As years go by, more and more companies are focusing their efforts on marketing strategies, always trying to find new ways to attract customers’ attention and do that better than every other rival out there.
Unfortunately, it seems like the days when the actual product was the most important thing in this equation are gone. Some 20 or 30 years ago, coming up with a good product would determine the faith of your business.
Things have changed now and entrepreneurs have to do more than just manufacture a decent product. After all, in the eCommerce industry, people can’t really touch or see the product when shopping online. Instead, they have photos, videos, product descriptions, and so on.
Naturally, in order to convince someone to buy your products, you need great marketing strategies. But, you also need to provide a top-notch product experience.
This kind of experience is really important since it can increase sales, build loyalty, and even improve net promoter scores.
So, if you’re interested in learning how you can improve your product experience and take it to a whole new level, keep reading.
But first, what is product experience exactly?
Let’s try to keep this short and simple. Product experience is a part of the entire user experience.
The focus here is placed on the customer journey. To be precise, product experience shows a customer the overall value of a product or service. It is the perception of a company’s product based on all touchpoints, interactions, and engagements.
Basically, this experience is the entire set of effects elicited by the interaction between a user and a product. If you want to improve this experience and thus drive more sales, below you will see what you need to do to really take it to another level.
How can you improve the product experience?
Image by free stock photos from www.picjumbo.com from Pixabay
First, you need to understand that it’s not possible to craft an identical experience for two different products.
Your products aren’t all the same, and that means that you need to think differently for each one. It is necessary to use a unique approach for each of your products.
For instance, when you’re selling antivirus software, you won’t devise a product experience strategy you’d devise if you were selling sunglasses. With the software, you need to focus on specs and features. On the other hand, sunglasses are way simpler and easier to promote.
Now that we have that cleared up, let’s take a look at some effective product experience examples that you can use for various products.
Trial versions
Trying before buying is something you need to offer. Of course, not all types of businesses can implement this feature, but if you can, you most certainly should.
For instance, in the software industry, a trial version of a tool means that a customer can try and test the application before making a purchase.
In most cases, these trial versions have all the functionalities of full versions, but they can only be used for a limited period of time.
Product categorization
You have to make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for and read whatever they need to read about the product. This means that you should categorize everything as well as you can and make it all clear.
Every detail has to be there, every photo has to be authentic. You shouldn’t meddle with this. It’s all part of the experience.
Fortunately, there are software solutions that can make your life easier in this case. To be precise, if you have a Shopify store, you could check out Shopify inventory management solutions.
These software solutions are designed to help you make a great online store where each product is placed properly, categorized well, and displayed however you’d like it to be displayed. On top of that, these can also help you keep track of transactions, provide you with important analytics, and so on.
Free samples
There isn’t a person in this world that doesn’t like free things. A free product sample is a small portion of a product package distributed for free. Obviously, this serves the purpose of introducing the product to a given customer.
For instance, some perfume shops always have free product samples whenever a customer wants to test out a certain perfume and figure out whether they like it.
Some online retailers that sell this kind of product send free samples with the usual orders. This is also a great way to boost the experience since a customer feels like they have got additional merchandise for free.
If you think that this practice will cost you more money than it will bring you, rest assured that it really pays off in the long run. After all, some of the giants have been giving out free samples for quite some time now. These include Gillette, Allure, Olay, and so on.
Don’t underestimate feedback reports
Image by athree23 from Pixabay
In order to have better product experience, you need to make a customer feel like they are the most important factor in the whole process. And, in reality, they are.
What they think, want, and feel about a product drives customer-centricity. So, collecting and acting on their feedback is really an important part of the whole improvement process.
Channels and ways for soliciting these feedback reports include surveys, interviews, site visits, and even email inquiries.
When collecting feedback, make sure that you execute the whole ordeal seamlessly and make it easy for a customer to speak their mind. Therefore, be careful with each detail when it comes to feedback collection.
You should think about every step of the way, starting from email design or survey design, the content of the inquiry, the depth of the report, and many other aspects. If you plan to send it out through the newsletter, you need to think about design, subject lines, preview text, and so on.
Augmented reality
This is still a relatively new trend when it comes to the product experience. Augmented reality is designed to immerse a user into a completely new world. This technology overlies new objects or realities onto the real world.
As you have most likely figured out by now, this is an awesome way to experience a product, examine it, and even have some fun with it.
For instance, IKEA has AR catalogs. They have an app that lets you place IKEA furniture in your home with the help of AR. This is really helpful since you have the ability to check out how a given furniture item fits in your home without buying it or even having to go to a brick-and-mortar store.
Oh, and you most likely know what Instagram filters are, right? They can make your face look different or even add accessories such as sunglasses, hats, and so forth. Well, a company from the UK that sells sunglasses uses similar technology.
To be precise, when you visit their website, you can find a pair of glasses and try them on. You just need a functional webcam and that‘s it. With the help of AR, you will be able to see how various pairs of sunglasses look on your face.
Final thoughts
These are the times when people lead busy lives, have tight schedules, and need to make quick decisions. That is why not many have the luxury to spend countless hours browsing brick-and-mortar stores anymore.
On top of that, the eCommerce industry is constantly growing and it seems like people will only buy things online in the future.
It may not come in the near future, but some changes are just behind the corner. This also points out that product experience is the future and without it, no business will be able to grow.
So, start perfecting the product experience now since it is slowly becoming a top priority for every retailer.
Samantha Acuna is a writer based in San Francisco, CA. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, and Yahoo Small Business.
