The customer is king: 10 tips for customer obsession

Keep an eye on the entire customer experience - anywhere, anytime.

Through the Internet and mobile devices, customers always and everywhere have the opportunity to find an offer and directly satisfy a purchase need. This is why a consistent shopping and brand experience is required across all channels and touchpoints. The online store must be optimally available on all end devices - both in terms of performance and responsive design as well as visual design and usability. If customer expectations are disappointed in any of these points, the next offer is only a few clicks away.

2. track and analyze your customers.

Even regular customers always want to discover something new in the online store. However, a certain consistency is also required so that customers can quickly find the desired items, smoothly go through learned processes and quickly complete the purchase. Web analytics shows how customers navigate through the shopping world, what appeals to them, and which page elements are particularly relevant. In this way, usability in stores can be optimized and the page can be built and designed accordingly.

3. ensure a reliable and stable IT infrastructure.

To really understand customers and meet their needs, store operators need a whole lot of customer information, which has to be processed and stored in an IT infrastructure just like all other store data. Anyone who has managed well with a simple hosting solution up to now will quickly find that the resource requirements increase rapidly when implementing a customer obsession strategy. An external hosting provider delivers professional solutions here and ensures that the store operator can concentrate fully on the wishes of his customers.

4. observe legal requirements for data protection.

Data protection is a challenging task for many online retailers, but it also offers the opportunity for a trusting customer relationship and better service. After all, more and more consumers are attaching importance to the protection of their data. The most important data protection obligations for store operators result from the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and the German Telemedia Act (TMG): For data collection and use, it is necessary to inform the website visitor comprehensively, to observe the purpose limitation principle and to obtain the user's consent.

5. get your online store certified.

Trust between customer and retailer plays a crucial role in e-commerce success. Quality seals that guarantee correct and secure purchasing processes ensure greater transparency in online shopping. When shopping online, customers rely on the fact that a seal of approval stands for compliance with certain quality criteria. Store operators who opt for certification of their store thus have a significant competitive advantage over online retailers without a seal of approval.

6. manage your product data intelligently and customer-specifically.

The growing number of touchpoints and sales channels makes one thing indispensable: product information must be available at the right time, in the right place, and of course be customer-specific. The whole range of customer data - whether collected and gathered through tracking, purchase history or customer conversations - form the basis for profiles of the most common customer types, so-called personas, with all their preferences, interests and habits. An online retailer can use these criteria to provide the right products and relevant product information for the persona.

7. meet the high information needs of their customers.

Today, in the age of digitalization, consumers have an enormous need for information. Companies need to meet this demand if they want to keep up with the competition. This also includes the provision of complete and correct information, so-called "trusted data" - along the entire supply chain. Corresponding technologies are already available and offer a wide range of opportunities to gain customer trust and generate additional sales.

8. offer their diverse clientele suitable payment options.

E-commerce is not only cross-channel, mobile and unlimited in time: Online commerce also knows no national borders, and customers today quite naturally shop in online stores not only in their own country, but all over the world. At the same time, customers expect a simple and convenient shopping experience at all times, including all their preferred payment methods, such as credit card, PayPal, invoice, or SEPA direct debit.

9. deliver products exactly tailored to your customers.

If you want to offer your customers exactly what they want, you can't avoid the topic of personalization. Personalized search offers online retailers new opportunities to address store visitors individually. Based on individual click and purchase behavior, the right products are automatically displayed - products that match the visitor's preferences and are therefore highly likely to lead to a purchase.

10. rely on personalized marketing measures.

To have even the slightest chance of being found or noticed by potential customers on the Internet, online retailers should not only master the classic methods of online marketing, such as SEO and SEA. Rather, store operators must develop precisely tailored marketing measures by collecting and analyzing data. For example, with appropriate software, newsletter campaigns can be set up automatically for specific target groups and personalized for each registered recipient - with prioritized content or individual product recommendations.The 10 tips are an excerpt from the e-book "Customer Obsession - The Customer at the Center of Online Commerce". On 34 colorful pages, the experts from United E-Commerce show what is important in Customer Obsession, bring examples from practice and provide useful checklists. The e-book is available here available for download free of charge.