5 October 2020
On marketplaces, the customer experience plays a key role in the conversion rate. Whether you are creating a new marketplace or improving an existing one, improving customer experience must be your guiding light. Accordingly, you must pay particular attention to the payment experience. Here are 5 ways to offer the best possible customer experience on your marketplace and to keep boosting the conversion rate.
Before you can even begin thinking about how your customers behave on your platform, you must optimise your website for search engines. After all, it’s difficult for customers to buy anything if they can’t find the website. Your marketplace must appear at the top of the Google search results if you want to generate consistent organic traffic. This means that your website must be quick and have a responsive web design, i.e. be easy to browse on smartphones and tablets. As far as SEO goes, you must follow many rules and fill each field in correctly. To appear at the top of search engine results, a good practice is to incorporate a blog into your marketplace and regularly post articles that interest your target audience. This approach also helps with keeping your customers happy and loyal.
Lastly, it can be useful to invest in SEA, search engine advertising, so that your platform appears in search engine ads and attracts traffic.
The main goal of your marketplace is to sell a product or a service. The entire design must be created with this in mind and each visual element must serve a purpose. The whole website must be graphically consistent and uniform, particularly when it comes to colours and fonts. Overall, browsing must be intuitive and smooth. As such, several rules must be followed:
To increase the conversion rate, there should be many CTAs (call to action) throughout your website to encourage visitors to buy. The CTAs should all be in the same format and colour so that they are easy to recognise.
The best way to make a website user-friendly is to swap places with your customers and make sure that buying a product or service takes as few clicks as possible. Doing so will help to identify potential stumbling blocks or sources of frustration that could make the process less effective.
A clear and objective title, high-quality images, bullet lists, relevant categories, appropriate keywords… You should encourage your sellers to add comprehensive and accurate product descriptions. Apart from improving visibility and SEO, properly filled-in product descriptions will have a positive impact on the conversion rate. Don’t forget that the product description will often be the gateway to your marketplace. It’s all about making a good first impression and answering any questions visitors may have.
As a marketplace operator, your role is more than just informing sellers of good practices. You must also offer them product description templates designed to ensure the best customer experience. In addition to professional photos and carefully drafted content, consider offering verified customer reviews. According to a study by Emarketer, customers are 12 times more likely to buy products online if reviews appear in the product description.
Lastly, the product listing page must be particularly well designed, with a clear and visible CTA.
Regardless of the nature of an online platform, trust is a make-or-break issue. Your marketplace will inspire trust if it complies with online conventions and standards (navigation bar at the top, logo in the top left corner or in the middle, the possibility to return to the home page by clicking on it, etc.). A familiar environment is reassuring by nature.
Free delivery, orders shipped within 24 hours, 24/7 support, money-back guarantee… To reassure customers and encourage them to buy, each page on the marketplace should have elements of reassurance in line with the main expectations of your target audience.
Tedious process, lack of preferred payment methods or doubts regarding security are some of the reasons why shopping carts are most often abandoned at the payment stage. It would be a shame if your potential customers got so far in the purchase process and stopped there. To convert shoppers, it is crucial to set up an easy and secure payment experience.
Providing payment services that comply with all relevant regulations and meet the needs of your customers is far from straightforward. To ensure a smooth and secure payment experience, the easiest thing to do is to entrust this step to a payment service provider (PSP).
As a payment specialist, a PSP is responsible for ensuring that transactions on your marketplace are managed correctly. In addition to offering a perfectly secure solution, PSPs provide various payment modes and methods to meet all the needs of your buyers. By choosing a passported PSP such as Lemonway, you can also easily access the international market.
As the partner of many marketplaces, Lemonway uses its payment expertise to improve the customer experience on your platform. Do you have a project in mind? Do you have any questions? Talk to us about your needs.
