Successfully selling products online and differentiating from the competition is no longer about just providing an easy, slick transaction and ordering process. Now more than ever, the “e” in eCommerce stands for “experience.” Going forward, the leaders in eCommerce will be thinking beyond the transaction and customer satisfaction and investing in a combined commerce and customer experience.

To make this vision a reality, you must consider how shoppers arrived at your online store and how customers have interacted with and purchased from you before. You must then use that information to deliver a personalized, inspirational shopping experience across channels that makes online shopping easy, serendipitous, intuitive, and engaging.

Fortunately, you can now take advantage of digital technology and data to create the new customer experiences at the heart of today’s eCommerce success.

What’s changed in the world of eCommerce?

Until very recently, the browsing, discovery, inspirational and emotive elements of ‘old school’ shopping were somewhat lost in the world of eCommerce. But the evolution of eCommerce has taken us from convenience (the Amazon model) to satisfaction (the Zappos model) to the age of now with experience underpinning today’s eCommerce.

A number of trends are behind this shift, namely the following:

• Consumers demand a personalized shopping experience. Shoppers are willing to share information about themselves in exchange for such an experience. But they expect their interactions with brands to be personalized to their tastes, devices, channels, etc.
• Video and mobile are the de facto for shopping today. After all, shoppers are drawn to highly visual, immersive experiences that inspire purchases. And they want to access them from their device of choice, whether a smartphone or tablet.
• Consumers expect to find products quickly and easily through search or on-site navigation. Increasingly distracted by their busy lives and always-on social media interactions, shoppers show little patience for sites that don’t immediately satisfy their needs.

Why eCommerce leaders are moving beyond the transaction

This eCommerce evolution places new demands on you to create holistic and consistent customer experiences regardless of how, when or where a consumer interacts with your brand. Specifically, the above changes have created a new eCommerce operating environment in which:

• eCommerce and brand marketing tactics are converging. Now the eCommerce team needs to embrace the brand concept and figure out how to embed an outstanding customer experience into the transaction process. Otherwise, the hard work and budget spent driving consumers to your site add up to nothing.
• Digital mrchandising is no longer about working on a hunch. It’s not sufficient or acceptable to feature a product on the home page or at the top of a category and hope it drives conversions. Because merchandisers can now access a wealth of data about online buying behaviors and trends, they can make informed decisions about which products to push.
• The team must deliver a single unified experience. Shoppers expect consistent interactions with brands regardless of how they access a shopping site. As part of that, the eCommerce team needs to deliver a standout mobile experience and tap into the power of video. Though it’s extremely challenging to create such an experience and keep the spiraling cost of video under control, it’s a must.
• eCommerce means that international opportunities are within retailers’ reach. But many retailers – especially those from a brick-and-mortar background – don’t understand the complexities of going international. To succeed in the international market, the eCommerce team must be sensitive to cultural differences and local preferences.

How to satisfy demands for the customer experience and commerce convergence

How do you make sure digital merchandising, search, content, mobile, and every other channel and technology are working to deliver this experience? You need to think about how they support the entire customer experience and not just the eCommerce piece of it. That means thinking beyond your world and working with brand and in-store teams. After all, if your brand team is spending millions to drive shoppers to your site, and you don’t deliver the experience they expect, consumers won’t purchase online or in your store.

To deliver experience-driven eCommerce, you need to focus on the following:

• Optimize the current experience. Apply the best practices we’ll cover below to take your online store to the next level and continuously improve it.
• Personalize the experience for each shopper. Tap into all the data at your disposal to understand customer context, purchase and browsing history and personalize the experience to drive loyalty.
• Take control of the experience. Take advantage of nextgeneration eCommerce technology that shifts control of the visual experience and campaigns and promotions from the IT group to your merchandisers.

Six steps to ‘experience-commerce’

By implementing the following best practices, you can achieve the optimization, personalization and control that are critical for today’s eCommerce.

