Implementing Usability and CX properly in the Shop: How to Improve your Customer Experience
The customer experience is becoming increasingly important in online commerce. However, in meeting customer requirements, B2B e-commerce often lags behind the B2C sector. Yet, more and more business customers expect a similarly personalized and intuitive shopping experience that they are accustomed to as private buyers. In this article, we want to take a look at what the terms Usability and Customer Experience exactly describe and why it is worthwhile to improve the user experience of your B2B shop. We present effective measures that you can apply to your e-commerce.
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ESYON: Usability since 2011
ESYON has already implemented numerous e-commerce platforms for small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to the automation and optimization of processes, the intuitive shopping experience is always the focus. Contact us and benefit from more than a decade of experience in e-commerce.
Usability and Customer Experience: Similarities and Differences
The term Usability can best be translated as user-friendliness. The goal of any online shop, whether B2C or B2B, should be to quickly and intuitively guide the user to the content they want. Usability is essentially a hygiene factor: when implemented well, users hardly notice it. However, poor usability is perceived by site visitors as extremely annoying. This does not mean, however, that companies cannot benefit from considering the user-friendliness of their shop: a successful user experience will lead potential customers to spend more time on your site and be more willing to buy your products.
The Customer Experience (CX) takes this approach further and adds aesthetic and emotional factors to intuitive usability. An appealing appearance and interaction with the content should invite users to stay and create trust in the company.
In the B2B Sector, Customer Experience is often poor: Why is that?
B2B customers perceive their user experience as poor. The reasons can be found primarily in the products themselves: complex B2B items often require intensive consultation. However, the e-commerce platforms of companies still too often lack appropriate solutions for digital communication. The websites primarily function as digital product catalogs – orders are placed by phone, email or fax.
In our experience, B2B shops often rely too much on business relationships. Compared to the B2C sector, e-commerce in the business-to-business space is characterized by a considerably smaller customer base. Instead, the same customers repeatedly order from the companies. Because of these circumstances, the sellers are rarely motivated to question the user experience. However, doing so could help attract new customers even in a smaller market.
Improving CX: Benefits
According to mckinsey.com, the benefits of satisfactory usability and customer experience can be measured with numbers. The renowned management consultancy reports the following effects for various companies after investing in CX:
10-15% lower bounce rates 20-40% higher conversion rates Up to 50% cost savings in customer support
Measuring CX: Here’s How
Many companies don’t know whether their CX needs improvement or not. The reason for this is that usability and customer experience are very subjective perceptions. The perception of decision-makers may be clouded by day-to-day business and the daily use of the B2B shop. The first step is to obtain independent feedback from customers that can be measured based on simple formulas.
Net Promoter Score
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an absolute classic among measurement methods, which compares the supporters of the online shop (promoters) to the critics.
NPS = Promoters (%) – Detractors (%)
The NPS is based on a simple question:
“Would you recommend our online shop?”
Ideally, you should give your customers answer options between 0 (extremely unlikely) and 10 (extremely likely). Anyone who gives a score of 9 or 10 is considered a promoter. All respondents between 0 and 6 can be classified as detractors. People who respond with 7 and 8 are classified as passive-satisfied users and are not considered for calculating the NPS.
7 pillars of successful usability and CX
In the following, we present a series of points with which you can sensibly expand your B2B shop into an intuitive e-commerce platform that promotes customer engagement.
User-friendly Design
User-friendly design is not only characterized by aesthetic aspects. Crucial for user guidance, whether B2B or B2C, is navigation. It should be limited to user-relevant topics and help make them easily findable. This is followed by an intelligent search, whose importance is sometimes underestimated.
In addition to filter functions that significantly simplify product search, the search can also contribute to a personalized customer experience by sorting search results based on user behavior, for example.
Process Optimization with ERP and PIM
B2B customers often request items needed for their own production and process chains. If delays occur in order processing due to manual and/or erroneous processes, the business relationship can be sustainably damaged.
With the help of ERP systems (= Enterprise Resource Planning), companies automate their processes to minimize time and error sources. The ERP brings together all goods and data flows and gives you a better overview and control of your business processes. This contributes to an increase in efficiency of your company, which also has a positive impact on your external image. A renowned ERP is Microsoft Dynamics 365.
