Once you put an online business out into the world, there will be a lot of expectations laid at your door. First, the site should be a safe place to be, where malware, trojans, and bad links don’t have a chance.
From here, your website should be enjoyable to use. The navigation should make sense, in a way that makes it easy to get from A to B. And above all, the website should be fast! If someone has to sit and wait for it to load, their expectations will not be met in any way, shape, or form.
But these aren’t the only things a customer will expect from your online business. They’ll also want to see the three things below too.
Responsive Customer Service
How long does it take you to get back to your customers? If it’s more than 24 hours, you’re probably already setting yourself on the back foot.
Of course, this can sometimes be unavoidable, but it’s best to let your customers know the average response time they can expect from you otherwise.
This is a form of common courtesy that’s essential in the online world, and it can prevent complaints about your responsiveness from cropping up as well! Some of the worst bad reviews out there focus on how hard a company is to reach, and that’s not a reputation you want to generate for yourself.
A Secure Place to Pay
If a customer senses that something is not quite right when they head to your checkout, they’re not going to check out. They’ll abandon their basket, which is a common problem in the online world, and they’ll head somewhere they know their payment details are safe.
As such, make sure you meet expectations regarding a safe checkout. This will tend to look the same for most customers using your website; for example, an unintrusive, easy loading payment gateway that has a lock icon next to the URL.
Thankfully, making your checkout secure is also quite easy. You can manage this by integrating payment processing into your website itself, which ensures everything goes through you and can be encrypted by you. Offering this guarantee is a great way to meet your customers on the right level.
Incentives for Repeat Customers
Yes, this is an expectation. In a world where brand loyalty is no longer a guarantee, providing an incentive to come back is essential. In the same way a loyalty program is very much part of a marketing toolkit, you need to think about valuable and exciting ways to pull your customers back in.
Gathering repeat custom can be more rewarding than hunting down new leads. You know these customers are already willing to buy from you; they also know how good this buying experience is. Both of these factors stack the sale in your favor, and an incentive for coming back will tip the customer over the edge.
Meet customer expectations to make your online business a great success.