1 Enrich your catalog

In physical stores, shoppers can interact with customer service and try out products. To bring that same experience online and encourage trust in the brand and help shoppers validate their purchase, eCommerce leaders must do the following:

• Tailor catalog descriptions to reflect customer language so shoppers can easily find items
• Present comprehensive, up-to-date catalog data so shoppers have everything they need to make a purchase decision
• Enrich the product catalog with informative, engaging content such as videos and advice

This can prove especially valuable for high-end, high-priced products. The site for ASOS, one of world’s largest online fashion retailers, features rich content such as videos of models wearing dresses on the catwalk. By merchandising in this way, ASOS drives higher conversion rates.

2 Merchandise in a context-aware, data-driven manner

You always want to deliver the item that your shoppers are seeking when they enter a search phrase. But you should go a step further to refine recommendations and merchandise to them simultaneously. Supported by sophisticated technology, you can transform the search box into a conversion-ready merchandising opportunity by providing product suggestions as shoppers enter specific terms. Based on insight into a shopper’s interests and past purchases, along with overall sales trends and available inventory, you can push relevant items to shoppers in real time as they search on your site.

3 Satisfy the omni-channel norm

Empower shoppers to engage with you via multiple channels on their path to purchase, tying together the physical and online store experience. A leading wine retailer does just that’does just that. When registered shoppers sign onto the site, the retailer looks up the closest physical store. Then when the shopper searches for a certain wine, the site only displays the wines in stock at the local store. Similarly, the mobile site pinpoints the consumer’s location and detects the nearest stores with the available wines.

4 Influence product discovery

One of the most enjoyable shopping experiences is stumbling upon or discovering an item unexpectedly. To satisfy shoppers in this way and hit company targets, eCommerce teams need a complete view of their customers and data. This requires a deep understanding of how and what their customers purchase, combined with the products it makes the most sense to sell from a business standpoint, such as high-margin, in-stock items. With this insight, brands can suggest relevant products that the company is eager to sell, while giving shoppers the sense of discovering products on their own.

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5 Blend (relevant) content and commerce experiences

Consumers don’t just shop to buy a product; they are also interested in learning and engaging with the brand and other shoppers. Savvy brands understand that educational, informative content complementing their product catalog can attract traffic to their sites and encourage conversions. Grasping the importance of becoming destination hubs as well as shopping sites, retailers are displaying expert advice and engaging content for their customers. They are blending content experiences, such as advice articles, with promotions and merchandising. Thiis drives more traffic, keeps shoppers engages and build trust, driving towards a purchase. The key is to use technology that allows you to publish personalized content while also pushing relevant products..

Cater to international audiences

When going global, it’s not enough to simply translate your product catalog descriptions and campaign messages. You need to understand and respond to different cultural nuances, such as how and when shoppers use mobile devices, whether they prefer visual experiences, and what search terms they use to describe each item. For example, if you search for “sneakers” on most UK sites, you won’t get any results. However, “trainers” would return a range of items.

By understanding cultural relevancy and the shopper’s intent, eCommerce teams in can deliver the right experience. As part of that, they need to create and manage the digital customer experience from a central location to ensure consistency and to address a lack of digital merchandisers in each location.

While it’s no small challenge to bring together all these elements, you can increase the likelihood of success by planning your roadmap with the customer experience as the central theme.

Optimize and personalize the eCommerce experience with SDL eCommerce

To increase wallet share and build customer loyalty in eCommerce, you must deliver an individualized and differentiated online shopping experience. Achieving that requires that you create a relevant and personalized eCommerce presence, and that you quickly react to trends, customer needs and shopping behavior. With SDL eCommerce, you can do just that, by controlling, optimizing and personalizing the customer experience from one simple interface in the Cloud. In fact, the solution makes it easy for eCommerce marketers and merchandisers to adapt and personalize the online shopping experience to any scenario, while keeping conversion rates high.