The UK online sales peak isn’t going anywhere…make sure you don’t either!
The pandemic lockdowns saw an overnight spike in UK online sales that only continued to rise as we journeyed further into 2020 and 2021.
But now we’re in 2022 and life has started to return to our ‘new normal’, we would think that the landscape of the ecommerce world would also start to trend back towards the pre-pandemic days. But it turns out that ecommerce is still experiencing the rippling effects from the surge of online buying trends. Even though we can now visit many of our retailers in person, the convenience and ‘stay at home’ philosophy of many customers has kept UK online sales on the upwards gradient. This is a great thing for those of us updating and maintaining our online product list – one thing we all learnt from the pandemic is that keeping a healthy stock level is imperative to keeping our customers! But are we maintaining our sites to ensure our customer experience is at a healthy level and encouraging return custom too?
It’s important that we understand that the customer experience changes, year to year, week to week and in some cases day to day. Although you may know what your customers want and have an enviable stock pile ready to be shipped, downloaded or printed, are your customers having a positive experience when they engage with your site for their ecommerce needs?
The best and only way to ensure you’re ahead of the game when it comes to online customer experience, is to Test, Test, Test! By thoroughly testing the many ways your customers and potential customers access and travel through your site, the more likely you are going to find snags and small inconveniences (that you will find due to those constantly changing ways customers access your site), and it is these that will turn your customers out of your online shop door and onto the ever expanding digital high street to buy their products elsewhere. Learning your customer’s behaviour, alongside their basket fillers, will ensure that any issues on your site are found, rectified and are never a problem for your customer’s experience. Maintaining your sales and keeping your site in peak performance is paramount – you don’t get one without the other.
For help on testing and keeping your UK online sales at peak performance, contact us here at thinkTRIBE, and we’ll help you continue on your positive ecommerce journey, now and for the future.