How to Design a Customer-Oriented Online Business

Mindleef
5 min readSep 18, 2021

The high-competitive eCommerce landscape stands focused on the customer’s experience. It’s imperative for any companies, of any sector and size. Forbes states that customer focused online business companies defeat their competition around 80%.

Below are few quick pointers that help you align your strategy. And how to create customer focused online business based on their interest.

What’s customer orientation?

Customer orientation is the way of structuring your whole business with customer needs. Every perspective of the business relied on customer behaviors. Like Process, product development, and staff training. Whereas in contrast, sales orientation prioritizes the business needs. And Product orientation focused on better product development.

Customer experience management competes for space in the conversation. But CX is what the customer orientation achieved.

Why need to be customer-oriented?

A customer-oriented business model gains you more potential customers for longer. Your loyal customers will savior your business from finding more marketing ways. Moreover, which is more expensive than customer retention.

Invesp blog statistics claims that,

  • The cost is five times to win a new potential buyer than retaining the existing one.
  • The probability of selling to the existing customer is 60–70%, whereas it’s only 5–20% for the new one.
  • Existing users are 50% more assuring to try new products.
  • Loyal customers spend an average of 31%, more than new customers.
  • When your customer retention increases by 5%, the profit raises by 25–95%.

The same research claims statistics. Only 18% of companies are focusing on customer retention through good CX. Thus it’s essential to adopt a customer-oriented business approach.

How does customer orientation mean for eCommerce?

When designing your online business to be customer-oriented, look after the principles. That is long-term and some more tricks to learn from the traditional retail shops.

The Sturdy CX works with a human associate. Many retail stores opt for greeters to say hello at the doorstep. Which breaks the ice; it recognizes customers as people.

Well, when a chatbot performs the same function on your website? Directing visitors to let them access help at any time. Chatbots save 30% in customer service charges. And, also 40% of the customers never mind whether AI or a person who answers.

What makes a good store? Friendly, well-trained staff, of course. Train your staff to reply to customers, which drives more trust and sales too.

The same applies to your online store too, make sure to answer all the queries. To be more Clear and Thorough. Also, use the right helpdesk software to pull all the questions under one resource. Also, this helps your support team to reply in a well-structured way.

How to become a customer-oriented online business

It is a big responsibility to restructure your entire business around customer focus. At times it may feel counterintuitive when some clash occurs on short-term profits. But as we explored, this is a long game that pays off huge.

Yes, we mean your whole business. Also, there are definite points to guide from product development, marketing, and delivery.

Product

Researching your user needs remains the basis of customer orientation. You cannot match a product to their requirements without research. Invest time to track your online niche to find the right customers. And. a product source that meets the customer needs at the right price.

Yet, when your products match your customer requirements. You have to spend time finding the effective way to claim its benefit. If you are not able to communicate benefits, then they will not exist.

Giving more engaging content helps to nurture your industry. People out there are yet unaware that they need your product. Iterate at the speed and need of the customer.

Well-Informed Data.

As an online entrepreneur, you have to know the value of data. Earlier sale data makes future sales and offer campaigns. Have you ever collected data that is useful to your customer? Relevance is the key. Gather data not only on the customer but also on your business.

Customer insights are priceless and, use them to mold your business process. Understand what customers expect from you and where ever you can make alterations. When doing a customer survey, ask hard questions. Use the surveys to get good results for sure your business will profit in the long run.

Money-back offers

Building a customer’s trust takes time. And when things get wrong, it needs to take responsibility. Well-guaranteed money back and return processes will pacify customer’s doubts while checking out.

Focus on the benefit of your products, not the bottom line. Need to refund any faults. Take complaints as good feedback to fix production issues to avoid them in the future.

Customer-oriented content

Almost 96 percent of the visitors to your website are not ready to buy immediately. Focus on creating and generating content that entertains them. Do researches on data, topics, and sale patterns. To establish your customer’s interest. Also, look at the relationship with the customer as long-run, not as a single-time sale.

Feedback and Reviews

Happy customers are your business’s effective ambassadors. Meanwhile, handle negative feedback legible to end the spread of dissatisfaction. Yet, bad reviews benefit your business. They identify the problem and weaknesses that were not aware to you.

Reviews help customers to make decisions. Thus, make sure to avail them access it on your product page itself.

Market

Give good CX at every level. Filter and categorize products to make them simpler to discover. Create attractive landing pages which convince and educate. The better CX gets, the more traffic you will get. Also, this produces data to improve your CX more.

Ask for feedback across many channels you can. Also, Track metrics from customer satisfaction (CSAT). Score from net promoter to see who recommends you to others.

Optimize mobile-first, no matter the type of your business. Even the most traffic comes from desktops. Google demands a mobile-responsive website. You can go ahead in this online business race with your mobile apps.

Delivery

Make sure to design checkout as easy as possible. Users find it annoying to fill in info twice while checking out. At times, customers abandon a buy only for a complex checkout process. Thus, optimize the shopping cart to reduce abandonment.

Always keep your customers updated on the order confirmation, dispatch status, delivery tracking. Each notification gives peace of mind to the customers. Deliver the items as much as possible.

44% of users expect order delivery within two working days. 13% of customers expect next-day delivery.

The quicker they receive, the probability to rate a five-star review. Reward by sweetening the deal with free delivery and shipping.

Final thoughts

Considering your customer first yields a big reward. Customer orientation provides you a sustainable business to thrive best. For sure, when your online business is customer-focused. You will find benefits long run.

Originally published at https://mindleef.com on September 18, 2021.

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Mindleef

We at MindLeef design the product development for delivering top-notch solutions