Customer reviews work incredibly as social proof on your Shopify eCommerce store and in answering all questions potential buyers might have. However, don’t just stop there. There are a tonne of ways you can leverage user generated content in the form of reviews.
All the above tactics are extremely effective in adding to the overall post-checkout experience as it makes your customers feel like a part of a community. Moreover, all the positive reviews gathered will invite more and more of your followers to try out your products.
Here's a very simple example from Casper:
More often than not, remarketing is used to target visitors who have abandoned their carts or search on your online store. However, remarketing is equally effective in reminding your customers about their favorite products that they have previously bought from your store. Remarketing ads can nudge them to restock on those items regularly by repeatedly prompting them to do so.
So, don’t hold back from investing in remarketing to drive repeat purchases and turn infrequent buyers into loyalists. Effective remarketing makes up for a crucial step towards offering a delightful post checkout experience. It makes your customers feel valued and cared for, and works magically in driving them to your Shopify store to repurchase their favorite products.
These were just a few of the many strategies you can deploy to improve the post checkout experience on your store. While these are a great place to start, don’t confine yourself to these tactics.
Be creative and experiment all you can to figure out what works for your brand’s unique requirements and target audience.
The key is to keep the buyer at the forefront of all your decisions and remember that the customer’s journey on your store does not end when they make a purchase, but it only begins there. And the post-checkout experience you offer has a huge role to play in defining how your audience perceives your brand in the long term.
Ready to take the first step to improving your post-checkout experience?
Humanize your live chat with smart automation and the power of SMS with TextChat.
