Data quality is a key element to a successful e-commerce business, but without a data quality tool to help capture valid data at the point of contact, it is quite easily for your database to be quickly filled with poorly formatted, inaccurate and invalid data. Many companies globally are suffering due to poor quality in their database, which in turn, is harming them and their business in a variety of ways. Let’s take a look at the top 5 challenges facing e-Commerce:
1) Data Submission Convenience
As a customer, the most painful part of making a purchase online is when you have to part with your finances on the checkout page. As an e-commerce business, you will need to make this experience for the customer as painless and smooth as it can be.
When a customer is going through your checkout journey, they desire a convenient and rapid process that will make purchasing the product as simply as possible. But how do you make this journey smooth for a customer?
Improving Customer Experience:
There are now thousands of payment methods available that will allow a customer to spread the cost of a transaction. Having such payment methods on your site will help prevent your customers falling off when they hit the payment page. The likes of Klarna, Splitit and PayPal Credit have now made it easier for a customer to pay for their goods than ever before.
Not only is the idea of spreading a hefty cost over a number of months more enticing, but so is a fast and easy ‘sign-in‘ option that doesn’t require the customer to go through the gruelling process of typing their bank card details where typo’s or invalid bank information could be submitted.
Real-time Address Validation:
Have you been in the situation when purchasing an item where you have aborted the purchase simply because you did not want to go through the laborious process of filling out your address? Well, for many e-commerce businesses, the address page can be a huge pain point that causes a high percentage of their customers to drop off.
Through companies like Data8, customers can simply type in their postcode or elements of their address and the required address fields will fill themselves automatically. Address Validation speeds up the address page process significantly and ensures that the data inserted in the address fields is validate and correct.
2) Obtaining and Maintaining Quality Data
When going through your customer information and records, there is nothing worse than seeing invalid or fake information being stored in your CRM. Even if the information was not intentionally submitted incorrectly, human error can often to lead to random keystrokes and typos that can be the difference between whether a parcel is delivered to the right address or not.
Customer Satisfaction:
Have you ever purchased something online but the goods that you were so eagerly anticipating never actually arrived? Annoying right? Well, that is the gruelling experience that you may be putting your customers through if you fail to have accurate address information that meets the Royal Mail Standard.
The initial impact of a failed delivery may be frustrating for both you and your customer, but the chances of that customer not returning to your site and purchasing from you again is extremely high. With this in mind, you could be damaging your company’s reputation in the long term and through reviews or word of mouth, you could potentially deter new customers from coming to your site.
Further Costs:
So, you have dispatched your goods to the customer, but due to poor address quality, the package has failed to deliver to the customer. Your delivery costs may not seem too expensive when it comes to one or two customers, but when your business is shipping hundreds of items a day and a portion of those packages fail to deliver, the cost to rectify these problem deliveries can quickly add up. This is often when businesses both big and small see a drop in their potential revenue, which could be crucial to business growth and success.
3) Validating Data for Marketing Campaigns
If you’re a marketer, you will know that without valid data, your marketing campaigns could be incredibly redundant and wasteful. For marketers who promote via email or even text message in particular, the campaigns that have been set up will bounce if you do not have the correct customer information. In turn, you will start to see a steady decline in performance in your marketing reports.
Pre-sale Contactability
Customer data is incredibly valuable to marketers as it allows them to target customers who have shown interest in their services or products. That means it is vital that the customer data is valid, otherwise, the customer data isn’t worth anything to marketing campaigns.
If you are a company that relies on email marketing to promote your products or services, it is vital that you utilise an email validation tool. This will ensure that the data stored is valid and contactable.
The initial impact of a failed delivery may be frustrating for both you and your customer, but the chances of that customer not returning to your site and purchasing from you again is extremely high. With this in mind, you could be damaging your company’s reputation in the long term and through reviews or word of mouth, you could potentially deter new customers from coming to your site.
Post-sale Contactability
But it is not only pre-sale that is causing the rub! If a customer has purchased a product or service from your website and you have to contact that customer via email or phone about their purchase, without valid information, your point of contact with that customer no longer exists. It goes without saying, this will cause negative feedback from your customers.
Most businesses inform their customers about their orders via email or phone to ensure an excellent customer service is provided. In some cases, it is crucial that the customer is contactable. Without email or phone validation, your business will be opening itself up to collecting invalid customer information.
4) Delivering Directly to the Customer
Some businesses may find that they are targeting a particular niche of consumer in comparison to other businesses that may lead to a very specific type of address. For example, a clothing company targeting university students may find that they are sending out many of their products to halls of residence. Some companies may be targeting first time buyers, purchasing furniture for their homes that are not yet built. But how do these companies satisfy their customers?
Multi-residential Address
As more and more people turn to purchasing products online rather than through a high-street store, you could expect to see more people making online purchases from within a block of flats, offices or University halls.
For example, a brand that offers a discount for students will find that the majority of their products will end up being shipped to a halls of residence. To stop your goods falling into the wrong hands, or being rejected by the receptionist at the front of house, you can have your customers order delivered directly to their door.
With access to a multi-residential address data-source, you can obtain the customers specific address at the point of capture on your site.
Not Yet Built Addresses
As the demand for homes is rises, new build houses are now popping up all over the country. For example, a furniture retailer may find that many of their customers may want to purchase products from your site for homes that have not yet been built.
But without access to the Not Yet Built Address data, they will be excluding a portion of customers that will instead approach your competitors to make a purchase. What is the easiest way to solve that issue? Get access to the Not Yet Built Addresses.
5) Eliminating Duplicate Records
Most companies suffer from duplicate records from time to time, but it is the businesses that deal with these duplicates than stand head and shoulders above the rest. You don’t need me to tell you that having duplicate records in your database can cause a variety of problems… here are just two of the top problems surrounding duplicate records for e-commerce businesses.
Costs of Marketing
When marketing to customers, whether you’re sending them physical brochures through the post, or whether you’re sending them a promotional offer through email, there is a cost that coincides with the amount of customers you are marketing to. With this in mind, if you have duplicate records in your CRM you will be needlessly driving up the costs of your marketing.
But if you’re using Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can merge duplicate records with a product such a Duplicare™. By merging your records together, you will be able to find your customers primary contact details on top of any other details they may have provided in the past, driving down the cost of your marketing.
