11 tips for your digital customer experience strategy (2023)

Digital customer experience strategies can make or break a business in this post-pandemic era.

In 2023, online consumers are expected to spend $6.4 trillion in the e-commerce space – up from $4.2 trillion in 2021.

This means it has never been more important to offer a seamless digital experience to your customer.

Here are 11 tips for making that a reality for your business.

1. Smarter Personalisation

Personalisation in online marketing is one of the perks of offering a digital experience. It works by collecting data about your customers and using that to make their web experience more targeted. The most common example is including a customer’s name in a marketing email subject line, which can increase email open rates by 18%, but it can go much further.

You can email or show targeted ads for products related to ones they have already purchased from you. When a personalised product recommendation is included in an email subject line, it can increase email open rates by up to a massive 41%.

The more you know about each individual customer, the more relevant the content you can display to them.

You can also use it to show empathy. For example, sending an email offering people the chance to opt out of Mother’s Day marketing email – which will be poignant for those who have lost their mothers.

Personalization helps to build a relationship between you and your customer, while ensuring your marketing is more targeted and relevant.

The more targeted it is, the better the outcomes will be. Personalisation can also lead to revenue growth between 10 and 30% – so it really is a no brainer!

2. Be easy to reach

If a customer needs to reach you, it’s very frustrating if your contact details are difficult to find.

Particularly if you have multiple FAQ sections to replace contact information.

Have a customer service phone number and email address that is easy to navigate to and clearly displayed.

3. Live chat

Offer the option for your web visitors to access a live chat with a customer service agent on every webpage they’re on.

Millennials and Gen Z are both notoriously phone-call shy as well as digital-first generations, making live chat the perfect tool for encouraging them to interact with you. Plus, no matter what generation you belong to, everyone hates hold music!

If no-one is working the chat, offer a ‘leave a message’ option that someone can reply to via email later.

4. Zero party data

As third-party data and cookies get phased out, zero-party data is a crucial way to get to know your web visitors.

In the form of a quick survey, you can ask web users a few questions to help you guide them to the products or services that suit their needs.

When done correctly, this personalisation is fully compliant with data protection laws, as the user is willingly handing over their information.

Snap Surveys can provide this service for you!

5. Accessibility

In many western countries, it’s a legal requirement for websites to be accessible for everyone – regardless of any disabilities they might have. To ensure this, several measures should be taken by digital creators.

All text on your webpage or app should be easy to read. So a large font with plenty of white space is needed – don’t overload the user with text.

For videos, subtitles/captions will let people with hearing impairments (or those who are simply sat in a busy place like a bus station) follow along.

Alt text when uploading images should accurately describe what is in the photos. This is the text that appears when your cursor is moved over an image.

Check out this article for more accessibility information.

6. Analytics

Web analytics let you see from the other side of the two-way mirror, allowing you to understand how people use your website. How many people use your website per day? What is the daily total spend? What keywords do people search for when on your website? Do they click links on your page? How many people come to your website from search engines?

You can also find out about new products you don’t currently offer, or the different names for existing products you weren’t aware of, by checking what people type into the search bar. You can also identify misspellings of products or services and make sure these queries redirect to the to the correct place, ensuring you aren’t losing out on sales.

Web analytics is key to creating a digital experience that users find easy to navigate to find what they want, which ultimately leads to conversion.

7. Heat maps

Heat maps show the areas on your website that draw the most interest.

This is useful because it tells you what catches the eye and can lead you to the reasons why an action was taken.

For example, you may infer that a dropped basket is because you don’t have a purchase summary at the checkout – causing people to press the ‘back’ button.

By identifying the areas that garner the most interest, you know where to put your most important products or messages.

8. Session recording

Going a step further than heat maps, session recordings help you get into the minds of your customers by viewing a real-time recording of their browsing session on your website.

These recordings can offer valuable insight into how people interact with your webpages: what they read, how fast they scroll, and where the cursor moves (indicating that’s where they’re looking).

This can provide context to your Analytics data, which may have told you that a customer bounced on a page, but you don’t know why.

Screen recording may reveal that an intrusive advert popped up and that caused them to leave. 

9. NPS score

This simple question asks how likely a customer would be to recommend you (on a scale of 0 to 10) to a friend or colleague.

They are usually sent by email following confirmation of a purchase or a service provided, such as the purchase of broadband. It is quick and easy for customers to do, which can help you get more responses.

The score is also easy to analyse if you have a capable reporting system.

10. Customer satisfaction

Invite full feedback via customer satisfaction surveys, including questions on how customers found interacting with you digitally: such as your website, app and email communications.

You’ll find out what works, what doesn’t, and what else they would like to see from you.

These surveys are the backbone for forming a customer retention strategy that gets results; helping to improve your communication, product offering, digital experience and more.

Happier customers = better sales!

11. Report technical issues

Let people easily notify you of problems with your website. Include a button on each webpage inviting people to submit a form outlining a technical issue they’ve stumbled across.

This could be a broken link, an incorrectly listed product, or a missing image.

The feedback can be set up to go straight to your web technical services team.

P.s Be sure to make clear that this isn’t a general customer feedback option.