With PIM (= Product Information Management), you can centralize the management of your product data and further optimize it. Changes to the data are synchronized across all channels with a one-time maintenance effort. You can also manage your product information in multiple languages and create a catalog from it if desired. This way, both your sales and your customers have all the information they need for purchase advice or decision-making.
Configurable Products directly in the Shop
By enabling your customers to customize their products through configuration directly in the online shop, you combine two elementary advantages: on the one hand, you increase the engagement of your customers with your B2B online shop and encourage them to find the configuration from the available variants that best suits their needs. This makes visitors feel more involved, which increases satisfaction and contributes to a positive customer experience. In addition, you do not have to take active action yourself and process the order through your customer service by phone or email. Our solutions help you to transfer customer orders directly to the ERP, release an offer, and then automatically forward it to production. This saves you valuable time and resources.
Improving loading times
According to Google statistics, 53% of users leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Loading times are often longer on mobile devices, which is why your e-commerce platform needs a performant server architecture that delivers content as quickly as possible. In this context, cloud hosting has proven itself. Unlike on-premise solutions, where you only have your own server capacity available, you can access an entire computer network here. With Microsoft Azure, Microsoft operates one of the largest cloud networks worldwide, which is perfectly suited for B2B e-commerce.
Various sales channels
Different points of sale (PoS) reduce your dependence on just one sales channel and ensure the economic stability of your company. However, they are also important for the user experience. For example, many customers start their product search on Amazon out of habit and eventually buy on the marketplace. Therefore, it makes sense to offer your products outside of your own online shop. One solution that allows you to connect your e-commerce platform to Amazon is ESYON’s Amazon Marketplace Connector.
Mobile commerce
Online purchases via mobile devices increase every year, even in the B2B sector. Responsiveness is therefore one of the most important factors for a comfortable shopping experience. It is important that content is displayed error-free and is quickly available.
Mobile apps
Especially in the B2B sector, where customers buy repeatedly, a mobile app can also pay off in addition to pure responsiveness. That’s why we want to take a closer look at the benefits of the app.
Quick access: With an app, customers can quickly access your products and services without having to visit a website or navigate in the browser. An app usually offers a more user-friendly and faster experience than a mobile website.
Personalized experience: An app can provide personalized features, such as product recommendations, special offers, or personalized notifications. This makes customers feel more bound to the company and provides an improved customer experience.
Simplified navigation: An app can offer simpler navigation than a website, which better adapts to the requirements of mobile devices. In addition, an app can also offer features such as saving search queries and orders to make it easier for customers to complete the purchase process.
Push notifications: An app allows companies to notify customers of special offers or news through push notifications. This keeps customers up-to-date and can win them over for special offers.
Simplified ordering process: A mobile app can significantly simplify the ordering process. For example, customers can use the barcode scanner on their smartphone to add the corresponding item to the shopping cart for reordering. ESYON offers you a mobile app for your webshop, allowing you to take advantage of all these benefits. Improving customer service
Customer service also contributes to the user experience. Companies that respond quickly to returns or questions about an order and offer uncomplicated solutions to their customers are perceived more positively. This is almost more important in the B2B sector than for companies in B2C e-commerce, as there are significantly closer customer relationships.
Usability and CX at ESYON
A successful user experience is one of the most important pillars of our work. Therefore, we would like to give you a closer look at how we have implemented the areas of CX and usability in previous projects.
Lekkerland Austria
ESYON developed an e-commerce solution for Lekkerland Austria that uses a combination of PIM and a webshop. The platform provides more clarity for the buyer and always up-to-date information that is fed from the product information management. In addition, the complaint management was improved to further optimize customer service.
You can find all the important information in our case study with Thomas Brandstetter.
KUBO
The new e-commerce platform of the Swiss KUBO Tech AG combines a personalized shopping experience with time savings. For example, the new webshop enables customer-specific prices, discount promotions, and articles. Personalization is ensured by an intelligent search and filter. In addition, many standard processes are fully automated with the help of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP.
Erfal
Erfal is a manufacturer of insect and sun protection products. In 2016, we supported the launch of Erfal’s first webshop. Since then, the shop has received a redesign, with a focus on responsiveness. Erfal rarely manufactures the same product twice, instead, customers can configure and order their desired product directly in the webshop. This feature is based on our in-house product configurator.
