Three Simple Ways To Improve Your Brand’s Online Customer Experience

A positive online customer experience is just as critical marketer as any brick-and-mortar storefront. How your brand is perceived impacts every aspect of the marketing process, and with more customers growing increasingly comfortable with online transactions, it’s important to present consumers with the best your business has to offer.

Achieving a standout brand experience separates your business from the competition and keeps satisfied users coming back for more. Here are three simple ways to enhance your brand’s digital presence.

Achieving Seamless Site Navigation

As ecommerce becomes increasingly commonplace, customers will continue gravitating toward sites that are easy to use. Convenience is a universal need — from initial product discovery to online checkout, every type of user benefits from an intuitive, easy-to-follow interface. That means simple product categorization for those new to your brand, search features and easy navigation to assist customers looking for specific products, and an always-visible cart to help those prepared to convert without any unnecessary obstacles.

Removing potential roadblocks through design can boost your branded site’s aesthetics, but it can also provide valuable insight into potential errors along the path to checkout that might otherwise go unnoticed. Quickly shoring up site glitches and frustrating checkout issues preserves customer loyalty and shows the online community your brand is in touch with customer needs. 

Maximize Voice Searches

Accommodating users who conduct searches via voice command on both mobile and home devices can establish your business as a helpful source for shoppers. Nearly a quarter of US households already use a smart speaker to conduct daily searches, and the popularity of asking digital assistants like Siri and Alexa for food recommendations, showtimes, nearby gas stations and sports scores is expected to continue ingraining itself into everyday life.

Voice-based shopping on home search devices like Amazon’s Echo Dot is expected to represent an 18% market share over the next two years, and 72% of parents who own voice-activated speakers have already considered shopping using those devices — in short, if brands want to be where customers are, voice search is now a sizable piece of the marketing pie. Tailoring ad content to voice searchers by utilizing geographic targeting and “near me” search results to your advantage can bolster your brand’s image considerably. Not only does it make your brand a convenient source of intel — it also keeps you top-of-mind with less risk of oversaturation or overly-intrusive ads on other platforms. Speaking of which… 

Avoid Overreaching with Non-Intrusive Ad strategies

At its core, every marketing strategy should strive to be helpful rather than disruptive to a customer’s overall experience. Native advertisements operate on this exact principle, providing relevant branded information without the interference of other ad formats.

Native ads are an opportunity to directly control the brand message and user experience, and are demonstrably more readable and shareable on social media compared to display ads. According to eMarketer’s annual report, native advertising makes up the majority of display ad spend, totalling more than $47 billion in 2020 and growing by 4.8% over the previous year. 

They also pose a natural advantage in getting past ad-blockers, which have become more common as consumers try to avoid the constant barrage of digital ads vying for their attention. Brands utilizing influencer marketing can maximize this even further, since sharing native ad content has proven more effective than the alternative.

The advantages of these principles create a naturally engaging, positive user experience that forms a bond between customers and brands. Unsurprisingly, when your online presence illustrates an understanding of customer needs — convenient site design, easily-accessible information from mobile and home devices, and non-intrusive advertising practices — customers respond enthusiastically, with increased lifetime value and an appreciation for a positive customer experience.