More and more e-commerce platforms offer unique, customized product design and recommendations that cater to individual preferences and behaviors. User interfaces and marketing strategies are being adapted, which helps companies to improve customer engagement by offering them the products they need and want – the article was originally published in Lider magazine
Six years ago, at the CRO Commerce conference, we spoke for the first time about the personalization of offers for users, when there were only a few local people doing it – recalls the president of the Croatian eCommerce Association, Marcel Majsan.
After that, remarketing according to the cookie model became more and more complex due to the General Data Protection Regulation, and advanced personalization systems in online stores became more and more popular.
– For example, Amazon has developed sophisticated recommendation algorithms that analyze purchase history and user behavior to provide personalized recommendations. This technology not only increases sales, but also improves the user experience because it shows customers products that are important to them – says Majsan and adds that user interfaces should be intuitive, easy to use and visually attractive (although this is not the main thing for the success of a webshop) and that better design does have the effect of increasing trust.
Building trust
In marketing campaigns for Majsan, it is crucial to determine target groups and design campaigns based on user preferences and behavior. The use of customer reviews and the display of the trust mark help the most to strengthen trust in the webshop, and creative and visually appealing advertisements can, Majsan believes, significantly increase the interest and engagement of customers.
– The primary tool for improving user experience and marketing is Google Analytics. It is free and allows for in-depth analysis of user behavior and the discovery of areas for improvement. We also recommend Hotjar for recording and analyzing anonymous visitors and creating simple surveys for visitors. For advanced users, we also recommend the use of tools for monitoring and optimizing results on search engines, as well as tools for personalizing content in online stores and marketing campaigns. Chatbots are also increasingly popular for helping customers quickly, as well as answering queries in real time. ChatGPT is used to research user preferences, create descriptions and texts for the web, as well as personalized responses to user queries. However, most domestic webshops do not sufficiently understand the importance of building trust, which will bring them much better results than any advanced tool – warns Majsan.
Understanding customers
Bima shop uses digital data analysis tools, says KB and Bima online store business development manager Marijeta Kuten Soldo, to map the customer journey, such as visitor demographics, interests, product searches, cart additions and purchases . This data helps to understand customer preferences and adjust the offer, and customers often leave product reviews and ratings.
– We follow market trends and analyze what is popular among customers. This includes monitoring social networks, blogs and other sources and using tools to search for keywords and monitor search trends. We segment our users according to demographics, purchase history and interests, and thus shape and improve the user interface even better. To attract as many customers as possible, we apply various digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing, search engine optimization, content and e-mail marketing. Paid advertising is also important: Google Ads, targeted ads on the Facebook page of Bima Hrvatska, Instagram and other platforms in order to reach certain consumers. With remarketing campaigns, we want to re-engage visitors who left the website without making a purchase – says Kuten Soldo.
Impulsive behavior
Investing in the user experience, adds Kuten Soldo, enables easy navigation, consistent design on all pages, easy checkout, secure payment, customer support by phone and email, the company’s Facebook page, live chat, and customer reviews. In her opinion, the trust of Bima-shop.hr’s customers is most influenced by high product quality, cooperation with well-known and reliable manufacturers of toys, tableware, gifts and decorations, customer support, efficient handling of complaints and product returns in the shortest possible time, policy privacy, fast delivery and the use of environmentally friendly materials and procedures.
The Croatian Post pointed out that the e-commerce market is closely related to logistics as one of the most dynamic industries, in which trends change at a high speed. This is why it is crucial for Pošta to constantly monitor the market and user needs in order to remain competitive. Also, they continue in it, if sensitivity towards nature is not included in the business, users and customers could avoid the company’s products and services.
– User experience is key to success, and the purchase is only part of the process that affects user satisfaction. It is important that the user interface is intuitive, transparent and simple. Buyers generally react impulsively: what they notice first attracts them, such as price or free shipping. This also applies to marketing campaigns: if you don’t have a good marketing strategy, you won’t reach the customer no matter how good the offer is. A large share of user satisfaction also relates to the way in which purchased goods reach them. Parcel machines, which we first introduced on the market in 2021, proved to be an important step in improving the user experience – notes the Croatian Post.
Why is the shopping cart empty?
In a brick-and-mortar store, it’s not often that customers leave carts at checkout, Monri Payments said, but cart abandonment is a problem that all online retailers face. One of the reasons they see in Monri Payments is that the point of sale did not offer a satisfactory payment method or there are problems with payment. For safe and easy payment, they point out, merchants must carefully consider the options provided by the payment service provider, where the ability to use digital wallets or pay in installments is important for customers.
– Merchants can choose from three ways of integrating the payment screen: as a pop-up window, a short-term redirect to our secure environment or an integrated form on their website. For a better user experience when paying, we advise our merchants not to ask users for information they do not need. For example, let them pay for their shopping cart as guests, only at the end offer them to create a user account. Security of payment, transparency in communication and business, delivery options and deadlines for delivery and return of goods are key to gaining the trust of users in the long term – according to Monri Payments.
They also note that with the development of technology, the boundaries between the physical and the online world are increasingly blurred, which also applies to payment. They give the example of their client, a shopping chain that has introduced scan&go purchases in some of its stores, where users scan the selected food with their mobile phones and pay using the app before leaving the store. Since the moment of payment is technically an online purchase, and the user experience is an offline purchase, Monri Payments actually unites the two worlds.
